From: GEELKERKEN@stpc.wi.LeidenUniv.nl (Marc) Newsgroups: alt.memetics Subject: preliminary alt.memetics FAQ: general introduction Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 17:28:39 GMT Organization: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Leiden Distribution: world NNTP-Posting-Host: stpc156.wi.leidenuniv.nl =========================================================================== alt.memetics FAQ: "GENERAL INTRODUCTION" Hi---- Here a first draft of what could once become an introductory part of the alt.memetics FAQ. I cut-and-pasted some introduction texts from articles I found on the net. The whole lot is meant to give an indication of what memetics is all about to those not yet familiar with the concept. I added a few remarks on memetic usage. Of course this is only a start, and I can think of many useful additions. However, a FAQ should not be a one-person enterprise, so I invite anyone to contribute and/or criticize. Please post to alt.memetics. ----Marc Last update: 23 August 1994 =========================================================================== :memetics: /me-met'iks/ [from {meme}] The study of memes. As of mid-1991, this is still an extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the first steps towards at least statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new information ecologies in which memes live and replicate. =========================================================================== FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: "What the hell is this 'meme' concept? It isn't in my diary. Don't even know how to pronounce it..." Meme (pron. `meem'): A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic. (Grant) Richard Dawkins, who coined the word in his book _The Selfish Gene_ defines the meme as simply a unit of intellectual or cultural information that survives long enough to be recognized as such, and which can pass from mind to mind. There's not much of a sense of describing thought processes, but nor is it just a model. As Richard Dawkins writes (this is from memory), "God indeed exists, if only as a pattern in brain structures replicated across the minds of billions of people throughout the world." (Of course the patterns aren't physically identical, but they represent the same thing.) (Lezard) Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize by brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, 'belief in life after death' is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual (people) the world over. (Dawkins) A meme survives in the world because people pass it on to other people, either vertically to the next generation, or horizontally to our fellows. This process is analogous to the way willow genes cause willow trees to spread them, or perhaps closer to the way cold viruses make us sneeze and spread them. (Henson) It is important to note here that, in contrast to genes, memes are not encoded in any universal code within our brains or in human culture. The meme for vanishing point perspective in two-dimensional art, for example, which first appeared in the sixteenth century, can be encoded and transmitted in German, English or Chinese; it can be described in words, or in algebraic equations, or in line drawings. Nonetheless, in any of these forms, the meme can be transmitted, resulting in a certain recognizable element of realism which appears only in art works executed by artists infected with this meme. (Vajk) My favorite example of a crucial meme would be "fire" or more importantly, "how to make a fire." This is a behavioral meme, mind you, one which didn't necessarily need a word attached to it to spring up and spread, merely a demonstration for another to follow. Once the meme was out there, it would have spread like wildfire, for obvious reasons... But when you start to think of memes like that -- behavioral memes -- then you can begin to see how language itself, the idea of language, was a meme. Writing was a meme. And within those areas, more specific memes emerged. (Rezabek) Memes, like genes, vary in their fitness to survive in the environment of human intellect. Some reproduce like bunnies, but are very short-lived (fashions), while others are slow to reproduce, but hang around for eons (religions, perhaps?). Note that the fitness of the meme is not necessarily related to the fitness that it confers upon the human being who holds it. The most obvious example of this is the "Smoking is Cool" meme, which does very well for itself while killing off its hosts at a great rate. (Borkman) =========================================================================== MEMETIC USAGE The gene-meme analogy is used in several ways. I describe two main usages here. They do not contradict eachother, but rather provide different perspectives for the same process, or concentrate on different aspects of the same idea. The first usage considers a culture as a 'meme-pool', analogous to the 'gene-pool' in a population of organisms. The individual human brain contains a (unique) configuration of memes from the meme-pool of the culture in which it participates. 'Allele' memes/meme-complexes compete for particular 'niches' in the brains of individuals. They evolve replication strategies that do not necessarily benefit the whole individual or culture, but first of all contribute to their own future existence: memes are inherently 'selfish'. The second usage compares memes to viruses. Genetic viruses infect host cells/bacterias in such a way that these will start reproducing the virus. Memetic 'viruses of the mind' will infect human 'host' brains and thereby induce behavior that helps propagate the meme to other brains. The virus metaphor often figures as a rhetorical instrument in discussions on religion and atheism. The word 'virus' suggests that there exists a conflict between memes and the individual mind. This 'paranoid' version of memetics is not only a psychologically inhealthy way of thinking, but also wrong: "The 'independent' mind struggling to protect itself from alien and dangerous memes is a myth; there is, in the basement, a persisting tension between the biological imperative of the genes and the imperative of the memes, but we would be foolish to 'side with' our genes -- that is to commit the most egregious error of pop sociobiology." (Dennett) One cannot oneself *choose* by which memes one is infected, nor could one ever *choose* to fight memes by which one is infected. Memes themselves fight eachother, both inside and outside brains. So memes will choose *their* preferred partner-memes, not 'yours'. The memetic perspective explicitely denies the existence of such a thing as an autonomous (non- memetic) free will. If you have the subjective experience of being firmly opposed to a certain meme, the first thing you should do is wonder which memes cause this feeling. =========================================================================== THE MEME AND ITS PHENOTYPE Consistent use of the gene-meme analogy leads to a dispute about the proper memetic analogue of the genotype-phenotype distinction. Memes, unlike genes (DNA), lack a universal code. No two representations of a meme are the same. This makes it hard to point out the 'memotype' of a meme. According to Dawkins, a meme should be regarded as a unit of information residing in a brain, with a definite structure. The phenotypic effects of a meme are "the outward and visible (audible, etc.) manifestations of the memes within the brain". An alternative view can be heard sometimes. Herein the meme is a social process (sociotype) by which a brain is influenced, resulting in a 'mental ontogeny' of the meme's phenotype *inside the brain*. Once this phenotype has matured, it will start generating behavior that supports the meme it originated from. This reverses the roles of meme and phenotype in Dawkin's view. Clearly, both perspectives are technically equivalent. As a compromise, we can eliminate the genotype-phenotype distinction by using the word 'meme' for the *complete causal cycle*, in which both internal and external processes participate. =========================================================================== ESSENTIAL LITERATURE There are few titles entirely devoted to the subject of memetics. On the other hand, there are many titles associated to topics related to memetics. In my opinion, at least the following four books should be within the close reach of anyone interested in memetics. Together they cover the conceptual basis of memetic thinking. 1. Dawkins, Richard, _The Selfish Gene_ (new ed. 1989). 2. Dennett, Daniel C., _Consciousness Explained_ (1991). 3. Hofstadter, Douglas R., _Metamagical Themas_ (1985). 4. Minsky, Marvin, _Society of Mind_ (1985). For additional readings on the subject of memetics, refer to the FAQ's "Memetics Resources" section [update to be posted soon]. =========================================================================== Names/addresses of persons quoted above: Borkman, Lee (leeb@kralizec.zeta.org.au) Dawkins, Richard (...) Dennett, Daniel C. (...) Grant, Glenn (...) Henson, H. Keith (hkhenson@cup.portal.com) Lezard, Tony (tony@mantis.co.uk) Rezabek, Heith Michael (REZABEH1648@cobra.uni.edu) Vajk, J. Peter (...) ===========================================================================