X-Message-Number: 28442
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:54:34 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Re: basic memetics for little ol' me

At 09:00 AM 9/14/2006 +0000, Ettinger wrote:

>Anthony and many others question the validity or usefulness of the notion  of
>memes and memetics. I haven't made a serious study of it,

The concept is so small and so obvious it doesn't warrant serious study.  A 
few academics latched on to it and made a lot of noise, but is wasn't 
justified.

The saying "Ideas have a life of their own" encapsulates the concept of 
memes and it's perhaps 100 years old.  Just take it seriously and apply 
what we know about living things, and you understand memetics.

Where the concept is particularly useful is in evolutionary 
psychology.  There the kind of memes that do well in some circumstances vs. 
those that do well in other circumstances fits into a EP model of why and 
how humans go to war.

Google "Evolutionary psychology, memes and the origin of war."

****
Anthony wrote

snip

>Disclaimer the 2nd: Keith, I invite you again to this forum I recently
>discovered:
>
>http://www.network54.com/Forum/291677/

I looked.  No thanks.

snip

> > >This is nothing but isomorphism. Is that all a meme is!?
> >
> > No.
>
>I don't see what else a meme is then. If a meme is "just" information,
>then isn't genetic information also a meme? Indeed, almost everything
>is a meme, including the universe - quite a blunt tool this concept!

Memes, as a class, are units of information that is copied from brain to 
brain.  Consider the memes "termiting" and nut cracking that are 
transferred from one chimp to another by a process that is broadly imitation.

> > >(If you are saying the info. is independant (like some "memeticians"
> > >do), then you are espousing another form of philosophical idealism -
> > >prey to the same old criticisms.)
> >
> > I am an electrical engineer.   Go read
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon to see why information in the
> > abstract does not bother engineers.
>
>The concept "death" doesn't bother most physicians, yet people like
>ourselves question it because the concept they are using is important
>and deserves re-appraisal.

That's a silly analogy.

> > I find the concept of memes as elements of culture or replicating
> > information patterns or similar descriptions useful to model what goes on
> > in the world going back to when the hominid line started to chip rocks.
>
>This is not Dawkins' use of the term, which also applied to animals
>and "explained" how/why they imitate each other - though Dawkins had
>people in mind of course (as he is an anthropocentric thinker):
>
>A meme is "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation"
>(from The Extended Phenotype)

I said above "similar descriptions."  I consider "a unit of cultural 
transmission" to be the same as "an element of culture."

>Did the meme "mutate" (& thus not be "fit" enough for "survival" in
>its original forumlation)?
>
>Your definition of memes as "going back to when the hominid line
>started to chip rocks" is odd. Are you saying:
>
>memes did not exist until people made tools? (Which meme transmitted
>the idea of tools?)
>
>Or
>
>not until people start to "think"?
>
>Or
>
>something else?

I said the concept of memes is "useful to model what goes on in the world 
going back to when the hominid line started to chip rocks."  Have you ever 
heard of hypercycles?  That's the term used to describe the evolutionary 
interaction of DNA and proteins.  Memes and hominids can be considered with 
the same mathematical model.  And certainly there were memes being passed 
from generation to generation long before chipped rock.  Look up 
manuports.  But unlike bags or sharp sticks chipped rocks left traces you 
can see today.

>I know these might be annoying questions

More like silly.

>(John K Egg doesn't answer
>them at all, they are so "annoying"), but the evolutionary origins of
>the "meme" is important to the concept, and I have not seen anyone
>address the problem - where did the first meme come from? You must
>answer this if you have any belief in evolution.

That not even silly, it's *stupid.*

Where did the first *gene* come from?  That's fairly well understood.  Same 
explanation, differ soup.

>If you still stick to the "chipping rocks" explanation, I'll offer an
>alternative account of human thinking.
>
> > If you don't that's fine with me.  I won't argue philosophy with you,
> > that's the wrong field to talk about information (and it's connection to
> > thermodynamics).
>
>Huh!? Since when was philosophy the "wrong field" to discuss concepts?

Information is not the same as concepts.  In science, particularly in 
engineering, information has a very specific meaning and a unit of 
measurement, bits.

>If electrical engineers can't talk to philosophers, why can they talk
>to evolutionary biologists (like Dawkins)?

I just said: "I won't argue philosophy with you."  Are you a philosopher?

> > In both cases the only constant of a gene or a meme *is* the
> > information.  Of course to have real world effects a gene has to be coded
> > in DNA and be in a cell.  To have real world effects a meme has to be in a
> > brain.
>
>Or media - right?

No.  A meme on paper has no real world effects until it is read and in a brain.

>(John K Egg says it is ONLY minds, not brains, nor media).
>http://www.network54.com/Forum/291677/message/1158168747/Memes+and+Genes

Minds run in brains like operating systems and application software runs in 
computers.

>(He also equates "self" with "memes" as well as "ideas" with "memes"
>and the universe with "memes" - can you see why I find this concept so
>flaky it's embarressing?)

Meme is just another word for idea.  As for the rest, I am not even going 
to look at it.

> > Try Henson baseball meme in Google.
>
>thanks, I will - you've obviously worked hard on this idea!

At least a long 
time.  http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/2000/16177.html  Don't take this 
as my current thoughts on the subject, its from 22 years ago

Keith Henson.

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