Talk:Memetics

Early talk, appears mostly 2002-4

Nearly every time I've heard memes and memetics mentioned, by philosophers and by others, it has been scoffingly. At least two of the complaints I vaguely recall is that it's just a pseudo-scientific fad and that it's an example of academic imperialism at its worst. A commonly made point is that biologists just aren't trained to think about culture and so naturally the whole notion is facile. Now, I am not saying this in order to get into a debate about these accusations--I'm saying them in order to try to get someone to add some such evaluations to the article. I'm not the person, because I personally don't know anything of significance about memetics (for all I know, I'd be the most avid memetics supporter, if I learned more about it; or I might end up supporting the views I just mentioned). I also have no idea how common the above criticisms are or whether they are fair. All of these things I don't know are important knowledge to have in presenting this issue as part of the article. But I do believe that the issue needs to be presented, either here or as part of the meme article.

Eh? Douglas Hoffstadter and Daniel Dennet are both very influential philosophers. (D.H. is actually principally a cognitive scientist who dabbles in philosophy.) And both have a very deep understanding of what science is. They both take memetics seriously, if only provisionally.

There are a lot of philosophers who still dismiss materialism too. That doesn't mean materialism isn't a valid, superior even, point of view from a scientific standpoint. I'm willing to bet that the same philosophers who dismiss memetics tend to be dualists and "scoff" at materialism too. --Brentt 08:52, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

By the way, we need to decide carefully really belongs in the meme article and what belongs in the memetics article. They can overlap, but as a first guess, I would say that the meme article should be about memes, while the memetics article should be about memetics.  :-) --LMS

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I think of memes and memetics as the arch-example of scientism, the idea that the *methods* of the natural sciences (as opposed to the *insights* thereof) are appropriate to all things, but then again too much of the 'sociobiology' I've heard in public is biologists talking about society rather than anything more substantive. --MichaelTinkler

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You mean "methods of science" like honest observation, rational discussion, rigorous testing? If those aren't appropriate tools for studying society, then I weep for its future. --LDC

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Well. Let's start with "testing". Who's going to conduct the human experimentation to see if memetics works at a societal level. We're not talking about college students pressing buttons in a cognitive science lab, here! It's much more like the legend of Frederick II Hohenstaufen having orphan children raised without human speech to see what language they would turn out to speak (the Adamic language was the theory). --MichaelTinkler

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Argument from lack-of-imagination is less than convincing. Yes, it's difficult to imagine ways to test societal influences, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Good after-the-fact analysis is one way (comparing similar cultures to determine the effects of a few variable); computer simulation is another. --LDC

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indeed, lack-of-imagination is not convincing, but neither is the idea that there can be a few variables between similar cultures. Ants seem to work that way (what I've read about Wilson on ants is very convincing -- I was much less convinced by Wilson on the death penalty) but the evidence from anthropology is more recalcitrant. To begin with, observer phenomenon seldom seems to cause much trouble with ants.

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Yes, it's very difficult. I understand why people often disdain "scientific" approaches to sociology, but what they generally mean to disdain is the jumping to conclusions by some over-eager human scientists on the basis of very limited data; things like evolutionary psychology can indeed be faulted for that. But the problem is not the scientific methods, but the natural human tendency to over-generalize from their results. The cure is greater adherence to the real principles of science--most significantly honesty and skepticism--not abandonment of them for other methods. --LDC

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Current version of article says:

It tries to explain many very controversial subjects, like religions and political systems, using mathematical models.

How many studies of memetics have actually used mathematical models? I can't see why they couldn't be used, and I think I've even seen one or two papers attempting to construct these models for memetics; but 99% of the work on memetics I've seen has not used mathematical models. (It has mostly not even been applications of memetics, just arguments about the validity of memetics as an approach.) -- Simon J Kissane

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The article defines memes as:

basic replicating unit of information

Can someone give me an example of a non-replicating unit of information? It seems to me that this definition reveals two fundamental problems with the notion of "memes": first, the term seems redundant (why not just call it "information?"); second, by invoking the model of "genes" it suggests that ideas or units of information reproduce themselves through mechanisms analogous to genetic reproduction.

Personally, the whole thing does smack of pseudoscience to me -- not because scientific methods are not appropriate to the study of humans (although the specific methods of specific sciences, like astronomy or molecular biology, may be inappropriate), but because it is really employing a metaphor to explain things. There may be something poetic about comparing ideas to genes, but making such comparisons hardly explain anything. In short, it doesn't sound like a theory to me, just an analogy.

I assume that there are people out there, including somewho have contributed to this article, who owuld disagree with me. I appeal to those people to clarify the definition of "meme" to make clear what this word adds to our conceptual tool-kit that is not already present in the phrase "idea," and, if possible, to explain a bit more how memetics is a scientific theory that has the power to explain things that people could not explain before the development of this theory, SR

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How about adding a link to Viruses of the Mind ? susano 05:07 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

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Since I can't conceive of a principled distinction between stuff to put in meme and stuff to put in memetics, I propose that we merge the two. I propose the merged article be called "memetics", because that seems a more encyclopedic name. Objections? --Ryguasu

"Meme" is the better name: although it is as yet an informal idea, it deserves its own article. "Memetics" suggests that there is an established science of memes, which there isn't as yet. If or when there is a science of memetics, we should have an article for it: at the moment, a sub-section in "meme" will be good enough for this. -- Anon

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SR raises what he sees as two fundamental problems with the notion of memes: (a) that "meme" seems to be a redundant term, just another word for "information", and (b) the implicit notion that memes reproduce themselves through mechanisms analogous to genetic reproduction.

I think these are key questions, and it's difficult to see the article/s developing any further (or even just staying much as-is without controversy) unless there is some exploration of them. I'm sure that there are many answers to SR's questions. Here are mine. (For the sake of clarity and to stimulate thoughtful responses, these are over-simplified and shorn of "ifs" and "buts".)

(a) "Meme" is just another word for "information", the term is redundant. As a concept, yes: "meme" adds nothing. Gregory Bateson walked over all this territory many years ago, as did Marvin Harris. (Others to list here?) The one thing that is new about "memes" instead of "transmissible information" is that the term is intuitive: almost anyone can understand it. It seems to have neither the universal reach nor the subtlety of Bateson's formulation, but it is enormously more approachable. By recasting an old idea in a new and simple form, Dawkins took it out of the realm of obscure academic writing (if you have ever read Bateson in the original you'll know what I mean), and into the mainstream of human thought. This is its prime value.

[b) By invoking the model of "genes", "memes" suggest that ideas or units of information reproduce themselves through mechanisms analogous to genetic reproduction. Quite so. The question then becomes what is the harm in this? The immediate knee-jerk response is along the lines of "it is ridiculous to postulate that ideas and fashions and societies have genes and DNA chains, or anything remotely similar, therefore it is nonsense." But the mechanism by which information is encoded is irrelevant to the uses to which that information is put, and provided that the accuracy and reliability of reproduction is similar between any two different physical mechanisms, then for practical purposes we can ignore them. The actual encoding method, in other words, can for most purposes be regarded as a "black box" about which we need know nothing, so long as we know the degree to which we can rely on it. There is no better example of this than the development of the theory of natural selection. Darwin and Wallace knew nothing of genes, they had never heard of DNA or RNA, they had not the slightest clue as to how the giraffe embryo "knew" to grow a long neck, they simply observed that it did indeed grow a longer neck than the zebra embryo, and proceeded to formulate their wonderfully productive theories anyway - leaving the details of the physical mechanism for others to explore.

So far so good: we don't need to specify the encoding mechanism to think about "memes". We should not make the mistake, however, of taking the parallel too far. There is no particular reason why we should believe that a single, easily described encoding mechanism exits, or that it will be found in due course (we need not stand around waiting for the long-neglected papers of a 20th Century Gregor Mendel of The Mind to turn up). Information is stored, it is transmitted with varying degrees of success, it endures or does not endure. That is all. Whether we think of it as "memes" or in some other, broadly equivalent way becomes irrelevant from a purely scientific view, it's just putting different labels on the same black box. From a sociological or historical point of view, however, it is not irrelevant. Different formulations of ideas, different expressions of them, have different implications for action, change societies in different ways.

To summarise, I am suggesting that, strictly speaking, the term "meme" may very well be redundant, but that its usage is nevertheless important from a sociological point of view, especially as regards the sociology of science. Further, I suggest that the genetic analogy is best viewed not as a line of scientific enquiry, but as a tool used by scientists and others to persuade people to their point of view. In this regard, if no other, it is important and deserving of coverage in Wikipedia. Tannin 12:04 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

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If there was a theory of memes, it might look something like this:

For over 99% of the human population, the attributes of an idea affect the transmission of this idea. The attributes will affect: (1) how likely an individual is to pass on the idea, (2) to whom the individual is likely pass the information, and (3) the manner in which the idea is transmitted.

If this theory is true, then it follows that:

• Different designs of similar ideas will have different (or no) uses in society
• It may be possible to make further theories matching idea attributes to transmission effects in a specific society
• We can improve the quality of education by examining alterations to ideas that make them more likely to be assimilated by the student

If this theory is false, then it follows that:

• Ideas are transmitted randomly, without regard to the attributes of the idea

Chira 23:27, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Meme theory

Let's not be overly enthusiastic, here. It's not even certain that memetics is an accurate theory, or that it's even useful if it is, or just extra terminology. [1] --Maprovonsha172 19:54, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

The editors on this talk page have left excellent feedback on just that point. Personally, I wouldn't be critical of memetic theory at all, because I find it unfashionable to be critical of something that doesn't exist. Analogies are very different from testable statements. In its current state, memetics is useful for explaining and generating ideas, not for the laboratory. --Chira 20:04, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Well there are the philosophers who produce only little of interest and then there are the scientists who can actually modell this. Memetics is a profound theory and in fact just as straightforward as evolution on a molecular scale. Clearly we live in a world constructed by our cortex, given that our profound understanding of the molecular world cannot account for such complex behavioral and societal patterns, to be so well conserved in a heritable fashion (gene expression via histone modification does have a minimal impact in this case) another explanation is required: How do we express such explanations? Well in scientific theories. How valid is this theory? Well i would say it is crystal clear that the requirement is valid also the outline - i mean it is really not that hard to come to the rational conclusion of the principle of memetics yourself. Where it starts to become interesting is of course once it is mathematically modelled, before it is just something that everyone is aware and everyone sees but isn`t really greatly influencing our world (in analogy to evolution, before the unraveling of the DNA molecule and it`s manipulation not much could be done). Once a profound memetics model exists its power is enormous: you could predict for instance how a religious movement like Intelligent-Design, influences the economy, where to invest, you could predict how over several generations wars and internal friction evolve and so forth. So in essence memetics can aid the modeling of society as a complex system and reduce the data significantly - because you can now clearly separate the superfluous social fragments from the meaningful conserved memes and their likelyhood of conservation (weighting etc.).

How important is something like that: Well a good model (imagine a "weather modeling", of our societal world means enormous power, preventive action and so forth. It sounds counterintuitive at first, but you should by now have seen memes everywhere (that is in short - conserved societal fragments). I am not studying memes, but am someone who sees their importance and ultimately came to the same concept/conclusion, before i ever read of memetics.

Slicky 10:06, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

To do list exported from "meme."

The To Do list at Talk:meme suggested these points should be covered, pertaining to Memetics: (Kaisershatner 15:51, 11 January 2006 (UTC))

• explain how culture was analysed before we had memetics;
• explain what memetics was able to explain or analyze that other methods could not;
• explain why memetic was controversial when it appeared; explain when and how it gained (if it did) true scientific support -- it's a relatively new concept, and it still looks like pseudo-science to many. The article as it stands now (oct 2, 2004) assumes from the definition until the end that memetics is a scientific field in its own with no discussion whatsoever about controversies surrounding it;
• describe how memetics helps in discussing the possibilities of conscious social/cultural evolution; it being analogous to evolution of biological organisms but with an improvement(?) on natures's hit-and-miss model.
• about applications: better distinguish natural selection of the meme itself (when confronted with other memes), vs selection of its "host", and explain how memetics help in both cases (or not);

The Game

1. You are playing The Game
2. Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
3. Loss must be announced.

My links to The Game (game) and losethegame com Lose The Game keep getting removed. This game has obvious memetic properties and is potentially the ultimate meme. Its spread is being used to study various aspects of memetics. --Anon.

Potentially the ultimate meme? Are you even listening to yourself? --maru

(talk) contribs 05:21, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, obviously there are more successful memes (at the moment). But The Game only exists because of its memetic potential. An even simpler meme game would be losethegame com/memegame.htm this.

The Game Tree Project

The Game Tree Project has been set up to monitor the memetic transmission of The Game, an interesting meme than only exists because of its inherent memetic properties. My addition of this link to this article keeps getting removed, does anyone else feel this link will be of interest to people reading about memetics?

No. --maru (talk) contribs 23:01, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it's OK to have that link in your comment in the talk page. If someone's *really* interested, they can find it there. Otherwise, please don't fill up articles w/ spam. Thanks. - JustinWick 19:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Memes & non-human animals

Has any thought been put towards the transmission of memes from, to and between non-human animals. Much of our technology was probably inspired by animals e.g. Aeroplanes from birds, but most of this information is a physical characteristic of the animal rather than a mental construct. However, when one animal learns a behavioural response from another, this is surely a form of memetic transmission. It is also likely that a number of human memes (not necessarily still 'alive' today) were aquired from watching the learned behaviour of an animal. Kernow 02:05, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

A lot of animal behaviour is not learned but is innate from their genes. However there are acceptions, dolphins and some primates such as chimpanzees are able to pass on a limited amount of behaviour, and even some of the more intelligent birds. As for humans learning a meme from birds regarding flight, this is not correct. Memes associated with flight would have originated in humans after observation of birds and experiments and then passed on by word of mouth, books etc... --Hontogaichiban 02:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, if you re-read what I said, I agree that learning to fly from the observation of birds does not count as a meme in the bird because it is a physical characteristic. However, memes are not limited to behaviour but to any information. This means that it is not just 'smart' animals that have memes. I have had a similar discission on the Meme talk page, where I used bees as an example. The famous waggle dance of honey bees conveys information regarding the location of food sources to other bees. Why is this information not memetic? Kernow 00:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Appeal for Assistance

I'm working on a wikibook but am stuck on the ideological foundation section of the book which describes government institutions as parasitic memeplexes which could be replaced by an alternative model based loosely on concepts borrowed from The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the GNU movement(particularly wiki), and the decentralized nature of the scientific community.

Any assistance of any kind would be sincerely appreciated.

--Wikitopian 17:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Poor quality of Memetics page and editors

I have to say, I'm very disappointed in this article and the quality of discussion this page. Memetics is well accepted in the UK at least. To a major extent it is as self-evident as evolution. As far as I'm aware the only people that scoff at memetics are the Christian far-right and various pseudo-scientists. Where are all the evolutionary psychologists? --Hontogaichiban 02:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Probably off working on/defending the evolutionary psychology pages; it's not at all universally accepted, especially in the US. --maru (talk) contribs 05:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

That's hardly surprising as so many Americans can't even understand evolution - an even more self-evident concept. I guess my point here is that the more ignorant half of the US shouldn't hold back and article for a concept that has so much support in the rest of the world.--Hontogaichiban 12:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed it is a self-evident as evolution but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's well accepted in the UK. A lot of peope have a problem with the ontological nature of memes. I think this stems from confusion between microbiology genes (i.e. cistrons) and evolutionary biology genes, which, like memes, don't have a distinct physical existence. Most people think that evolutionary genes refer to specific sections of DNA, which makes them easier to believe in. I think people find it hard to put faith into a science based on abstract concepts. Kernow 00:49, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Reference on Measurement

Measurement is indeed a serious challenge for memetics; I suspect that this is in part due to a lack of research methodologists within the memetics community (although this is merely my own impression, and not something which should be propagated to the page). At risk of self-advocacy, I and a co-author published a substantive paper on this topic in 2003; the citation is Butts, C.T. and Hilgeman, C. 2003. "Inferring Potential Memetic Structure from Cross-Sectional Data: An Application to American Religious Beliefs." Journal of Memetics, 7. http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2003/vol7/butts_ct&hilgeman_c.html. This paper demonstrates a statistical approach which can be used to identify certain types of latent structures which are potentially memetic in character. This identification is not conclusive (additional analyses are needed to confirm transmissibility), and it cannot recognize all potential memetic structures. On the other hand, the approach can be used with cross-sectional data (which is quite abundant), and is intended as a preliminary "screening" tool for identifying latent memetic structure. Not the last word on the topic, by any means, but hopefully a step in the right direction.

I am hesitant to add something about this to the page, since that has the character of self-dealing. (Also, I don't have time!) However, I hope that this text might prove useful to someone who is interested in expanding that section. The page clearly needs a lot of work (as some other discussants have noted), but then this is a somewhat awkward research area with an extremely high variance in quality. I am bullish about the general prospects for evolutionary approaches to the formation and transmission of culture (in part because of the large body of existing work in many different fields, very little of which goes under the "memetic" label), but don't know how "memetics" per se will work out. (I am confident, however, that reasonable approaches to measurement will have to be part of any successful venture in this area.) -CTB --68.4.197.108 05:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Generate useful, novel predictions or die?

Given the amount of interest in Memetics, I find it odd that we're now suddenly at a "make or break" point, where Memetics must prove itself or be forgotten. I think memetics makes a lot of predictions that are simply difficult to test - but may become easier to in the future. Indeed String theory has cleverly avoided making any kind of useful, testable, and novel prediction since its inception, yet hundreds of PhDs toil over it each year, undaunted. Maybe memetics just needs more time? Maybe we need better equipment? Maybe it really is just a nice idea that didn't work out? - JustinWick 22:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Or maybe everyone wants to apply memetic principals to the theory itself. :) Seriously, I think it just hasn't met its Darwin yet. If you just baldly laid out the theory of evolution, it would've looked as useless as memetics does now, but Darwin ingeniously predicted and explained a lot in his books. --Gwern (contribs) 06:21 9 December 2006 (GMT)