I forwarded Matt's words as counterpoint to my bro/sis in-laws, who have lately been romanced by some of Dawkin's beliefs...

Matt provides a lot more substance toward that, than I could muster.

-Jim 

Thanks you two.

I'm doing a lot of work with memes these days. I finally bought The Selfish Gene. Even in 1976 he was militant, saying things like, the 'victims of faith'. I read his chapter about memes and moved on to The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore. He wrote the forward. It's sometimes tough to reconcile the brilliance of his idea of memes (not to mention his work with genes) and his virulent bigotry. Blackmore suffers ever so slightly from rub-off, but her book so far is BRILLIANT! I highly recomend it.

 Peace and Love and Empathy,

Matt 

I really dislike the idea of Memes because it really doesn't add anything to the study of culture or cognition that wasn't being addressed by a different name before.  I've read both Dawkins and Blackmore on the issue and I found Blackmore a little better in terms of her 'faith' but... 

I'm of the mind right now that the concept of the 'meme' is so popular because it is accessable to the public, where as many other systems of modeling cognition are veiled in lots of scholastic jargon.

I suppose people take inspiration where they can, and I wish you luck on your research.

I'm curious about what other fields you're refering to. I'd like to be able to stack memes up against other ideas. Also, can you elaborate on any criticisms you might have about the idea?

For me, the idea of the meme is so elegegant, so perfect, that I do not have words. The idea of Universal Darwinism is so sound and the idea of the meme replicator makes so much sense to me. The clearest thing Blackmore said was something to the effect of, "Imagine a world full of memes and brains with way more memes than can find homes in the brains." Of course there is going to be selective competition on ideas. If one can go that far then the next step, that memes are replicators, is an easy one to take.

So far, inside of 80 pages of her book, I've been able to use memes to explain so much. Wait a few months. There's some ground breaking stuff a comin'

Peace and Love and Empathy,

Matt 

As a model, the uselessness of memes comes into play when you try and find where one meme ends and the other begins. While it's a typical reflection of capitalist philosophy to quantify social structure into individualized units that can be bought and sold (look at me in my levi jeans/ i just got me a brand new meme) and capitalized upon.

Without a real working theory of memory, then memes are like the platonic 'atom', thought to exist, but it would be thousands of years before the actual 'atom' would be seen, which, in itself, was actually divisible. And so that part of us that resists new things should be understandbly sckeptical about a 'meme' that has never been seen.

But to address this atheism bullshit directly: this is worse than religion, it doesn't even come close to being the 'lesser of two evils', it appear to me to be a denial of experience. When you close any door, you throw away the opportunity to understand. Dawkins does seem unwilling to understand anything beyond being forced to go to church as a little kid and projecting his 3rd grade epiphany(anbout the same time I realized the church was both silly and historically improbable) in a very grown-up manner.

But while his impatience with religious and spiritual experience can be translated into a sophisticated treatise on logic, it all begins with a false premise: that there is nothing on the other side.

I was recently given a chance to peak behind the technicolor dreamcoat.

I think at this point the only thing I can rationally say to someone who has already made up their mind is: false premise.

 And while it may seem at first arrogant and dismissive to basically say 'you're wrong' I can no more argue with someone who is attempting to disprove that my dog loves me.  To attempt that something doesnt exist is impossible. It is also mentally unhealthy to become so obsessed with knowledge so very far out of reach.

UNfortuntely, for the Dawkins seet, disproving gods isn't about trying to see what other people see, it's about trying not to see what you don't want to see.

Anyone who has had a deeply religious experience can only sign in frustration, and, truthfully, condescendingly, only pray that they do have an experience, that they are prepared -- 'cause you can't stop what's comin

Hey, Tony.

It's true, no one is sure what the structure of a meme looks like in the mind, although one neurologist has presented a theory of what the neuronal structure might look like, but that doesn't take away from the theory in my mind. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Darwin pre-dated the discovery of DNA, the structure in which genes are encoded, by quite some time. So I can see where you're coming from, but the idea of Universal Darwinism is pretty sound, for my money anyway and the idea of memes as replicators and therefore subject to Universal Darwinism, is excitingly flexible.

Personally, I don't perceive this problem.

Firstly, genes are expressed as traits and recombinated as an organism. Each organism has millions of genes. The Human Genome Project, the attempt to identify them all, is imensely sophisticated and astronomically expensive. Memes are expressed as behaviour and recombinated as a culture. Each culture has millions of memes and therefore, I can only imagine that the Human Memome Project would be equaly complex.

That being said, we know of a few mal-adaptive memes:

• Do what you will with the world
• Don't abandon civilisation for any reason
• Produce a surplus whenever and wherever possible 

Secondly, Dawkins offered a simple way to define memes in 1976.

So simply put, memes are anything that can be immitated. If you can't immitate it, it's not a meme. The smallest immitatable unit is subject to selection and is therefore an individual meme. It could be part of a large meme and part of an even larger memeplex. 

I must say though, I really don't get what you mean about that association between memes and buying and selling. I fail to see the connection.

Peace and Love and Empathy,

Matt 

Matt,

I appreciate the chance to engage you on this subject.

When I think of the importance, and I mean social importance, of memes, I think of the times when your friends catch you using a catchphrase of another friend.

Recently, I said 'at this juncture' and it was recognized that I had said it as a friend would have said it, that I clearly borrowed from the friend.

The friendship didn't exist before I had used that phrase, and the phrase existed before the friend. But what was unique was that my intonation had a ring to it reminiscent of a friend's language patterns, and therefore, regardless of the other facts in the case, it was clear that I used his phrase in his frame.

But the model of memes is patterned from genetics. I see that the model fails because of the fact that memes end up looking more like overlapping pie charts with only the corners of the charts touching each other to form a quanta of 'meme' than a sequence that can predict behavior (which genes DO do, they quanitfy and qualify directly the cellular behavior of an organism).

As I see behavior more of a chorus of the voices of every single thing a person has experienced, and that I find free will v. determinism as a false choice ( I believe in the elasticity of will and the determinism of behavior, cancelling each other out, and leaving behind only behavior patterns), I find it difficult to believe that someone could take a snapshot of me and determine my memetic makeup. Even as the whole of my behavior is being snapshot, my new behavior is being determined by the new environment of behavior observation.

All I see memes doing that they do very well is to discuss the expression of behavior, I believe it is still unknown, and foolish to model, quanta of behavior. It may not exist. there may be a spiritual explaination that eliminates the ability to quantify behavior at all. Perhaps spiritually, the hints that others have gotten from the other side could guide us in attempting to better understand cognition.

I remember once Matt you didn't like my idea of finding out how much the earth is 'worth', in dollars. I feel the same way about memes. Not that either doesn't come with any benefits, but perhaps it is those very ways of thinkingthat should be questioned.

And since Memes are a model of quantification of the realtive, like our system of money(the relative value of labor), and not describing a thing that is actually there, like genes, we could only hope to find a better theory of memory until we actually find where all our thoughts, ideas, hopes, dreams, loves are really kept.  

Something about this makes me think of differential calculus as a model...  Like the derivative of x.  Does that fit somewhere? Just riffin' here... (I hadn't thought of the distinction, 'till you just pointed it out, Tony)

-Jim

Hey, guys.

Yes and no.

The idea comes from Universal Darwinism. UD suggests that Darwinism isn't exclusive to genes. It applies to any replicator in a competitive environment. It suggests that anywhere in the universe that we encounter replicators, no matter their form (say the replicators that are expressed as the silicone people of Lepton IX) they will be subject to natural selection.

So Dawkins wondered, we know that Earth has one replicator, genes. Are there any others on this planet? He realised that yes there are, memes. So memes are analagous to genes because they're both replicators and because it makes for a simple teaching tool, but memes are replicators in their own right. They are not subservient to genes. Meaning that the biosphere is actually comprised of minerals, conditions, genes AND memes.

For example, the TA, unlimited growth and we own the world memes are selection pressures that wipe out the genes of some 200 odd species a day. 

I'm not sure I follow your overlapping pie chart analogy but "predict behaviour" popped out at me.

Memetics doesn't say that an idea like evolutionary psychology is bunk. Of course there are behaviours that are genetic in origin, ie, the phenotype of a gene. Indeed, the behaviour of MOST species is the result of the phenotypic expression of genes. Where humans (and a small handful of other species, although their ability to immitate memes is much less) differ is that while virtually all creatures can encode gene replicators in DNA, we can encode meme replicators in the same area of our minds that allow us to think symbolically. I think I'm off track...

Take Totalitarian Agriculture. Without doubt, not the result of an expressed gene. So why do many people engage in it and many more endorse its use? How did it travel from person to person in the first place? Why did it replace other behaviours? If you imagine that it's a meme, then it's transmission is simply a matter of communication. It's something that can be IMMITATED. It replaced other behaviours because all memes are in competition for the room in our brains, just like genes are in competition for the room in our DNA. It was selected because of natural selection. Unfortunately, it's a maladaptive, or fatal meme.

Memes can be used to predict behaviour roughly, just like genes can be used to predict traits roughly because both are expressed phenotypically, ie, their expression is affected by their environment.

So memes don't take away from genes, they are their own entity.

What people experience is the core of memetics.

Take Happy Birthday. Everyone sings it when it's someone's birthday. It's a single idea that is immitated by many people. It's because the idea has replicated itself and found a home in all of those people's minds. There is a French translation:

• Bonne fête à toi

 In Quebec in 1975, a nationalist movement was in full swing and Gilles Vigneault introduced the unoficial Quebec National anthem, Gens du Pays. That same year, it was adapted to be sung at birthdays:

Mon cher ami (or Ma chère amie), c'est à ton tour

De te laisser parler d'amour.

Mon cher ami (or Ma chère amie), c'est à ton tour

De te laisser parler d'amour.

 Now, throughout the province, some people sing Bonne fête and some people sing Mon cher ami. So how did both spread? Why is Mon chere ami replacing Bonne fête?

If you accept the idea of replicating memes, then each song is a unit of culture that can be replicated, transmitted and immitated. But they are also in competition with one another. So in some areas, Happy Birthday is selected, in others Bonne fête and in others, Mon cher ami.

 As far as someone taking a snapshot of your memome, it's not that inconcievable. You have a collection of memes that you host in your mind and that you immitate. You have learned these memes over the course of your life. Just think of some of the things that you immitate:

• The style of your beard
• The kind of clothes you wear
• Your accent
• The language you speak
• The way you dance
• The way you play the piano
• The songs you play on the piano
• How you cultivate mushrooms
• Your use of money

We could go on for a very long time. But yes, you're right, you're always immitating new memes, so like I said, a human memome project would be incredibly complex because memetic evolution occurs at a much faster rate than genetic evolution.

 Anyhoo, I totally respect your position that you don't much care for memes. I'm just trying to correct what I see are misconceptions about memetic theory. If the idea fails for you, that's cool. If you say it fails as a statement of fact, I just gotta jump in there

For me the true benefit of understanding memetics is that it gives us a method to explore something that, I think anyway, most of us agree on. Our culture has certain beliefs that cause it to do things that are maladaptive. Memetics gives us a structure to examine those beliefs, examine how they spread and how they can be countered (among other things, I'm sort of in the middle of assimilating the whole idea). 

Hey, Jim.

I have never taken a day of calculus so I have no idea how to respond; however, calculus is a meme

Peace and Love and Empathy,

Matt 

I don't understnad the acutal scientific need to take something very practical, like the origin of happy borthday, and create an abstract model that provides quantization, when the origin of happy birthday can be better understood by hearing the story of the history of happy birthday in Quebec.

My problem is that you can' t actually show me a meme. You can model a meme, but I could model a whatzit and say it means anything.

I question not the model of logic it follows, I clearly understand that it is an attempt to quantify behavior in a way that adds something news to the understanding of humanity.

What you haven't pushed forward for me yet is how it's usefulness coexists and increases the usefulness of understanding the story of something.

I get that it is a model, and it is an attempt to quatify behavior, and I get that a 'quanta' of meme is an incredibly complex thing to know, but, can it be known?

The overlaping piechart example models for me illustates the complexity of understanding 'hello' regardless of 'the origins of happy birthday' or 'calculus'. Is the meme of hello connected to the point when the first sound vibrated from the first vocal organism. but even then, the abilty to discern vibration was more elementary. And so, quantifiably, to understand speech, I have to understand the entire history of vibration in the universe. 

Complexity -- that's an understatement.

The point where vibration in the universe meets the english version of a vocal greeting can be understood, with a lecture in etymology.

I think the meme certainly has the power to create an 'aha' moment, but I think quantifying behavior like gene expression is like comparing the solar system to our model of the atom.  

Hey, Tony.

The Happy Birthday story doesn't say WHY. Why is the point of memes. Just like when Darwin said, why are there so many different species. It's about understanding the mechanism.

I can't show you a meme, but can I show you a gene? Do you not accept the idea of genes knowing that you will never see one?

 It's usefulness lies in its ability to help us understand why people behave certain ways. Why do certain behaviours flourish while others disapear? Why do all businessmen wear suits? Why did Taker culture spread? How did it spread?

The point is not to quantify behaviour any more than the Origin of Species was an attempt to quantify life. It's about understanding.

Genes help us understand selection in relation to organisms; selection being a theory that predates the discovery of genes; the FIRST replicator we discovered. Memes help us understand selection in relation to cultures; memes being the SECOND replicator we discovered. Universal Darwinism gives us a METHOD to understand replicators.

If culture is indeed subject to selection (and I can no longer imagine an argument that could prove that it is not) then you require a unit of replication that can be selected against. That unit is the meme.

In terms of what, at least, I am trying to acomplish, the breaking of Our culture's, Taker culture's, monopoly of the cultural landscape; it's virtual 100% representation in the meme pool, UNDERSTANDING memes and how they work is as vital as a plane builder understanding Aerodynamics.

The foundational memes of our culture constitute a co-adapted memeplex. They support one another. They are, in the context of the biosphere, a part of a Nash Equilibrium. All the players host these memes and NONE gain any benefit from unilaterally abandoning them. So due to the Nash Equilibrium and any memeplex's inherent resistance to INVASION from other memes, the reason that new memes like the ones proposed by Quinn, that by and large are hosted by his readership, have failed to significantly increase their representation in the meme pool can be understood; something that shows us that we can either continue with a failing tactic, or learn, adapt and try a new tactic; one with a greater chance of success.

We want to invade the Taker memeplex with Leaver memes; or mutated forms of Leaver memes. To do that we need to understand what makes memes more successful at replicating, what makes memes able to invade existing memeplexes, what gives memes longevity and a host of other things?

Should we want to change minds, we need to become MEMETIC ENGINEERS.

Advertisers are memetic engineers. "Two all beef paties, special sauce, lettuce, cheeze, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun." Why do I rememer that? I heard it when I was like 10. But it's still present in my mind. Why? Why do so many other people remember it? Because quite intentionally, it was a meme that was designed to successfully replicate. And it did. And continues to.

If we understand memes we can use them to our advantage.

I use OUR loosly. I'm not suggesting that we represent a coherent group with a single goal, but that anyone that wants to break the monopoly of Taker culture WITHOUT understanding what culture is and how it functions is in for a rough time.

To break the Taker cultural monopoly, memes must be designed that will successfully replicate and successfully invade the existing Taker memeplex. The understanding of memes offers a method for designing them. That's why it's significant.

If such memes are created, if they successfully replicate, if they successfully increase their representation in the meme pool, then eventually we will reach a Tipping Point. If they do not, we will not. So it is of value to me to understand them.

Memes are good M'Kay. M'kay being a successful meme. Just like:

• D'oh
• Do it
• Just do it
• Here's Johnny
• Row, row, row your boat
• Go forth and multiply
• The world belongs to us
• We are above nature
• Pumpkin pie
• Baseball
• The assault rifle
• Nintendo Wii
• The wheel
• Wagons
• Table manners
• English
• French
• Shaking a friend's hand

In closing, I'm really not trying to sell you on memes. You know that I believe you can believe anything you want (not like I have to give you permission ). But I feel, and this is 100% assumtion, that your decision to dismiss the idea is based off of misunderstanding the concept. I'm just trying to, at the very least for posterity, correct what I see as misconceptions. Should you then continue to decide that you still don't like the idea, that's cool. You know I love ya, baby

Peace and Love and Empathy,

 Matt

I can see this 'benefit' you are talking about when it comes to creating a meme. How do you know when you exactly a meme, not less than a meme or more than a meme?

But still, I think changing gene to meme is disingenious. The name itself makes me want to conjure up what our memory could physically be. But, I am beginning to believe that what and who we are doesn't begin and end within the body, so I'm unclear, not dismissive, as to what memes 'are' as I feel more clear that memory isn't a pyhsical, biological process, but one of a spiritual nature. Behind the veil, concepts seem to all be interconnected, but of no discernable shape or size, and tend to resist form as a part of their nature, always seemingly up to interpretation.

I believe it is an Atheist mistake. A mistake in scientific deduction based upon a false world view. It is expecting to find a 'quanta' of memory somwhere in the biology of this flesh. But important things like experience aren't stored in the temporary human vessel. That is what 'carries over' to 'the afterlife' the part of us that 'rejoins the whole', and so, if the core of who we are isn't our body's defense mechanisms, our ego, then it surely isn't the body, as the also decays like the ego in the rapture of ecclesiastical ecstasy, all that is left is one of the great mysteries of science, where does our memory go?

I believe as all of us are interconnected beings, that we form connections with this things we have in common. So for me, it isn't important that there is a thing called nintendo wii, and that that information can be transmitted with the symbol of the word wii, what is important to me is the experience I have had playing wii with my friends. We formed many new connections and learned new skills, together. A shared example that in many philosophies would carry on over from death. 

How does that experience get from here to there? It makes sense for me to explain that the recording of that experience doesn't happen here, so there is no need to transfer. I feel like in a place I don't have the equipment to explain, all of me that I am now is connected and communicates experiential information back to 'the whole'. Much like a meta-spiritual organism that would biblically be the entity that 'created' man in 'its' image.  But perhaps, all experiential life is a part of this meta-organism, and rather than be a reflection of 'god', all social beings, perhaps, could be the expression of what 'god' is at this juncture, and the variances of all living things the possibility of what 'god' is able to become at this juncture of collected experience.

I just want to say that I feel empathy for you or anyone else who thinks 'taker' memes have filled up the meme pool. That's like saying humans are the dominant species on this planet, even though what we are, speaking of genetic volumes, is only 10 percent human and 90 percent helper bacterias and etc. Having taken the time to install new behaviors in my own thinking to resist binary thinking, I see between the lines much better. Just down here in New Orleans, I have picked up on many 'un-taker' views on life, but perhaps, I could called 'unleaver' just as well. Zydeco music, Creole Cooking, Cajun cooking, Southern Cooking, french cuisine, jazz music, blues music, and the Napoleonic code are all examples for me that are both 'unleaver' and 'untaker'. Take for example, cajun cooking it's like being a leaver because -- you eat from the land around you, in our case crabs, crawfish, duck, boar, rice, etc. it's unleaver because Cajun food is also big business. It's untaker because it doesn't want everyone else to be Cajun, we'd perfer others not be Cajun, cause they'd just mess it all up anyways and be callin' our mamas and baby mamas for their recipies It's untaker because it crosses economic and racial lines, like Creole culture and Francophone cultures down here. You haven't lived until you've been cussed out by a Cajun thug.

But anyway, not to get hung up on thos bianry models -- they sure are efficient and can take you anywhere -- I'm concerned your reverence for this Atheist model is dsitracting from an opportunity to better understand the root of experience. 

I feel like the dangers of the Atheist Theory of Memory (memes) are already sinking in. With 'quanta' memories, it is assumed that what we are is in this body, and that when we die they can only be passed onto future generations. It's a dangerous anti-afterlife theory. I'm just putting my finger on this right now so excuse me while I go and meditate on discovering just exatly, for me, why I have resisted this theory. 

While I can 'admit' that my worldview in part has to dismiss the Atheist Theory of Memory to prevent the development of my own theory of inter-connectedness and experience as divine, I have to say, this conversation has painted me in a philosophical corner more than I am used to. However, I feel like my previous philosophy of being open to experience, and not commiting philosophically or otherwise, opened me up to this possibility of divine experiential entity.  

I want to close with saying that I don't think your logics fails, Matt, it succeeds in leaps and bounds and respect what you do do with the premises you are working with. It's the premise you are working with that I feel fails, and that I truly feel we are all simply doing the best we can with what we've got. But I will convert you if it's the last thing I do on this experiential Earth :0

Hey, Tony.

Now this makes more sense. You and I just have different world views that do not translate. As a result, what we import with us prevents us from accepting the other's world view. That's awesome! Know why? Becuase there's no one right way to live That we can understand each other while still "sticking to our guns" is a wonderful feat of communication and acceptance.

A meme is something that can be imitated. If it can't be imitated then it isn't a meme. Trial and error learning, for example, is not memetic. What is learned can then become a meme if it's imitatable. Much like genes, the exact boundaries of the unit are a little... soft... and have more to do whith the field of interest you're aproaching it from. But a meme is the smallest unit that can be selected against. That small unit can be a part of a larger meme as well.

Cells host millions of genes. Minds host millions of memes.

I don't follow. Nothing has been changed. They're each their own replicator.

Slow down. Now you're making Dawkin's mistake. You're conflating science and atheism. Two very different things. One is a method for learning from the world through observation and the other is a religious philosophy. I, for instance, am an agnostic and quite enjoy Universal Darwisnism and will not allow atheists to hijack it for themselves.

Seen. But two different things really. Memetics just talks about how behaviour spreads and the forces that select against it. It is only once the meme is expressed as behaviour that you get your shared experience. So I can totally see the importance of shared experience and I can dig what you're saying about it carrying over after death, but the experience is not the meme.

Well, I'm only talking about the human meme pool (granted, the relative size and scope of meme pools of other species is microscopic in comparison; from what we know so far). So when you compare the behaviour of every human on this planet, how many of them behave in a way that is the expression of our favourite Taker memes like, this planet's ours, TA, unlimited growth, crush your competitors...etc, and how many host different memes? About 99.99% of the human population host the Taker memes so I stand by my assertion that Taker memes have a near 100% representation in the meme pool.

As for your Cajun experience, I can relate somewhat. I grew up around Francophones and my best friend is an Acadian (Cajuns being Acadians that were forcefully shipped from the Maritimes to New Orleans). As far as Cajuns not being Takers, I don't buy it. I'm sure that you're having wonderful experiences; however, if we look at the term as Quinn defines it, then absolutely they're Takers.

This is not to say that, using memetics, Cajuns don't host all manner of memes that are benign, filled with spirituality and joy, or even Leaverish. Humans and Chimps share most of our genes but we are decidedly different species. When you look at what makes a Taker a Taker, Cajuns fit the mold perfectly. But being Francophones, they're probably less douchbaggy than the American Takers you're used to

 BTW - Taker and Leaver aren't a binary model. Quinn has already introduced a third cultural group. In BC he notes that the New World civilisations were not Taker, although they certainly weren't Leaver. He chalked it up to a difference in memes. Concievably, there were other civilisations in the old world that were not Leaver before Taker civlisation conquered them through force or through memetic transmission. Being a Taker is about enacting a specific story and hosting specific memes. There may in fact be thousands of cultural groups like this that we haven't discovered. Can't imagine them, but at least we know of three. So at the very least, it's a trinary model for now

Well... you're root of experience

Not at all.

All the theory says is, "This is how learned behaviour spreads and is selected against." Your life, your collection of behaviour and experience over decades is your life. Memes don't take away from that. There's nothing saying that all that is you cannot go with you into the afterlife. Nothing at all.

 You must remember, I'm an Agnostic, not an Atheist

Peace and Love and Empathy,

Matt