Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA11308 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 8 May 2000 20:48:25 +0100 From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 20:06:33 +0100 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <3915AEB4.9BE0796F@mediaone.net> Message-Id: <00050820415301.00952@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Sun, 07 May 2000, Chuck Palson wrote:
>Blackmore in Meme Machine writes
>that two memes that have infected our brains are the fax and the windows OS. She
>says that the only reason these memes have been widely accepted is that they
>have been mindlessly copied because they are useless. How does she know they are
>useless? Because she finds them useless, period.
I didn't think Blackmore was quite that simple-minded, so I looked up fax and
Windows in the index. Windows isn't there. Fax has three entries, and in none
of them, as far as I can see, is it called useless. In fact, she has two fax
machines in her house! Can you give page references for these claims?
>This ability to copy accounts
>for the spread of inventions according to her. She does not once mention the
>possibility that people find inventions usefull because they solve problems by
>multplying efficiencies of our efforts -- which happens to be the actual reason
>why most inventions are eventually accepted.
Are you sure she doesn't take forgranted the fact that being useful is a
good strategy for memes? That's certainly what I'd have assumed, and
Blackmore does not strike me as in any way stupid.
>She then spends the last two
>chapters picturing memes as nasty little viruses that she is trying to get rid
>of, and makes suggestions on how to do this. She never makes it clear why they
>are nasty, and one gets the impression it is just that she doesn't like them.
Blackmore, to the best of my knowledge, was a Buddhist long before she became
interested in memetics, and so had a profound appreciation of the benefits of
a *relatively* meme-free mind, I suspect even before she knew what a meme was.
Her attitude to them goes a *great* deal deeper than just not liking them.
>For
>example, to Dawkins, the only thing that matters in regards religion is that
>there is no God, and therefore religion is a lie. That is far too facile and, I
>dare say, straight ideology.
Here I agree with you. Dawkins' attitude to religion is highly unscientific.
He just lets his feelings run away with him.
>> - how does culture evolve, given the model of Darwinian selection of memes?
>
>You are assuming the Darwinian selection of memes a la Dawkins, Blackmore etc.
>The whole model is, as far as I can see, based on the faulty methodolgy and
>value judgements I have described above. People choose to hold on to memes
>because of some well described reasons. And they get rid of them for other well
>understood reasons. As far as I can see, describing them as having a life of
>their own simply mystifies the problem.
It does indeed. But your big mistake -- shared with many, many others
including Blackmore despite my defence of her above -- is to assume that
explanations are mutually exclusive. Memes survive *because* people choose
them (among other reasons). Genes have no life "of their own", either --
they're totally reliant on the phenotype for their survival and reproduction.
Both genes and memes are essentially passive: all they do is survive. It so
happens that such survival is at the centre of the most complex systems we
know, and almost certainly ever will know, which is why the gene and meme are
such important concepts to us. But they are obviously no kind of "active
agent". And there's no conflict whatsoever between memetic explanations, and
people making choices. In real life, that is, as opposed to pure theory. The
things people choose naturally tend to proliferate. To focus on these things,
and call the more common ones "successful", *as if* they'd engineered the
situation, can be quite an enlightening exercise, like most radical shifts in
perspective. But it is just that: another point of view. You're right that
many people who adopt it, even the biggest names, tend to take it too
literally, but that, in itself, does not invalidate it. The model is most
certainly *not* based on faulty methodology and value judgements -- at the most
basic level, it is too simple, even tautologous, for that to be so -- it just
encourages them. Whether it can survive them, I don't know.
-- Robin Faichney===============================This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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