Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA26227 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 8 Mar 2002 05:44:27 GMT Message-ID: <001601c1c66b$75d0c0e0$5e2ffea9@oemcomputer> From: "Philip Jonkers" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <B8AD843F.2BD%srdrew_1@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Example of an aggresive irrational meme Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 21:34:33 -0900 Organization: Prodigy Internet Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Philip:
> **An aggressive meme is a meme that is designed to emphasize on
> transmission rather than virtue.**
Steve:
> Just re-reading this and that last bit caught my eye.
>
> Not withstanding my earlier post about the use of words to describe
meme's,
> this again falls foul of the use metaphor. I know this seems picky and is
> not intended to be, but i think we have to be careful of the language we
> use. I understand that by aggressive you mean the emphasis is on
> transmission, but that is true of any meme, (and biologist can correct me
> if I'm wrong, of genes). The primary 'goal' for either is to be
replicated.
> Full stop. Any effects or apparent benefits on people are coincidental
from
> the meme's eye point of view. And as Grant might suggest, it is these
> qualities we use in choosing the memes that we do.
Memes have no goal. It's the hosts who use memes to achieve goals. Memes
just
are and the memes who can persuade the hosts (by offering fitness
increments, genuine or false)
most frequently to adopt them dominate over rivaling memes. There are lots
of good memes
who die out because they fail to be sufficiently replicated. For instance,
ideas and inventions
on how to exploit alternative energy resources are bought up by the
oil-industry for obvious reasons.
Just like genes, memes come in all sorts and shapes, some are successful and
some are not.
This is reflected by their adoption or transmission rates. Only the
successful memes have
emphasized sufficiently on transmission and thus were prevented from being
swept away
by rivaling memes.
> But from the meme's point of view it is irrelevant. It is not because they
> are aggressive but because they fit that particular environment in which
to
> replicate or the mutation rate is such that it can be changed as a result
of
> the environment in which it finds itself. A silly example might be a
> 'Chinese whisper' where people in a circle pass on a word or phrase at a
> very low audible threshold, which introduces a method of natural
selection.
> I.E. each generation of the meme may be subject, due to the hearing of one
> of the participants, to arbitrary change.
Chinese whisper is not as much about natural selection as it is about
mutation. Each time the
meme is passed on to its neighbor it's distorted, transformed mutated (you
get the picture now).
After going round the circle, the meme might be completely transformed into
something completely
different from the original.
In biology mutation together with sex defines one vital component of natural
selection: variation.
The other two are: selection and retentive reproduction.
> There is a meme for behaviour, but not a meme with behaviour.
???
Cheers,
Phil.
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