From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Mon 16 Jun 2003 - 02:05:34 GMT
Wade, I read your explanation of the performance model (attached for those
who have you killfiled). You call this a model of cultural evolution but you
haven't explained how culture evolves. I enjoy your posts so if you say
you're being serious and this is not all a prank I give you the benefit of
the doubt. But I would like to see at least a sketch of how you think your
model explains cultural evolution. If you are looking for an analogue to the
gene, you need differential selection and replication of some replicator. If
not, explain what non-Darwinian process you believe is at work. For all your
voluminous posts, all you seem to do is make definitions, analogies, and
derisive comparisons. How the heck does it work?
Richard Brodie
www.memecentral.com
-----Original Message-----
From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
Of Wade T. Smith
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 6:15 PM
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: the very model
On Sunday, June 15, 2003, at 04:52 PM, Richard wrote:
> I look forward to someone some day explaining exactly what the
> "performance model" is. :)
The performance model is one where the gene analog is also called the
meme, and one where the concern is also about cultural evolution, but
one where this analogous unit is contained not within one organism,
like a cell, but within one performance, and then goes on to claim that
all performances are unique, but will, in an enforced cultural venue,
be similar enough to continue and maintain the venue itself. (A
baseball game will continue to use four bases, a bat, and a ball.) The
performance model claims that cultural evolution is not possible
without at least three agents- a performer, an observer, and a place
for performance and observation. This is analogous to the agents of the
genetic model- two sexes, (or simply a splitting into two new wholes,
and the included chance of mutation), and the new species so created,
which needs to be similar enough to continue and maintain itself.
(Every mule is an island, but the horse has several pedigrees.) The
genetic material that gets transferred by the sexual process (and the
sexual process is more apt to cultural evolution than any other) is not
properly analogized in _any_ memetic model other than the performance
model.
Of course, I've spoken and amplified upon explanations of the
performance model at considerable length here, so, please feel free to
peruse the archives. Kenneth and William Benzon have also expanded and
joined in these explanations, and it is consistent with the G-meme. In
fact, it is from early considerations of William's and Derek's posts
that I've arrived at this formulation of cultural evolution, which, I
totally admit, I do for my own edification and understanding and
enjoyment, in much the same way I listen to John Zorn and then to
Lucinda Williams and then to Pink Floyd....
But, I have striven in some vain to indicate that it is _only_ to
cultural evolution that this model attaches. It is not a theory or
model of cognition, or memory, or thought in any specificity or
generality, nor is it a model of society or language and it is most
certainly not a philosophy or a branch of mathematics or logic. Humans
are accepted as self-conscious and creative creatures in this model,
and given as such to culture's mechanics. It is also an expansion of
basic artistic performance and aesthetic theories, from Aristotle to
Cage, and to Zorn, if you need the whole alphabet.
It is, and I would have thought this would impart itself to you, the
most relevant model to PR and marketing and advertising and influence
approaches to memetic 'engineering'. In the performance model, there is
a strong influence from the introduction of changes to the parameters
and expectations of the venue to changes in the performances of the
agents. It is not the idea, or even the truth of the idea, that matters
to cultural evolution, but the control exerted by the influence of the
parametrically described societal venue the culture in maintenance is
continuing. Religion is an excellent example of this, as is advertising
and education, and, well, all of culture, of course, even down to table
manners. It is not the idea in the head that matters to culture, but
the performance that continues to enforce others. It is not the gene in
the body that matters to biological evolution, but the sexual act that
continues to produce offspring. Memetics, if it claims all agency of
cultural evolution within the brain, is simply not sexy enough....
So, since I've sort've handed myself the sceptre of its crown, so to
speak, I'll enlist Keith, who took his ball home and who doesn't even
talk to me or listen to me anymore, to help me out. Don't tell him....
> [Keith]- I would like to suggest you consider a simplification
> consistent with Darkins [gack! he misspelled the saint's name!] and
> Dennett,
And, keep that thought. But, replace 'simplification' with 'necessary
and sufficient condition'.
> [Keith again]- namely memes as pure information, independent of media.
I move this particular phrase aside, because, IMHO, neither Dawkins nor
Dennett have any interest in denying the media, or making it
independent of the information encoded within it, or vice versa.
Vincent would not be here if this were the case, and neither would I. I
won't speak for you, but from what I've seen of your interest with
perceptual studies and theories, you wouldn't be either.
So, we have a meme as necessary and sufficient condition... for what?
For cultural evolution, per Dawkins, and per Dennett, and per almost
everyone else in the memetic world. (There is a heated and contentious
argument about what constitutes culture, as well, and who, or what, has
it. I don't care, much, as long as one demands that whatever it is
continues through self-conscious performance and not through instinct.)
> [Keith again]- So the meme of chipped arrowheads would amount to the
> information about how to make and use them.
Yes. But, don't stop there- this information is useless to cultural
evolution until and unless it gets observed in performance, but, let
Keith continue-
> Taking only the making part, the information could exist in a human
> mind,
The performance model totally accepts this, but, hey, what is mind, if
not a brain in a body?- let's not forget Damasio, now- this memory of
making is also a sensual memory of physical contact.)
> on paper (though for sure it would be tough to successfully describe
> how to chip rocks in text alone), in a video of someone chipping out
> an arrowhead, or to some extent in the object of an arrowhead itself
> if a person who knew rock chipping but not arrowheads could duplicate
> one from a sample.
What Keith is defining in the above are three instances of _artifacts_,
which are themselves _results_ of performances, _not_ any sort of
_mere_ information at all. Big, big, _big_, difference between a
performance and the information in a mind. This is a crucial point-
there is no such thing as a perfect performance of any information in
any mind such that precisely exact copies of information are formed-
each performance, each artifact, regardless of how carefully rehearsed
or how skillfully performed, is not the information. It may be close,
it may be damn near ideal, but it is not exact- it is not the same, it
is not the self-same, it is not the information itself, and no
perception of this performance will create the same, the self-same, or
the exact information in the observing mind. This is a physical
impossibility imparted by the nature of perception itself. There is no
such thing as exact encoding of information in any organic structure,
and even the most precise copying mechanisms of life which do exist at
cellular levels are not immune to alteration. If all things were the
same, we wouldn't be here to see how different they are.
> [Keith again]- A subculture is just a collection of memes. The fact
> that a whole bunch of them are bound up in a mutually supporting
> package is not unlike Dawkins pointing out that genes are bound
> together in much the same way in a genome.
This should seem applicable to any model of cultural evolution, and, if
I have done any good here at all, then let me rephrase it according to
the performance model-
"A subculture is just a collection of performances. The fact that a
whole bunch of them are bound up in a mutually supporting package (the
cultural venue) is not unlike Dawkins pointing out that genes are bound
together in much the same way in a genome."
- and thank Keith for showing me, and I hope you, that the models
themselves are not so much aberrant from each other- it is only the
word 'meme' that gets applied in different places.
And, since I'm here, IMHO, there is no efficacy to putting a meme in a
mind for any model of cultural evolution, but that is my own bias, and
I'll cop to it.
Now, viral patterns of thought as arbiters of behaviors are _another_
matter entirely....
- Wade
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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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