From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Fri 20 Jun 2003 - 01:24:22 GMT
Lawry wrote:
<<In our view of memetics, we accept that rarely will
a meme be replicated 100% identically.>>
As I said, I think you are using the term "meme" to refer to what I call
memeplexes.
<< Like you, I am much intrigued with
the usage of words and the promise that resides within the availability of
words, both for precision and for mind-changing potential. But I think the
wording of a meme -- that is, the stuff that goes between two people -- is
only part of the story of dissemination. There is also the processing that
occurs within the transmitter, through which he tries with only partial
success to find the words that best convey the idea, and the effort by the
receiver, also only partly successful, to conjure from the transmitter's
words what the actual idea is that lies behind them, and then we have Wade's
prescient observation that the cultural venue also exercises its deleterious
effect on the fidelity of the dissemination.>>
Well, Snowcrash to the contrary, I don't think you can speak a meme. Memes
are in the mind. As I wrote in my 1995 book:
**********
One potential pitfall with [Dennett's] definition is the use of the term
vehicles. The distinction of a meme-carrying vehicle is not as clear-cut as
in biology, where organisms are vehicles for the spread of DNA. Not all meme
transmission is as simple as imitating a catchy tune or noticing a spoked
wheel.
If memes are our internal programming, we can draw on decades of research in
psychology to look at how we get programmed-how memes get transmitted into
our minds. Once programmed, we behave in complex ways that spread memes
indirectly.
So while it may sometimes be illuminating to use the term vehicle to
describe behavior or an artifact that tends to infect people with a meme,
more often the existence of a meme will cause a Rube-Goldberg-like sequence
of actions that only indirectly cause spreading of the meme. The wagon wheel
and the TV commercial advertising TV programs are the exceptions as
meme-spreading vehicles; the rule is more complex.
***********
<<At our end, here, we accept, therefore that the dissemination loses
fidelity, and we still call the whole thing a meme. You suggest, if I
understand correctly, that we should be calling it a mutation, and you may
be right, but I think that there is something in between a 'mutation' and a
100% replicated transmission.>>
Memeplexes reproduce (the word used for organisms) rather than replicate
(the word used for genes). Reproduction creates a similar, but not
identical, new entity. Replication creates an exact copy unless there is a
mutation. The distinction is very important. Without the exact replication
of memes to bring the process back on course, the fuzzy reproduction of
memeplexes would soon deteriorate to randomness.
<< A mutation to me seems more random than the
process of deterioration that I discuss above. If a transmission mutates, as
I hear the term, it becomes something different, its similarity to the
original is so perverted that it can not be said to be anymore related,
substantively. At the other end, if a meme is only what is passed with 100%
fidelity, than I think the term becomes relegated to an extremely small
number of instances, so I think that I prefer the more robust definition of
meme, one in which deterioration happens routinely, yet the pedigree and
connection of influence readily and adequately persists. My operational
standards for 'memes' have more to do with the needs and dynamics of
influence than with a standard of fidelity that is akin to genetic
replication.>>
You are using the word "meme" for what I call a "memeplex."
<<I know that you too are interested in influence and cultural evolution:
how
can a meme, defined as 100% fidelity, serve the needs of those interests?
I hope I have understood your thinking correctly, and that I am not dragging
us off into a pointless tangent.>>
I've said all along it's more interesting to study memeplexes and, more
generally, viruses of the mind, than memes. But without memes there would be
no memeplexes. It would be like living in a world where the only way to
communicate was by painting an original piece of abstract art and showing it
to people. And even that probably has memes.
Richard Brodie
www.memecentral.com
===============================================================
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri 20 Jun 2003 - 01:32:39 GMT