RE: meme as catalytic indexical

From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Fri 23 Jan 2004 - 05:58:32 GMT

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    What a wonderful post, Keith. Thank you again for keeping us grounded.

    Richard Brodie www.memecentral.com

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
    > [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Keith Henson
    > Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:44 PM
    > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > Subject: Re: meme as catalytic indexical
    >
    > At 11:05 PM 21/01/04 -0800, M Lissack wrote:
    > >thought experiments with "obvious results" (your words
    > Keith) are not
    > >demonstrable ways for a "science" to illustrate how it makes a
    > >pragmatic difference
    >
    > That's not always the case. The most famous thought
    > experiment of all time is Shrodinger's Cat (1935),
    > http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html. Not only is
    > quantum mechanics science par excellence but it underlies all
    > of the pragmatic solid state engineering of the last half of
    > the 20th century. (This happens to be my professional field.)
    >
    > >Bruce's challenges are about the role of memetics as a useful science
    >
    > I am not so certain that memetics is a large enough topic to
    > *be* a useful science by itself. The best analogy is
    > probably genetics, where we are concerned with two aspects,
    > the effects variations in genes have at the level of an
    > organism and the rate of growth or decline in a population of
    > various genes as a result of selection (population genetics).
    > By analogy, memetics would be concerned with what a meme
    > does to make a difference in an organism's behavior and how
    > (or why) the meme behind that behavior becomes more or less
    > common in a population. Population memetics if you will.
    >
    > The answer to how and why a meme becomes more common requires
    > a deep understanding of human psychological traits. Since
    > those psychological traits were selected during our
    > evolutionary history, evolutionary psychology is key to
    > understanding the differential selection of memes. Memetics
    > not just Darwin applied to ideas, but Darwin applied twice!
    >
    > The math behind both genetics and memetics generates S curves
    > where the early part of the S curve is exponential. The
    > exact same math describes epidemics.
    >
    > Memetic models predict that potato washing by monkeys would
    > be adopted on an S curve. (Anyone have the numbers?) There
    > is little chance of resolving it in the geologic record, but
    > I would assume the hand ax (killer
    > Frisbee) was adopted by our remote ancestors on an initial
    > exponential curve which then flattened out for the next
    > million years before declining to few or zero practitioners
    > (the discus might be a non-functional-for-hunting remnant).
    >
    > We do have historical records for the adoption of life
    > insurance. I researched this while looking into the adoption
    > of cryonics before I started writing on memetics and found
    > that the curves for England, France and the US were parallel
    > on semi-log paper with the US following England by about 20
    > years and France trailing England by almost 70 years. (If
    > memory serves, it has been a very long time.)
    >
    > Of course, genetic effects are embedded in the whole of
    > biology and behavior variations are embedded in biology and
    > its extensions into the psychology of social primates. Thus
    > I have found a memetic model to be of use in stating and
    > understanding problems from evolutionary psychology.
    >
    > If someone wanted data to support memetic models of
    > infectious behavior, you could probably find it in the
    > records for the major sports--particularly basketball which
    > is not much over 100 years old. There is a thumbnail sketch
    > here: http://www.ku.edu/heritage/graphics/people/naismith.html
    >
    > >rather than as a philosphical school of belief
    >
    > >Your example is great for the latter and useless for the former
    >
    > I find this amusing for reasons that will be obvious to most
    > list readers.
    >
    > Keith Henson
    >
    > PS I have a copy of Bruce's paper now, but will probably
    > hold off on commenting for a bit.
    >
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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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