From: jeremy.burman@utoronto.ca
Date: Mon 26 Jan 2004 - 12:09:21 GMT
>> every few months somebody comes in here and for some
>> reason tries to redefine "meme." I or someone else
>> generally pipes up, if only for the record.
Given the current displeasure about definitions, I have to ask: Which version
is more correct for the study of infectious ideas, "memetics" (as has become
the convention), "memics" (after Dawkins, 1986/1991, p.158), or "mimetics"
(after Dawkins, 1976, p.192)? The first contains the idea of memes, which I
understand to be Dawkins' own mutation of the original definition in "The
Selfish Gene"; the second is a direct reference to Dawkins' evolutionary
theory, using his language from "The Blind Watchmaker"; and the third
references both concepts while at the same time containing the idea of mimicry
and imitation (and thus also of natural selection) by being true to Dawkins'
original process in coining the term. Given that "memetics" seems to have
become the standard, even having its own dictionary.com entry, is there a
difference in definition or usage between the three terms?
[Raymond O. Recchia wrote:]
> My question is for the lot of you is: if drug addiction is a meme, are
> there any insights that a memetic perspective can suggest on how to limit
> it's spread? A related question: how is this complicated by the
> involuntary nature of addiction itself?
[M Lissack responded:]
> if you view the addiction as a meme from the meme as
> catalytic indexical perspective you find the
> following:
>
> incarceration plans focus on trying to limit the
> carrying capacity of the indexical by loading up the
> indexical with "bad things" (jail time, los of
> freedom, need to avoid the police, etc.)
>
> clearly the indexical has a high carrying capacity and
> indexical breakdown is a step function so until you
> overload it with bad things the effect is minimal
>
> the alternative to focus on the meme as a catalyst:
>
> what is it about the addiction that is worth
> catalyzing and how do the many factors which are
> symbolized by the meme work as catalysts
>
> if you can find a way to restrict the catalytic powers
> or find a stronger reaction which is similarly
> catalyzed you can interfere with the reaction and work
> toward interfering in the addiction process
If I have interpreted Lissack's response correctly, a simplification of the
above would be as follows: the meme would predispose (or catalyze) addiction in
the direction of the meme's valence. However, because addiction has
physiological underpinnings, the (step?) function describing the likelihood of
addiction actually occurring would not drop to zero. No matter how strong your
beliefs, your brain will always react to novel reward with a dopaminergic
peak. Therefore, to answer you question -- "is drug addiction a meme?" -- I
would argue, "No: Drug addiction involves memes, but it is not itself a meme."
This raises an interesting question, in line with what it seems Lissack is
asking of Richard Brodie: Does the effectiveness of memes increase with their
alignment to pre-conditioned rewarding or punishing stimuli? In other words,
are memes cultural phenomena *before* they become mental phenomena? Do
memes "prime" reactions through a cultural process of "framing" potential
responses and thus predispose a reaction that "fits" within the current
cultural paradigms? (Furthermore, if one's paradigms conflict with those of
another, could one become immune to the "opposing" culture's
memetic/memic/mimetic advances? What would a memetic/memic/mimetic "war" look
like? Would it be solely propagandistic? Have we therefore seen it before, as
part of wars both hot and cold but not on its own... integrated, as with
addiction?) Is "fit" thus a measure of chromosomal "goodness" in the primeval
cultural soup, as it is treated in management theory (see e.g., Collins &
Porras, 1994, pp.9, 121)?
[Lawrence de Bivort wrote:]
> It is an interesting coincidence that on the same day you post this email,
> I have been asked to look at how an anti-smoking initiative for young adults
> might be designed. The situations would be similar, I would guess.
I agree 100%. Tobacco marketing is the example I had in mind as I read Raymond
Recchia's post. In this case, and at this point in time, virtually everyone
knows that tobacco smoke is bad for you, yet manufacturers continue to
advertise and make profits. (A related future example would be fast food.)
I did some research about tobacco marketing for a recent project. Tobacco
advertising today doesn't seem to increase the number of people who smoke, but
instead changes the distribution of brands consumed. So, from a historical
perspective, where has the pro-smoking meme acted? Did it play its role by
affecting the size of the market, promoting smoking using infectious symbols
like the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, or were such symbols just brand-indicators
that had little or nothing to do with promoting smoking in general? After all,
we still talk about "smoking a cigarette"; I have never heard someone refer to
the cigarette brand as a generic product name, like we do with 3M's Scotch-
brand cello-tape.
I recognize that the pro-smoking meme is likely far more insidious than a
cowboy of questionable sexuality or a phallic cartoon dromedary with
sunglasses... but where does the meme act? This, I would argue, is what you
would need to answer in successfully targeting an anti-smoking initiative.
(And it would seem that, by asking about the goal, this is also what Lawrence
asks after too.)
Dawkins' appears to answer this question in his discussion of the God meme
in "The Selfish Gene" (p.207). While I would argue based on my own research
that the God meme would arise on its own as an emergent property of our
interaction with the world (as an anchor and source of the absolute in a
relative world), Dawkins suggests that our current ideas about God are very
old, developing each from the other, with its success resulting from its "great
psychological appeal". Even though I think he got it backwards, both our
logics are based on the brain: mine is an argument based on neurochemistry,
whereas his is evolutionary. But that doesn't help with tobacco marketing, nor
does it really answer the question. What makes a meme worth imitating? Is it
just salience?
There's a story I remember from a class I took in undergrad. For my purposes
in asking this question, I find it more compelling than Dawkins' kiwi
saddleback story. It's about an octopus' involvement in a psychology
experiment to assess learning and the transmission of "ideas".
The experiment was set up as follows: an octopus was put in a tank, which had
been connected to a machine that could administer electric shocks to the
water. The experimenter would show up and, at random intervals, present a
series of objects to the octopus from outside the tank. When a soft, cushy
teddy bear was presented, the octopus received a shock through the water.
Eventually, as the association between paired teddy and shock (pain, which is
highly salient) was learned, the octopus began to react with fear to the teddy
when presented alone. Here's the interesting part: one octopus can learn from
another, in an octopus-see, octopus-do kind of way. In this way, by putting a
second octopus in a second tank, the teddy phobia was taught. More interesting
was that when they took the second octopus (the one that had never been
shocked) and put its tank next to a third (which had never met the first), the
third octopus also developed the teddy phobia. Is this example of "cultural
transmission" also an example of a "teddy bears are mean" meme for octopuses?
That would be interesting. But this is also just a story. The key question
is, "How would one set up an experiment to test for memetic/memic/mimetic
influence?"
Here's my tentative attempt to connect the story to meme science: Would a
similar presentation of a female octopus "in heat" change the reaction time or
delay the learning? In other words, would the "genetic reproduction" meme (the
visual display of something signifying a relevant biological event) conflict
with the "teddy bears are scary" meme? If so, if there is a measurable
difference in reaction or learning time, then I would argue that
memetics/memics/mimetics has a solid future as a science...
If I have shown a complete lack of understanding in posting these comments,
perhaps my confusion comes about as a result of being unsure about what
a "meme" actually is, from a pragmatic point of view. I have read chapter
11, "Memes: the new replicators" (also online at
http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html) but I am still
somewhat unclear about the distinction between memes as-replicators, as-
catalysts, and as-things-in-themselves. Based on my reading of Lissack's
questions, as well as my own uncertainty about the topic, it seems like a
greater exploration of the processes involved in cultural natural selection
would be a useful thing.
Jeremy Burman
http://individual.utoronto.ca/burman/
===============================================================
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 : Mon 26 Jan 2004 - 12:20:45 GMT