From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Thu 19 Feb 2004 - 03:39:45 GMT
At 09:36 AM 17/02/04 +1100, you wrote:
> From Keith Henson:
>
>
>>Memetics is a very simple little corner of knowledge, in math it would be
>>a lemma. None of the works of people on memes makes the claim it *can*
>>explain anything beyond the obvious that elements of culture are subject
>>to Darwinian evolution.
>
>If this is all anyone working in memetics claimed, then there would be no
>reason to take issue with memetics. It is possible that some elements of
>culture (again, why is the word culture used over and over again when what
>is at issue is social life?) are selected in a way more or less similar to
>the way genes are selected (though whether this is usefully called
>Darwinian and whether it is obvious is an issue). But the promise of
>memetics, taken up by many, is that it will explain social life in some
>general way - in more or less the same way that genetics explains
>biological life. Surely this is what Dawkins was suggesting in the Selfish
>Gene, or what many have interpreted him as saying.
Not exactly. Genetics, gene based Darwinian evolution, is too small a
frame to "explain" the features of biological life. "Explaining" eyes in a
biological context doesn't work unless you include an environment with
light. Indeed, as I recently mentioned on this list, evolution eventually
results in eyes disappearing in species that have taken up living in caves
where there is no light.
The "environment" of human culture memes is human brains, the environment
of those brains is human bodies and recursively those bodies live in an
environment that includes the rest the physical universe.
Important parts of that universe (such as farmland) have been *reshaped* by
human cultural activities. There are multiple complex feedback loops
involved (some with time constants of 100,000 years!). You have to
understand that human psychological traits were mostly selected during the
Pleistocene if you want to answer the question of why some memes do better
than others.
>If memetics only explains some aspects of social life, then what doesn't
>it explain and what explains the rest?
Seventeen years ago I had hopes that memetics might do exactly that:
http://www.nancho.net/memes/infoviru.html
"We don't have a science of social prediction. Until recently we
haven't
even had much in the way of theories. Our continual surprise at the
development of cults, religions, wars, fads, and other social movements
is a notable exception to the steady progress humans have made in
building better models of our environment. Our lack of good models must
be considered a major deficiency.
"A successful theory for the development of social movements will
have to provide a unifying theory for events that make up much of
the evening news. It will have to discover common features that lie behind the
diverse trends causing problems in Nicaragua, South Africa, Northern
Ireland and the Middle East. It should be able to produce a
plausible model for the breakup of the Rajneesh cult. The theory should be
able to predict the conditions under which Turkey will be subverted by a
fundamentalist version of Islam similar to that which has led to so much
grief in Iran.
"Tentative answers to these questions are beginning to emerge from
the new field of memetics. Memetics (from meme, which rhymes with cream) is
an outgrowth of evolutionary biology. It takes the age-old saying "ideas
have a life of their own" literally, and applies models from biology to the
evolution, spread and persistence of ideas (memes) in human culture."
("Ideas have a life of their own." Age-old saying. Riiight.)
snip to end.
"If most conflict in the world is an indirect effect of memes,
memetics holds as much potential for reducing human misery as the germ
theory of disease. Just being able to model the interactions among the
Soviets, the West, and the Islamic groups may make the world a safer place.
Widespread understanding of hard-to-avoid human susceptibilities and an
ecosystem-like model of replicating information patterns that have no
short-term interest in their host (and indeed no consciousness at all) may
lead to the development of meme evaluating "mental health practices" just
as knowledge of disease has changed our behavior in regard to drinking
ditchwater."
Almost ten years after this was published, I had a disconcerting experience
at a party where a woman expressed her bewilderment about her time in the
scientology cult ("Peak experience of my life!"). She said so in terms and
body language that reminded me very strongly of another woman expressing
the joys of injecting dope. (Discovery story here:
http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html, search for "heroin,"
1996 posting here:
"In the aggregate, memes make up human culture. Most of them are of
the rock-chipping/shoemaking/vehicle-avoiding kind--they provide clear
benefits to those who host them. They are passed from generation to
generation because of the benefits (ultimately to the genes of their hosts)
they provide.
"But a whole class of memes fails to have such obvious replication
drivers. Memes of this class, which includes religions, cults and social
movements such as communism, have induced some of the most spectacular
events in human history, including mass suicides, wars, migrations,
crusades, and other forms of large-scale social unrest.
"These memes often induce humans to actions which seriously damage
or destroy their potential for reproductive success. The classic example
is the nearly extinct Shakers--whose meme set completely forbids
sex. While inducing such behavior makes sense when viewed from the
*meme's* viewpoint (diverting host time and energy from bearing and caring
for children to propagating the meme) it makes no sense when considered
from the *gene's* viewpoint for a susceptibility to this class of memes to
have evolved.
"This is where my understanding about the vulnerability of humans to
this class of memes was stuck for many years. It was recently unstuck by a
new discipline which has grown out of the early work in sociobiology. This
new field is most often called evolutionary psychology. What evolutionary
psychology proposes to do is explain the features of the human mind in
terms of what mental traits led to *reproductive success* in the *ancestral
environment*.
snip
"Of all the things which have been measured in such representative
ancestral environments as we have, social standing or status is the most
predictive of reproductive success.
snip
"It follows that humans would have evolved to be exquisitely
sensitive to changes in status, which (no surprise) is the observed
situation. Activities which lead to feelings of increasing status are
highly rewarding: that is, they cause the release of chemicals which induce
highly pleasurable states in the brain. This reward system is fundamental
to human motivation, and in the ancestral environment it worked to enhance
reproductive success most of the time.
snip
"In short, an action (such as hunting) leads to attention (an
indicator of status) which in the short term releases rewarding brain
chemicals and in the long term improves reproductive success.
snip
"In time humans discovered drugs which shortcut this
action-attention-reward (AAR) brain mechanism and directly flood the brain
with pleasurable chemicals.
snip
"Gambling and drugs cause misfiring of the AAR mechanisms, and often
result in severe damage to reproductive potential, but both are very recent
in human evolution. In the past, evolution favored those who were
motivated by the mechanism.
"The importance of the AAR mechanism is hard to underestimate. It
may well be the most important motivating mechanism behind virtually all
human activities. In previous times it was tied directly into reproductive
success, and it is still a major factor in this endeavor.
"It should come as no surprise that such a powerful mechanism can be
taken over by drug-induced rewards. It seems that this is not the only way
the brain reward system can be parasitized. Memes which we see as cults
and related social movements seem to have "discovered" the AAR reward
system as well.
"Successful cult memes induce behavior (typically focused
attention) between cult members which trips the "improving status"
detectors. Tripping the detectors causes the release of reward chemicals
without having much (if any) connection to "real world" improvements in
reproductive success.
"Examples of focused attention are "love bombing" in the Moonies and
"auditing" in Scientology. As an explanation for the propagation of the
meme classes mentioned at the top of this article, I propose that
successful cult memes induce behavior between cult members which results in
the release of pleasure inducing chemicals into the reward system of the
brain. This release of chemicals results in reinforcement of behavior
similar to that we see in addicts.
(Supporting article
here:
http://www.hnl.bcm.tmc.edu/articles/NY%20Times%20Article%20-%20Hijacking%20the%20Brain%20Circuits%20With%20A%20Nickle%20Slot%20Machine.pdf
with a number of pointers to scientists working in this area.)
Hijacking the Brain Circuits With a Nickel Slot
Machine
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE (NYT) 1665 words
Compulsive gambling, attendance at sporting events, vulnerability to
telephone scams
and exuberant investing in the stock market may not seem to have much in
common. But
neuroscientists have uncovered a common thread.
Such behaviors, they say, rely on brain circuits that evolved to help
animals assess
rewards important to their survival, like food and sex. Researchers have
found that those
same circuits are used by the human brain to assess social rewards as
diverse as
investment income and surprise home runs at the bottom of the ninth.
And, in a finding that astonishes many people, they found that the brain
systems that
detect and evaluate such rewards generally operate outside of conscious
awareness. In
navigating the world and deciding what is rewarding, humans are closer to
zombies than
sentient beings much of the time.
The findings, which are gaining wide adherence among neuroscientists,
challenge the
notion that people always make conscious choices about what they want and
how to
obtain it. In fact, the neuroscientists say, much of what happens in the
brain goes on
outside of conscious awareness.
snip
(Back to 1987 article:
"If most conflict in the world is an indirect effect of memes,
memetics holds as much potential for reducing human misery as the germ
theory of disease. Just being able to model the interactions among the
Soviets, the West, and the Islamic groups may make the world a safer place."
My thinking on this subject has obviously changed since 1987. I make the
case in recent postings (and in an article on war under construction) that
xenophobic memes are in the causal links to war. But they are not the root
cause. I make the case that the cause of war is an evolved psychological
trait in humans.
This trait induces a tribe (or extended tribe) to get into fights with
neighbors as a response to falling income per capita. ("Falling income per
capita" is a modern "mapping" of looming privation, a condition experienced
by our ancestors often enough in periodically overpopulated environments
for a response--go to war with neighbors--to have evolved.)
Of course the *root* cause of wars is having more babies than the
environment can support.
1987 article again
"A successful theory for the development of social movements will
have to provide a unifying theory for events that make up much of the
evening news. It will have to discover common features that lie behind the
diverse trends causing problems in Nicaragua, South Africa, Northern
Ireland and the Middle East. It should be able to produce a plausible model
for the breakup of the Rajneesh cult. The theory should be able to predict
the conditions under which Turkey will be subverted by a fundamentalist
version of Islam similar to that which has led to so much grief in
Iran.
I believe there is such a "unifying theory" but it does not come out of
memetics. Memes are *part* of the theory (like genetics is part of
evolutionary biology) but the overarching explanation for how human
societies operate is human psychology as understood by evolutionary
psychology/sociobiology. I.e., shaped by a million years of human
ancestors reproducing in small hunter gatherer groups.
The theory predicts that the danger to Turkey being "subverted by a
fundamentalist version of Islam" is highly influenced by the prosperity of
the population. Which is to say that you could predict the danger level by
birth rates and economic growth.
This theory makes the case that the fading out of the Northern Ireland
troubles was due to birth rates that started falling there over 20 years
ago. After a long time lag, this resulted in a growing income per
capita. Higher income per capita (which human tribal minds map into a time
of more game and berries) reduces the spread of the xenophobic memes and
resulting social support that induced the Irish fighters to kill each other.
The *particular* xenophobic Catholic and Protestant memes are not in a
sense important. Another island population founded by about 20 people
split into the "long ears" and the "short ears" when they reached about
20,000 people and started to starve. They made war on each other with
rocks till 90% of the population was gone. At that point the income per
capita was able to recover because of the much smaller population and they
quit killing (and eating) each other.
>What is the relationship between memes and the other sources of social
>creativity?
I have explained how memes fit into the causal chain that leads to
wars. What are you looking for?
>Why are these difficult questions not being addressed?
They are. Look around on the web.
>The problem with posting like that offered by Keith is that they are
>ideosyncratic. Keith thinks he has the answer to everything to do with
>memes (for all I know he may be right), yet almost no one else agrees with
>him. If someone came to this website, what view would they get of memetics?
This is a (nearly) unmoderated email discussion list. Typical of such
lists you get much heat and relatively little light.
The common end of a thread on Usenet or mailing list is an article that
most reasonable people agree with. My postings often end a thread. :-)
If you go to the JoM *web site,* and read some of the reference material
you will see that the majority view of memetics is fairly close to
mine. If you go to "A Brief Overview . . ." the link [2] is to an article
by William Calvin whose views on these subjects I highly respect. I am
mentioned on the first page of "A Lexicon of Memetics . . ."
Keith Henson
PS. Incidentally, I appreciate your questions even if it does tie up a
bunch of my time answering them.
===============================================================
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 : Thu 19 Feb 2004 - 03:45:04 GMT