From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat 04 Feb 2006 - 12:14:50 GMT
>From: John Wilkins <j.wilkins1@uq.edu.au>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>Subject: Re: new review of memetics/sociobiology/EP
>Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 16:45:00 +1000
>
>On 04/02/2006, at 1:33 PM, Keith Henson wrote:
>
>>At 09:39 AM 2/3/2006 +1000, you wrote:
>>...
>>>Religion is less virulent when passed on vertically (Boyd and
>>>Richerson's "unbiased" transmission) from parent to child, because
>>>then the religion must adapt to the hosts' needs to reproduce. It is
>>>more virulent when it is laterally ("biasedly") transmitted because
>>>then the meme-complex (religion is *not* a meme - it's a memome or
>>>something similar. A meme-complex of coadapted memes) has different
>>>"interests" to the hosts.
>>
>>I don't object to your terminology, I just don't see the need for it.
>>Memes to me are like string, any length is still string.
>
>A meme is something that gets passed on entire (which of course means that
>something can be a meme at one point in history and a meme- complex at
>another).
>
So a meme is like a coin in that when it passes hands it doesn't become
fragmented? Sounds like an article of faith to me. Of course metal coins
will hold themselves together to a certain extent (ignoring long-term wear
that results in their features deteriorating thus the different evaluations
of coins in collectors value guides). Culturally relevant info OTOH could be
more labile or evanescent. In some cases, especially when written down, it
has fidelity in transmission, but I've heard enough of how things get
botched between the quotee and quoter in newspapers that faithfulness of
transmission comes nowhere near the coin example. Following up on the
Greyfriar Bobby legend, in the book by Forbes MacGregor _Greyfriar's Bobby:
the Real Story at Last_, newspaper accounts got the story wrong and one of
the participants in the life of the dog himself apparently falsified part of
the story about the dog's owner. A popular children's book got the story
wrong and so did the subsequent film.
>
>But something like a religion has many elements that can be differentially
>sorted and cross-lineage transmitted. These things are memes.
>
Particulate things? Sounds like it's gonna be difficult to pin down a higher
level meme-plex if the elements themselves are like will-o-wisps. Does
memory or artefact generation work this way? What about the relation(s)
between ideas and behavior? Going beyond the tidy abstraction of memes on a
string or in a beanbag, how does the *real world* actually operate?
>
>>
>>>Of course, religious evolution is somewhat faster than biological
>>>evolution, so there is considerable slop, but overall if a religion
>>>is vertically transmitted, it will tend to be more benign.
>>
>>At least it can't be too rough on host reproduction.
>
>In the long run (in which we are all dead, as Keynes remarked), sure. But
>given that meme complexes can change rapidly relative to host
>reproduction, so long as there are sufficient new hosts for the meme to
>inhabit, it can in fact be quite deleterious biologically. Shakers, again,
>or (my personal favourite) the Albigensians.
>
Shaker style furniture lives on. The ideas embodied in the Shaker mindset
can be read about in books, but unless they are all photocopies or
plagiarisms of an original source material these books will be worded
differently and may have subtle variations in content. These words may
affect each of us differenntly based upon our own life history. Memeticists
will use the ploy of saying this is an example of a self-plex in action, but
that is merely assuming the conclusion already, taking it for granted.
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