Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA00525 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 10 Jan 2001 16:27:16 GMT Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.0.20010110094006.02121ec0@pop3.htcomp.net> X-Sender: mmills@pop3.htcomp.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2 Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 10:14:57 -0600 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Mark Mills <mmills@htcomp.net> Subject: RE: DNA Culture .... Trivia? In-Reply-To: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230010D19FF@DELTA.newhouse.ak zonobel.nl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Derek,
At 09:47 AM 1/10/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Mark:
>What empirical advantage can you describe for the substrate-free meme?
>
>Derek:
>The opposite of what you say is true. How can you possible collect data
>about neural memes? You can't identify them. You can't count them. You
>don't even know for sure if they exist at all.
It's not difficult at all. All one has to do is follow genetic procedures,
population genetics to begin with, but neural research can be blended in
(as DNA research has been blended into genetics). It is the combination of
substrate and population research that produces powerful results.
Derek:
>On the contrary I can identify cultural artefacts and behaviour. I can
>count them. I can do empirical work. I do do empirical work.
Mark:
Sure, one can count artefacts and behavior. Where is the meme, though?
Counting artefacts and behaviors is a traditional activity, but few
practitioners of the art find it necessary to call their subjects memes.
The Lynch-meme paradigm allows one to call these artifacts and behaviors
memetic phenotypes. By studying population dynamics of these phenotypic
expressions, the patterns of memetic genotype replication can be discerned.
It's just like genetics. For hundreds of years, people had classified
animals. In the 19th century, people started using genetics to better
understand the evolutionary dynamics of those animal classification.
Derek:
>Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas of 1956 contains data on several hundred
>societies from all continents. Each society has numerous fields of
>quantitative data on everything ranging from food sources to house building
>to sexual behaviour.
>
><snip>
>I ran all these vectors through a Kohonen self-organizing map (SOM) using
>various sizes and conformations of map. Then I examined the resulting
>clustered and topographically arranged data to see if there was anything
>striking in them. There was. Agricultural societies tend to be more
>monotheistic than societies relying on other food production methods. This
>is true across all continents. The correlation between percentage
>dependence on agriculture and monotheism is about 0.65. The average
>dependence on agriculture in a polytheistic society is under 40%. In
>monotheistic societies it's over 70%. This difference is statistically
>significant at p < 0.001
>
>Now I don't pretend to know why this is the case. I leave easy just-so
>stories to the neural brigade. But the facts remain: agriculture and
>monotheism are both cultural phenomena, and they are associated. That's
>empirical memetics, and there isn't a neural meme in sight.
Mark:
It is an interesting example. What it has to do with a substrate free meme
is less obvious.
First, there is no mention of memes in the outline provided, only a
discussion of beliefs and cultural activities. The term 'memetics' doesn't
occur until the last sentence when the example is labeled 'empirical
memetics' and the lack of any references to 'neural memes' noted.
It would have been more accurate to say there wasn't any mention of memes
one way or the other. This is basically the point Bill Benzon made in his
reply. People have been doing population studies like the above for years
and had no need for memetics.
I don't know how you are going to involve the substrate-free meme in this,
I would still like to know. I agree your example is a memetic case study,
but don't see what a substrate free meme does for anyone.
For the neural meme brigade, the above is similar to the raw data Mendel
collected. It's a population study. It suggests a relationship between
environment and belief system. The data isn't random. The study suggests
there is a genotype-phenotype relation between the phenotypic cultural
behavior and the neural mechanics of the brain, the neural meme. As you
point out, we don't know 'why this is the case,' we have a reasonable
starting point for study, though. Neural mechanics.
Mark
http://www.htcomp.net/markmills
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