Re: Thesis: Memes are DNA-Slaves

From: Philip Jonkers (P.A.E.Jonkers@phys.rug.nl)
Date: Fri Oct 05 2001 - 12:55:51 BST

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From: Philip Jonkers <P.A.E.Jonkers@phys.rug.nl>
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To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Thesis: Memes are DNA-Slaves
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Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 13:55:51 +0200 (CEST)
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    Philip:
    > > Only if it's successful enough, yes... unsuccessful ones will be
    > supplanted
    > > by more successful ones, it's a law of evolution.
    Salice:
    > The question is, what makes a meme become successful?

    Now that's fairly easy to answer: Blackmore and Dawkins
    identified three criteria to characterize the success of a meme:

    1. copying-fidelity, memes should resist mutation to high
       extent in order to maintain their character after many
       copies are made of it. NB: fidelity, should not be infinite,
       that is the meme must be open to some small mutability
       potential, if not absence of variation prohibits evolution
       of the meme.

    2. fecundity, the meme ideally must spread like wild-fire.
       The more copies the merrier.

    3. longevity, the longer the meme is present in a brain
       the higher the expectation frequency is of copying the meme
       to other brains.

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