Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 22:40:22 -0400
From: Karthik Swaminathan <karthik@echonyc.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Adventure Memes/Duration Memes
Aaron Lynch wrote:
> A related point is that there is an evolutionary connection between
> replication rate and preservation fidelity of memes. This is analogous to
> viruses, where a highly contagious virus does not need to keep a hold on
> its host for very long. Hence, the common cold is so contagious that it
> needn't evolve elaborate mechanisms to achieve life-long infection. Herpes
> simplex, on the other hand, often must wait for a host to change sex
> partners in order to retransmit. Hence, it must evolve mechanisms to evade
> the immune system for a long time. With memes, rumors exemplify the highly
> contagious infections that need not evolve long-term self-preservation
> mechanisms. A religion, on the other hand, has a long mean interval between
> retransmissions. So it must evolve mechanisms to preserve itself for
> decades in the average host. There is more about this in my article
> "Thought Contagion and Mass Belief" at http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/tcamb.htm.
>
Thank you Aaron for a very interesting article.
Karthik.
===============================================================
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