Memetic 'hide-and-seek'

    "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them:
otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven."
    "That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in
secret Himself shall reward thee openly." 
(Matthew 6:1-4)

A good trick to protect vulnerable memes against powerful hostile meme
complexes, is *hiding* them, making them invisible to the outside world,
and thereby 'immune' to other memes/meme complexes.

Generalizing "alms" to all behavioral outcomes of moral memes, the
Christian attitude of 'doing good in secret' is easy to explain. In the
early days of Christianity, the memes carried by the followers of JC were
strongly suppressed by memetic defense systems of the Judaic and Roman
meme complexes. For the Christian memes to survive, they had to protect
themselves by making their outcomes invisible.
By attributing a divine intention to the conduct of secrecy, this smart
memetic protection mechanism gets a logical legitimation.

I think this memetic game of hide-and-seek is a very general memetic
mechanism. Needs more reflection.

-- Marc

From: xentrac@unm.edu (Kragen J Sittler)
Date: 22 Jun 1994 15:37:21 -0700

Marc (hingh@xs4all.nl) wrote:
>    "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them:
>otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven."
>    "That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in
>secret Himself shall reward thee openly." 
>(Matthew 6:1-4)
>
>
>A good trick to protect vulnerable memes against powerful hostile meme
>complexes, is *hiding* them, making them invisible to the outside world,
>and thereby 'immune' to other memes/meme complexes.
>
>Generalizing "alms" to all behavioral outcomes of moral memes, the
>Christian attitude of 'doing good in secret' is easy to explain. In the
>early days of Christianity, the memes carried by the followers of JC were
>strongly suppressed by memetic defense systems of the Judaic and Roman
>meme complexes. For the Christian memes to survive, they had to protect
>themselves by making their outcomes invisible.
>By attributing a divine intention to the conduct of secrecy, this smart
>memetic protection mechanism gets a logical legitimation.
>
>I think this memetic game of hide-and-seek is a very general memetic
>mechanism. Needs more reflection.

I agree with your idea of hide-and-seek, but I don't think that what
Matthew is saying is that doing 'good' in secret is better than doing
'good' in public.  My interpretation, and I think the interpretation
of most people who believe the Bible (which does NOT include me, btw)
is that you shouldn't do 'good' for the purpose of being seen.  You
ought to do 'good' for its own sake, not to impress others.  A 'good
deed' done in secret is one which was certainly not done to impress
others with, and thus must have been done for its own sake.

I disagree that doing good deeds in public, for most values of 'good
deeds', would tend to bring the law upon the heads of early
Christians.  Giving alms to the poor, which is the specific example
Matthew uses here, is an act of charity endorsed by many different
religious meme-complexes.  It is also endorsed by simple sympathy.

I think that the primary memetic survival value in the passages from
the Bible you quoted is in the fact that following them tends to make
people feel good about themselves, not in the fact that they might
tend, under some circumstances, to keep the religion of the believer a
secret.

My opinion on hide-and-seek as a memetic survival technique is that it
tends to be more destructive than constructive to the hiding
meme-complex.  A martyr, or ten, or a hundred, is a powerful addition
to the strength of a meme-complex.  Visibility of a meme-complex, such
as the meme-complex which holds together the 'community' part of the
gay/lesbian/bi community, makes the infection of new hosts much
easier.

I will be glad to support any of the above statements with examples if
it is desired.

Kragen

Kragen J Sittler (xentrac@unm.edu) writes:
[...my original posting deleted...]

"" I agree with your idea of hide-and-seek, but I don't think that what
"" Matthew is saying is that doing 'good' in secret is better than doing
"" 'good' in public. My interpretation, and I think the interpretation
"" of most people who believe the Bible (which does NOT include me, btw)
"" is that you shouldn't do 'good' for the purpose of being seen.  You
"" ought to do 'good' for its own sake, not to impress others.  A 'good
"" deed' done in secret is one which was certainly not done to impress
"" others with, and thus must have been done for its own sake.

From a memetic perspective, the reasons individuals THINK they
have for certain behavior are irrelevant -- as long as this
behavior is useful for the reproduction of the meme complexes
giving rise to the behavior. Furthermore, the reasons Jesus
may have had for his moral standpoints (expressed in the
Sermon on the Mount, quoted by Matthew) are irrelevant for the
survival value of his memes. 
Jesus' criticism to hypocritical religious behaviour in his
time may appeal to a sense of moral purity that christians and
non-christians (like you) share nowadays. The question
memetics asks however is not what's the BEST moral standpoint,
but what makes a moral standpoint SUCCESFUL.
Your interpretation does not explain WHY moral behavior "for
its own sake" turned out to be more succesful than behavior
"to impress others".

"" I disagree that doing good deeds in public, for most values of 'good
"" deeds', would tend to bring the law upon the heads of early
"" Christians.  Giving alms to the poor, which is the specific example
"" Matthew uses here, is an act of charity endorsed by many different
"" religious meme-complexes.  It is also endorsed by simple sympathy.

As you know, early christians in fact WERE persecuted because
of their radical opinions. It would have been a very bad idea
to do their 'good deeds' in public.
I hasten to admit that this doesn't apply to giving alms, but
it DOES apply to the most important of all 'good deeds':
converting people to christianity [redemption!].

"" I think that the primary memetic survival value in the passages from
"" the Bible you quoted is in the fact that following them tends to make
"" people feel good about themselves, not in the fact that they might
"" tend, under some circumstances, to keep the religion of the believer a
"" secret.

Wait a second... 
I think the one and only reason why obeying the words of Jesus
(such as in the quoted passages) makes people "feel good about
themselves" is the mere fact that they believe them to be of a
divine origin!
You seem to turn around the causality: people would feel good
after doing good in secret BEFORE they were infected by the
christian memes dictating them to do so...?
I'd say people living according to a different moral system
will "feel good about themselves" after a good deed defined by
THEIR moral system.

Maybe this is a topic for further discussion. Many ATHEISTS
disapprove hypocritical charity-in-public, and prefer the
principle of doing-good-in-secret
Isn't this fact a result of these same christian memes again,
that were adopted by humanist thinkers??

"" My opinion on hide-and-seek as a memetic survival technique is that it
"" tends to be more destructive than constructive to the hiding
"" meme-complex.  A martyr, or ten, or a hundred, is a powerful addition
"" to the strength of a meme-complex.  Visibility of a meme-complex, such
"" as the meme-complex which holds together the 'community' part of the
"" gay/lesbian/bi community, makes the infection of new hosts much
"" easier.

My view: it cuts both ways.
For swift infection of many new hosts, visibility is
necessary. However for optimal long-term survival of an
existing community, it's often a better strategy to slightly
reduce replication rates in order to maintain invisibility
(i.e. invulnerability).

Lesbianity is a good example: until half a century ago most
people didn't know there could ever be such a thing as female
homosexuality, although (as far I know) it's an all-time
thing. In fact, HAD they known, they surely would have been
opposed to it. This was the reason for the Lesbian memetic
strategy to keep itself invisible.
Only recently, after the legal risks of non-hetero sexuality
had declined, the Lesbian memes could 'change their stategy'
to more openness.

B.t.w. you implicitly distinguish gay/lesbian/bi COMMUNITY and
gay/lesbian/bi BEHAVIOR. Shouldn't we consider this as ONE
meme complex (-- communities stimulate continued existence of
sexual behavior patterns v.v.)? 
Yet another interesting discussion topic. Hope it's not too
controversial for this newsgroup.

"" I will be glad to support any of the above statements with examples if
"" it is desired.
If you can find the time to do another posting, yes please!
I'd appreciate to hear more examples. This also applies to
other alt.memetics readers.

---Marc

From: bj835@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Tim Connors)
Date: 29 Jun 1994 15:00:24 GMT

Regarding the "hiding" meme as a protective part of a 
meme-complex:

I agree with the poster who noted that the hiding property can
cut both ways. It depends on the circumstances, the memetic
environment. For example, under many circumstances, being
public has helped gain power and influence and followers for
various figures in the fundamentalist Christian movement. Yet,
in order to facilitate the spread of the FC Meme Complex 
through the acquisition of political power, some FC groups
(the Christian Coalition, I believe) has encouraged its
members to get involved in grass roots political activity,
school boards, city councils, etc., because they realize
that their long-term goals will be less succesful in a
memetic environment hostile to their meme-complex. Sorry,
human will keeps creeping into this example, I'm in a hurry 
and it's hard to weed out all non-memetic thinking...)

Another example of hiding is the white supremacy movement.
The general memetic environment is hostile to their meme
complex generally but receptive to certain portions of it
(white people aren't to blame for everything, crime is a
big problem, foreigners may be taking your jobs when they
come here). By withholding the memes to which significant
resistance exists (overt racism) these meme-carriers are
put in a position to lure new followers (Tom Metzger) or
put their memes into practice (David Duke).

Other examples: Socialists who hid their beliefs and 
worked as union organizers... I'm sure there are others.

Note I'm not trying to equate socialists, fundamentalists,
or white supremacists (none of which I am) with each other.
I'm just giving examples of hiding as a successful 
meme for the propagation of a larger meme-complex.
-- 
TJC	"Surprisingly tasty..."
		The Jazz Butcher ("JB v. Prime Minister")

Internet: bj835@cleveland.freenet.edu

From: David McArthur (david@mail.utexas.edu)
Subject: where memes live
Date: 29 Jun 1994 16:56:50 GMT

I'm new to the idea of memetics as a subject of formal study.
It has always seemed so self-evident that people's inability
to understand it has always surprised me.  That being said, 
perhaps I don't understand something here.

>From a memetic perspective, the reasons individuals THINK they
>have for certain behavior are irrelevant -- as long as this
>behavior is useful for the reproduction of the meme complexes
>giving rise to the behavior. Furthermore, the reasons Jesus
>may have had for his moral standpoints (expressed in the
>Sermon on the Mount, quoted by Matthew) are irrelevant for the
>survival value of his memes. 

Is it the goal of memetics to eliminate content from consideration
and study only the structure how memes reproduce?  To my mind it 
does not weaken the notion of 'memes surviving only because of their 
capacity to survive' to acknowledge that memes also have content 
that may or may not influence the meme's survival.  Why separate the 
'reason' for a meme from all the other factors governing its
existence?

As I see it, memes don't only compete in the physical world.  They
exist in a "conceptual" world.  Albeit this world is really physical
too, made up of arrangments of chemicals in people's heads (or ink
on paper, or charges in a magnetic substance).  The survival of a
meme reflects its ability to survive first and foremost in my 'mind'
, competing as it were with the other memes there such as the ones
that represent my sense of identity, fairness, logic etc...  Then
the meme also 'has to worry' about my wellbeing and my ability to
go around in the physical world spreading the meme to other hosts.
  D a v i d M c A r t h u r     
 _____/\_/\_\____/_/_/\_____    Fine Arts Microcomputer Lab
  ___/__\__\_\__/_/_/__\___     Computation Center
   _/____\__\_\/_/_/____\_      University of Texas at Austin
    david@mail.utexas.edu

From: dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood)
Subject: Re: Memetic Hide-and-Seek
Date: Sat, 9 Jul 1994 06:13:50 GMT


Looking at hiding from another angle --

There are some memes that conceal not their presence
but their content.  Freemasonry is a good example.
The meme replicates but not indiscriminately: it is
choosy about its hosts, and publishing parts of the
meme-complex is strongly discouraged.

Two obvious questions:

What is the advantage of this strategy?

What would be a genetic analogy?  A gene that causes
parents to kill some offspring that carry it, but
leave homozygous non-carriers alone?  I'd be very
interested to learn of an example.
-- 
  Disclaimer: The above is likely to refer to anecdotal evidence.
Anton Sherwood   *\\*   +1 415 267 0685   *\\*   DASher@netcom.com
 Libertarian candidate for California Assembly, district 12 (S.F.)

From: arkuat@netcom.com (Eric Watt Forste)
Subject: Re: Memetic Hide-and-Seek
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 23:50:13 GMT


Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com) wrote:
: There are some memes that conceal not their presence
: but their content.  Freemasonry is a good example.
: The meme replicates but not indiscriminately: it is
: choosy about its hosts, and publishing parts of the
: meme-complex is strongly discouraged.

: Two obvious questions:

: What is the advantage of this strategy?

Advantage of choosy replication: a meme's reproductive success is 
strongly linked to the reputation of the existing carriers of that
meme. Replicating into a group that would give carriers of the meme
a bad reputation (a reputation for being stupid, for instance) might
have a much bigger negative long-term effect on the meme's success,
completely wiping out the short-term gain. Freemasonry is choosy in
that it only wants to replicate into respectable citizens, the sort of
people whose reputations and social contacts will help and not hinder
its further replication.

Advantage of content-hiding: Memes, I think, give rise to structures
that recognize their direct memetic competitors more capably than
gene-programmed phenotypes can. (But then why aren't carriers of
obvious genetic alleles hostile to one another? Or perhaps this has
something to do with racism?) In any case, for various reasons that I
haven't thought through clearly enough yet, I think that memes induce
hostility between memetic-allele carriers to a greater extent than
genetic-alleles can. Now all this has a lot to do with the secrecy of
a revolutionary cell (for instance), and nearly nothing to do with the
secrecy of the Masons. I suspect the latter is simply an unusual (but
there are plenty of other examples) strategy of making the meme
complex more attractive to potential hosts: humans are inherently
curious, and everyone wants to be let in on a secret.

: What would be a genetic analogy?

Can't think of one. This is probably one of the many areas where
we can discover and theorize about an interesting memetic phenomenon
that does *not* have an obvious genetic parallel; these phenomena are
the most interesting parts of memetics, as far as I'm concerned.
-- 
Eric Watt Forste || finger arkuat@c2.org || http://www.c2.org/~arkuat

Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@netcom.com) writes:

| Advantage of choosy replication: a meme's reproductive success is 
| strongly linked to the reputation of the existing carriers of that
| meme. Replicating into a group that would give carriers of the meme
| a bad reputation (a reputation for being stupid, for instance) might
| have a much bigger negative long-term effect on the meme's success,
| completely wiping out the short-term gain. Freemasonry is choosy in
| that it only wants to replicate into respectable citizens, the sort of
| people whose reputations and social contacts will help and not hinder
| its further replication.

Genetic analogy of 'choosy replication': think of genes that
code for partner selection behavior, based upon recognition of
phenotypes with certain preferred characteristics. Such genes
protect a gene complex from mixing with competing gene
complexes.
E.g. most people find persons with 'neanderthaler'-like
appearance unattractive [...hope I do not insult anyone]. 
This disapproval may well be genetically determined. It's a
remainder from a period in our evolution, when ape-like pre-
humans were our direct competitors. [nowadays these genes
serve no goal anymore]

Even more than genes, memes are constantly having sex with
eachother, making all kinds of combinations in the brains of
different individuals. One can expect meme-partner selection
to be a common mechanism.
In this respect, the Freemasonry meme-complex will look for
partner memes that are not likely to affect the content of
Freemasonry.

| Advantage of content-hiding: (...)

I'm confused about the use of the word "content". If memes
have content, what then is the genes' analogon?  
I'd say that the content of a meme complex is nothing more or
less than the memes it consists of. So there is no difference
between memes hiding their *existence* and memes hiding their
*content*.
The advantages of hiding existence have been discussed before.
They also apply to Freemasonry.

=== Marc