When is a meme not a meme?

Newsgroups: alt.memetics
From: Richard Kennaway (jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk)
Subject: When is a meme not a meme?
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 14:26:18 GMT

Suppose I define the property "stof" as follows:
A person becomes stof if a stof person speaks to them.
No-one ever loses the status of being stof.
Charlemagne was stof.
Is stofness a meme?


Define "flits" thus:
A person becomes flits if they see the word "vergemakkelijken".
A person ceases to be flits if they hear the word "squint".
(Thus everyone reading this is now flits, unless they're "reading" with
a voice synthesizer.)
Is flitsness a meme?  


There are meme-complexes called "Jehovah's Witness" and "Roman Catholic".
Define "Jehoman Cathness" to mean anyone who is either a Jehovah's Witness
or a Roman Catholic.  Is this a meme-complex?


If the answer to the last question is "no", is "Christianity" a
meme-complex, bearing in mind that both Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman
Catholics are varieties of Christian, and that there is scarcely any
proposition which all self-professed Christians will agree to?

___
\X/ Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich

Richard Kennaway (jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk) writes:

>> Suppose I define the property "stof" as follows:
>> A person becomes stof if a stof person speaks to them.
>> No-one ever loses the status of being stof.
>> Charlemagne was stof.
>> Is stofness a meme?

I've seen a green frog who could jump 10 feet high in the air, sing like a
nightingale, and solve non-linear differential equations.
His children and all their offspring could do the same things.
Are there genes for these remarkable properties?
The answer is no, because I lied. Had I not lied, the answer would have
been yes.
The idea of a meme is that it's a real, physical thing, not just anything
you can define.
Maybe Charlemagne WAS stof, but in that case I'd like to know about the
infection/replication strategies that made stofness such a successful meme.
If there is no such strategy, stofness is not an existing meme.

>> Define "flits" thus:
>> A person becomes flits if they see the word "vergemakkelijken".
>> A person ceases to be flits if they hear the word "squint".
>> (Thus everyone reading this is now flits, unless they're "reading" with
>> a voice synthesizer.)
>> Is flitsness a meme?  

I have been flits for many years (I guess Richard can see why), and my
experience with it is that the brains of non-Dutch show hardly any physical
reaction when they are exposed to the word "vergemakkelijken".
Conclusion: the process described above is not a physical process present
in the real world. So there is no meme related to flitsness.

>> There are meme-complexes called "Jehovah's Witness" and "Roman Catholic".
>> Define "Jehoman Cathness" to mean anyone who is either a Jehovah's Witness
>> or a Roman Catholic.  Is this a meme-complex?

Back to the genetic analogue:
There is a gene for blue eyes, there is a gene for brown eyes. But there is
no gene for "either blue or brown eyes". The two are ALLELE genes, not both
part of one complex. Please tell me if I'm wrong.
The JW and RC meme complexes are competitors at some crucial points. They
contain allele memes, and thus cannot be together in one meme-complex.

>> If the answer to the last question is "no", is "Christianity" a
>> meme-complex, bearing in mind that both Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman
>> Catholics are varieties of Christian, and that there is scarcely any
>> proposition which all self-professed Christians will agree to?

As I see it, no, christianity is not a meme-COMPLEX. Christianity is more
like a meme-POOL. People who are open to the memes of christianity can
carry (and propagate) any non-conflicting combination of memes from this
meme-pool, but never the COMPLETE set.
Indeed it's hard to point out one meme from the pool as the 'kernel' meme
present in all christians.

Genetic analogue: the combined genes of a certain population make up a
gene-POOL, not a gene-COMPLEX.

In general:
The more SPECIFIC the entity we are referring to, the more COMPLEX the
corresponding replicator. The more GENERAL the entity, the more DIVERSE the
replicators involved, and the more LIMITED the kernel replicator (if any).

---
Please more questions of this type. They force us to re-consider the basic
starting points of memetic thinking.

Marc

From: cearley_k@wizard.colorado.edu (Kent Cearley)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: When is a meme not a meme?
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 1994 17:00:06

Richard,

>The answer is no, because I lied. Had I not lied, the answer would have
>been yes.
>The idea of a meme is that it's a real, physical thing, not just anything
>you can define.

I didn't think "physical thing" was a necessary requirement for a meme, or in 
fact "physical process". But, there is obviously a physical process 
(neurologically instantiated) ascribable to a lie. And if this lie is 
propogated, this physical process will manifest and traverse other neural 
systems via replication. Even to say a meme must be 'definable', whatever that 
might mean, seems to indicate a preconception about memes that is probably 
memetically engendered (and not defined).

>In general:
>The more SPECIFIC the entity we are referring to, the more COMPLEX the
>corresponding replicator. The more GENERAL the entity, the more DIVERSE the
>replicators involved, and the more LIMITED the kernel replicator (if any).

An intriguing rule... how are Complex and Diverse differentiated? And how is a 
replicator different from a meme? Might not the 'entity' and the 'replicators' 
and all the instances of a meme be construed as a form of singular 
'distributed meme'? How about parallel memes? Are memes constrained by 
newtonian assumptions of time and matter, or quantum models? Can a meme work 
backward in time? What are the implications of using memes to think about 
memes... are they going to show us the whole story, or is there another agenda 
here?

-K

Newsgroups: alt.memetics
From: Richard Kennaway (jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk)
Subject: Re: When is a meme not a meme?
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 09:29:31 GMT

A major difference between memetics and genetics is that in genetics, a lot
is known about the physical embodiment of the genotype -- genes and
chromosomes -- and the mechanisms of mutation and crossover creating
variation and recombination.

In contrast, memetics has nothing corresponding to the concept of genotype. 
Nothing is known of the mechanisms underlying the manifestation,
communication, and mutation of memes.  I have yet to even see a definition
of the word "meme" that goes beyond pointing out examples like backwards
baseball caps and religion.

Even in genetics, the picture is not clear-cut.  However, the relation
between genotype and phenotype is highly complex, and little is known about
how one gives rise to the other except that little is known.  (This does not
stop popular writers from egregious claims about "the gene for" this or that
genetically influenced characteristic.)  The gene is said to be the unit of
inheritance.  But imagine two sites, each of which has two alleles: A/a and
B/b.  Suppose that the genotypes AB and ab are both more advantageous than
Ab or aB.  (I'm assuming haploid organisms just to keep the example simple.)
 Suppose further that the two sites lie close together on the chromosome, so
that each offspring of two parents will take genes for these sites either
both from one parent, or both from the other.  In this situation it seems to
make more sense to talk about the two sites together as a single site with
four alleles AB, Ab, aB, and ab.  The further apart the two sites lie, and
the less the advantage of AB and ab over aB and Ab, the less they behave as
a single site.  So even the notion of a unit of inheritance seems to be
fuzzy.

What, then, is a site, even in biological genetics?  What operational test
can be given for saying that something is a "unit of inheritance"?  Note
that Mendel's original experiments looked at phenotypic characteristics
which happen to be closely related to single genes.  He could not have got
his results otherwise.  In memetics, the situation is even less clear. 
There are simple memes like backwards baseball caps, popular tunes, .sig
viruses, etc., which give an intuitive understanding of the concept of a
meme, but are the elaborations of the notion in terms of which Dawkins sees,
say, political or religious beliefs supportable?  Such movements can
certainly be seen in terms of the memetic concepts of hook, bait, infection,
etc., but the contribution of memetics to understanding them seems to me to
be more a matter of providing names for various aspects of the phenomena
rather than discovering anything new.  Where is the memetic equivalent of
Mendel's numerical results?  Do we even know where to look?

___
\X/ Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich

Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 18:31:59 CDT
From: Alan O. Parman (U30585@uicvm.uic.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: When is a meme not a meme?

Richard Kennaway (jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk) says:
>
>A major difference between memetics and genetics is that in genetics, a lot
>is known about the physical embodiment of the genotype -- genes and
>chromosomes -- and the mechanisms of mutation and crossover creating
>variation and recombination.
>
>In contrast, memetics has nothing corresponding to the concept of genotype.
>Nothing is known of the mechanisms underlying the manifestation,
>communication, and mutation of memes.
>of the word "meme" that goes beyond pointing out examples like backwards
>baseball caps and religion.

ANd then further goes on to say --


>Note
>that Mendel's original experiments looked at phenotypic characteristics
>which happen to be closely related to single genes.  He could not have got
>his results otherwise.  In memetics, the situation is even less clear.
....
.>Where is the memetic equivalent of Mendel's numerical results?
>
>___
>\X/ Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich

I am new to the subject of memetics but it seems to me you are confusing the
segregational and recombinational aspects of _meiosis_ with the copying
(replicating) process of _mitosis_.  Mendel's laws of inheritance come about
because of the process of meiosis and sex.  There will be no
'phenotypic ratios' in a replicative process.  There will be no equivalent
to 'Mendel's results' in memetics simply because memes are not transmitted
via a sexual (meiotic) process.  Different memes can recombine freely ,at
least to the extent that they are compatible within an individual.  Even
if they are not, incompatible memes may find themselves in the same individual
since not every one 'beleives' in the 'logic' meme, and many people hold
logically conflicting points of view.
Genes are constrained to to remain together (linked) because they are physical
bits of a molecule.  _Recombination_ of those genes is only possible in meiosis.
_Replication_ of genes or memes does not produce Mendelian ratios.
Genes were replicating long before they were recombining.  Memes have no
physicality that links them together.  They can recombine in any fashion.
There will be no strict genotype for memes, as all individuals do not contain
an allele for all memes.  To pick a simple example, a person who has never
taken algebra has no 'algebra meme' on his 'math chromosome'.  In contrast,
all organisms within a species contain one copy (or two in diploids) of an
allele for _every_ gene.  Before I learned to brew beer I had no 'beer making'
meme, but it was certainly successful in replicating into me, and I have passed
it on to at least two others.  Within my circle of friends the beer making meme
has been very successful.   An organism lacking a gene is probably dead, it
lacks a part of it's necessary genotype.  I and my friends were doing just fine
buying beer, before we acquired a new meme.  Memes have no necessary memotype
that is required before you can even (mentally) exist.
*************************************************************************
AP [:{)       The Paramecium Man               u30585@uicvm.uic.edu

From: cearley_k@wizard.colorado.edu (K. Cearley)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: The hierarchy of memes
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 10:54:15


Howze that for inventing a thread!? This is in partial response to the 
following email from Marc:

>Last month you wrote on alt.memetics:
>>>and all the instances of a meme be construed as a form of singular 
>>>'distributed meme'? How about parallel memes? Are memes constrained by 
>>>newtonian assumptions of time and matter, or quantum models? Can a meme 
>>>work 
>>>backward in time? What are the implications of using memes to think about 
>
>Could you expand on some of these questions?  What are your own 
>speculations about the relation between QM and memetics??

The Heisenberg principle, while generally abused in metaphysical arguments, 
has real import to memetics. I think it implies, that selection of memes, is 
not only critical in the representation of reality, with all its behavioral 
consequence, but interacts at what we construe as the physical layer of 
reality, i.e. selecting the meme of position or velocity.

Memes wield a larger pattern of interconnection that the arbitrarily 
disconnect of Descartian mind/body. And while we have been struggling 
with the place of each of these dichotomies in systems of the other, or where 
consciousness fits in either, we have been working from within the meme that 
subsumes them both. That memes are intelligent patterns, that they can be 
subsets or *supersets* of thought and consciousness, leads to some interesting
hueristics.

If a construct existed in only slight differences of spectrum or scale than 
our perceptual mechanisms, they would be transparent at best, confusing and 
dangerous at worst. For example, despite our vaunted opinion of historical 
progress, we rarely perceive dimensions of time. Around us there are objects 
that are very small in space, but large in time, like a pebble. Others 
are large in space, but small in time, like a city. Everything in our 
perception of time, seems be hooked by linear chains of causality. Yet in 
Science, there are a number of experiments and phenomenon which demonstrate 
non-causal relationships.

Well I should wrap this up with something like a point, but hey, this is 
alt.memetics right? Where points are strange attractors, and the fewer the 
basins the wider the plains.

-Kent Cearley