Meme's: Metaphor or Theory

[Dr B]

I have dipped in and out of Memetics research quite a bit of late (reading from the sidelines). It is not my field and I still have a great deal to get to grips with but I was wondering about opinion here.

To me it seems (at times) to be little more than a metaphor. A nice metaphor granted - but a metaphor all the same. If it truly is an explicit theory or framework, what does Memetics give us that social anthropology / evolutionary psychology & biology does not? The notion of a toxic idea is not exclusive to the notion of memes - so do we really need this notion (metaphor) at all?

Maybe the idea of memes does give us something the other theories do not? What are your thoughts? As I said - I am no expert would be grateful for your opinions if you are familiar with this field ;). I will know more as I read more, but your helpful comments here would be useful.....;)

[Ririon]

Ah. Memes. Carry on. :)

[Dr B]

Yes...I get it.....:D

But I do think if memetics can accommodate the propogation of belief and habits of thought it is relevant to the paranormal and all aspects of belief really.....

carry on....;)

[BlackCat]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Memes just sound like something that sociologists would study: culture and how it's passed from one generation to the next.

BlackCat

[Soapy Sam]

When Dawkins first proposed the term he was seeking a non-genetic, indeed non-biological analogue of genes to illustrate the point that when information has the ability to get itself copied it may do so to the detriment of the copying machinery- generally a human brain. He was making the point that the same is true of genes. What is paramount to a gene is its own reproduction. Reproducing the body it finds itself in is merely a means to that end.

He subsequently rather backed away from the subject- possibly because he felt it to be a metaphor and because he found others not only took it far more seriously, but considered it the most significant idea in the book.
(The Selfish Gene 1976??) .

I found Blackmore's book, (The Gene Machine) interesting but unconvincing. I also could not help feeling that Dawkins' foreword was less than 100% enthusiastic.

Personally, I find once the idea of the meme gets into your head, it seems to pop up usefully all over. And it's damned hard to get rid of...

[strathmeyer]

Memes are a hoax; tell your friends.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Look how many terms have been introduced in science and other areas in the last few decades. Terms are useful if they describe a concept not previously verbalized. New words expand our paradigms.

When you verbalize concepts you expand your understanding of the Universe. I don't mean to make it sound grandiose, but it is true. One can merely name something new, like the Internet. A new concept also might require a new name. Did people understand gravity before the term and description were introduced or did they just not think about the fact things fell to Earth when dropped? Sometimes common words will do. The Big Bang describes the theory without new words. Sometimes old words gain new meaning such as evolution.

But getting back to the term meme. I actually think it is a very useful label for a very important concept. The way Dawkins described the proliferation of religion, (http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html) including the idea the religion itself takes on a self preserving life of its own just makes so much sense to me. He uses the term virus as a metaphor in the cited link, the term meme is more than a metaphor. The term meme is indeed a good match for the concept.

[gnome]

There's no time for metaphors, cried the little pill to me
He said life is a placebo, masquerading as a simile.
--TMBG

[Flange Desire]

This meme lies.

[athon]

Memetics is a system of rules we can use to model the movement of a social behaviour/s. Any dynamic system that has stress applied can be modelled to describe the likely influence of those stresses - we can virtually say that any dynamic system can 'evolve' in response to its environment. Typically, the change reflects a selection for the most efficient of the available patterns within the system. Genetic evolution is a good example, however we see similar processes at work whenever basic competition is at work.

Memetics is used to describe competition between culturally adapted behaviours. Look at how language changes over time, the most suitable forms of expression becoming dominant over those that don't work so well. Or religion; Christianity thrived where Nordic mythology didn't. Memetics explains how one cultural behaviour can survive while another doesn't, and how they move through a society.

I don't know what you mean by 'metaphor or theory'. It's neither. Study of culture and learned behaviours contains theories; memetics is a collective name which relates the theories to other forms of system change.

Athon

[Darat]

...snip...

I found Blackmore's book, (The Gene Machine) interesting but unconvincing. I also could not help feeling that Dawkins' foreword was less than 100% enthusiastic.

Personally, I find once the idea of the meme gets into your head, it seems to pop up usefully all over. And it's damned hard to get rid of...


:)

Blackmore's book is the The Meme Machine and I agree interesting but unconvincing.

[Dr B]

Thanks for all the helpful info so far.

To me it is a metaphor - by which I mean a useful descriptive framework, more than a truly explanatory one (thats what I meant by metaphor). Of course, metaphors may well be unavoidable in science to some degree, but it is important to see what certain forms of explanations give us, that others do not.

I see Memetics as a funky rediscription of phenomena.

I wonder to what extent you would all agree (or indeed disagree) with the idea (and I am simply playing with the idea) that the rise in creationism and religion in the USA could be seen as a meme under threat - a kind of last stand of a memeplex before it dies. So here it is recruiting everything it can to survive and ensure it survives. So the rise in extreme belief is actually, not so much an index of its spread (though of course it is to some degree) but both reflect the fact that a meme is actually under threat! It would be difficult to test of course, but how do we know an idea is dying? Obviously when it starts to decay and fewer subscribe to it, it is well on its way, but the process may well start long before that. Could an early indicator actually be - the idea increasing. In many cases, a neuron fires like crazy, harder than ever before, before it finally dies (another metaphor there :D )

Of course, it will take many generations for the meme of magical thinking and religion to die and be replaced by something else or even rational thought (though there is no assurance that rational thought will replace belief systems if they are removed).

Thoughts anyone?

[Hellbound]

Dr B:

I think there may be some truth to that. In my experience*, when an idea starts to get under serious attack (i.e.-evidence piles up against it), you tend to get a polarization of the positions. For religion, take a hypothetical example:

Ten years ago there were fewer atheists/agnostics (as a percentage), and fewer rabid fundies (the percentage of atheist/agnostic is represented in census data). Now, let's say we break that into three categores (numbers not exact but used to illustrate the concept):

1% ahteist/agnostic
2% Rabid Fundie
10% Firm Christian
30% Moderate Christian

Now, according to my idea, we might end up like this:
2% atheist/agnostic
4% rabid fundie
10% Firm Christian
27% Moderate Christian

Dunno if there's data to support these characterizations, but the basic idea seems sound. As more evidence comes out to show a belief is wrong, a person is marrowed down into two options:

1. Admit the belief is wrong. The evidence is against it, so you follow the evidence.

2. Retreat from fact. Deny the evidence, immerse yourself within the belief. In other word,s become a fundie.

It's an interesting supposition (I think). I believe this is also happening with our two-party political system, as more peopel are coming to the realization that the extremes put forth by the parties on both sides are rarely the answer (which is usually a more moderate route), so we end up with (it seems) more devout Democrats and rabid Republicans, but also more peopel looking into minority parties, voting cross-party, or looking at independents. And fewer fence-sitters.

Of course, this is just my take on it :)

*-Insert standard disclaimer: I am not an expert in this field. These thoughts and opinions are solely my own, based on personal knowledge and half-remembered possible facts. They may well be wildly incorrect. I am not responsible for any harm, physical, mental, social, or emotional, that may be caused by anyone so idiot as to take my word as THE TRUTH[supTM[/sup]. Believe at your own risk.

[drkitten]

To me it is a metaphor - by which I mean a useful descriptive framework, more than a truly explanatory one (thats what I meant by metaphor)

Well, the phrase "a useful descriptive framework, more than a truly explanatory one" describes much of hard-core science as well. For example, we still don't have a truly explanatory framework for gravity, although we can describe in scarily precise terms. I don't think "gravity" is a metaphor, though.

Memetics is nowhere near as useful or as well-described as gravity. But I'm not sure that makes it a "metaphor." Biological organisms replicate and change; one of the fields that studies this is called "genetics." Ideas also replicate and change, and one of the fields that studies this is called "memetics."

Memetics hasn't come up with any really earth-shattering insights so far --- but neither has chaos theory, and no one doubts that it's a respectable field of study. Perhaps it's the cool pictures....

[Skeptic Ginger]

A lot of religious beliefs are under threat including the Christian creation myth, (or myths if you take interpretations over text). It would be interesting to find out how other creation myths have been discarded by the mainstream over time. Science has provided the first evidence based creation story to replace a previous creation myth.

I definitely think the Christian creation myth is a meme under threat. While many can argue the majority of Judeo-Christians still believe the Biblical creation version or some form of it, the science for evolution is unshakable. Just as the flat, young, centrist Earth myths have faded into the past, evolution science, especially genetic science, will push Creation and even the last gasping attempts of ID into the past as well. It's only a matter of time.

As to religious memes in total, those will be here for a long time to come but I believe even they will eventually succumb to an evidence based belief system. I think there is a threat to religion when evidence based belief frameworks are favored. The attack on science by some faith based "believers" is clearly a reaction to the writing on the wall.

Side note: A lot of people who favor science wish that weren't so. Some wish to retain their "faith" while others prefer not to challenge "faith" with science as it is not very productive and leads to backlash against science as we currently see. My comment to them is only this: What do they see at the end of the road when the vast majority of the content in the Bible is discredited by scientific evidence? How does that compare to other religions which have already been thoroughly discredited by scientific evidence such as belief in the Greek Gods which is now viewed as pure myth?



As to memes being theory or not, the term does apply to a theory. It's a theory of collective beliefs, how they are maintained, how they promulgate and proliferate. Dawkins didn't just introduce a term in 1976, he introduced a theory of collective information in a population, how it functions sometimes with a seemingly life of its own. It's much more than just education and communication. You can call it a sociology or culture theory but I think the application to belief systems like religion is extremely insightful and very much a theory of collective thought or beliefs.

[Skeptic Ginger]

....Memetics hasn't come up with any really earth-shattering insights so far --- Really? Have you read the Dawkins piece on religion in the link above?

[drkitten]

Really? Have you read the Dawkins piece on religion in the link above?

Um, The Selfish Gene, chapter 11? Or "Viruses of the mind"? I've read both -- and my earth remains unshattered.

[Overman]

Meme means little sister or little girl in chinese!

[Skeptic Ginger]

Um, The Selfish Gene, chapter 11? Or "Viruses of the mind"? I've read both -- and my earth remains unshattered.So do you not buy the concept of self preserving Christian "faith" mechanism contained in the belief system, or, do you not find the concept useful in understanding why people believe weird things, or, did you already have a well defined concept of this self preserving mechanism without Dawkin's papers and if so how did you understand it, or, is there another reason for your failure to appreciate the theory of memes as it applies in the case of religious beliefs?

Don't tell me you believe in God because it is a matter of faith and that's why you don't like Dawkin's ideas? Too close to home? (Sorry to come off sarcastic there. I should really await your answers first.)

[Piggy]

I find memetics to be a very useful way of thinking and talking about the relationship between language and ideas. So far, I haven't seen anything emerge that would allow it to be predictive in the way hard scientific theories (such as QM) are.

One of the enduring problems with this area of inquiry is that the language we have to talk about language is itself rather messy. "Meme" nicely bridges the gap between "term" and "idea", and even allows us to discuss the transmission and propagation of notions which are so vague that there seems to be no discernable referent to them at all.

One of the most active memes around right now is "activist judge", aka "legislating from the bench". It's wonderful, because it doesn't have to be coherent -- it doesn't even have to be accurate or applicable -- to be useful and effective.

As long as the term is associated with a cluster of other notions and holds them together in the mind, it's sufficient, whether these ideas belong together or not.

So, for instance, when Georgia's constitutional gay marriage ban amendment was recently struck down by the court, on the legal grounds that it violated the state's requirement that all constitutional amendments be single-subject (this amendment banned same-sex marriage, banned same-sex civil unions, and prohibited the recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states -- the latter 2 provisions did not appear on the ballot used for the referendum, only the first did), proponents dragged out the "liberal bias" and "activist judge" meme.

Because the "activist judge" meme (like "liberal media" before it) already had extensive mind-share, it was of great use in quickly casting the decision not as an issue of incorrectly drafted legislation, but as a case of a loose-canon judge replacing the will off the people with her own personal agenda by knocking down an enormously popular referendum.

(Given that the legislators were told before the vote that this problem existed with the language, I do wonder if it was their intention to draw a strike from the bench in order to leverage the judgment during the upcoming elections.)

Without the "meme" construction, we're left talking about facts, ideas, and terms, but none of these really sum up how the process works nearly as well as the "meme" meme.

So for me, it's a useful term that describes a very real phenomenon. But it's not a predictive theory.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Propaganda talking points become memes when the second person uses them as a new belief. In other words, they start out as a calculated talking point. The targeted group then buys the explanation and repeats it under the triggering circumstances.

What's predictive is the mechanisms by which the propaganda is successful can be studied under the meme theory. In the past we identified the characteristics of the propaganda techniques, just as propaganda techniques. But as meme theory we can establish a broader view of the process.

[Piggy]

What's predictive is the mechanisms by which the propaganda is successful can be studied under the meme theory. In the past we identified the characteristics of the propaganda techniques, just as propaganda techniques. But as meme theory we can establish a broader view of the process.
How so?

[Skeptic Ginger]

How so?I'm not sure what field of science you are in or enjoy but you seem like a physical science person. By "predictive" a physical science person would expect to put in some variables, use the formula the theory contains, and find a result which matches what is observed.

In human behavioral science, or psych/soc/cultural sciences the theories are similar but the way one uses the predictive value of the theory is quite different. That's because one is typically dealing with fluctuating interacting variables in quite different ways than in physical sciences. Even weather, with all those fluctuating interacting variables still has pretty much fixed properties to the variables. In human behavior, you deal with more patterns than fixed properties.

So in looking at human behavior science, I am very much interested in why so many people would believe in gods. (BTW, you didn't answer that question.) There are many psychosocial factors which explain religious beliefs that have been thoroughly described. Leaders manipulating the masses, fear of the unknown after death, wanting to hold onto lost loved ones, belonging to the group (we don't eat pig meat they do), explaining tragedy, and so on. Dawkins meme theory added an additional layer to the belief process.

The usual suspects noted above are rational specific benefits/causes which explain religious beliefs. But the process itself isn't included. You can place the priest up on the temple podium, getting all sorts of benefits from claiming to be the go between for the masses and god, but it doesn't explain why the priest believes he is the go between. You can see the attraction to believing in heaven but it doesn't explain how the idea began and evolved. And you can see what the mechanisms are for continuing religious beliefs but can you analyze why certain religions have become dominant. Can you explain why Mormonism and Scientology as new as they are grew to the size they have?

Even if the theory of memes is incomplete, which I think it is, the process it explains is more encompassing and weaves some framework around the more specific explanations of psychology and sociology than we had before.

How do you break the cycle of religious beliefs when they interfere with human advances? Do you just look at how science can answer the questions better? We can cure a lot more disease with science than prayer. And you can argue that nonsense that religion provides morality or whatever science supposedly doesn't provide but there's no real evidence for that. Churches offer social benefits, but you don't have to believe in Jesus for social groups to gather. I see the analysis in meme theory as predicting why religion is part of the human psyche in areas regular psychology does not include. From better understanding comes better ways to deal with false beliefs.

Now if that offends you, we know why Dawkin's theories don't impress you. If it doesn't offend you, then let me know what you think of how I view this.

[Piggy]

skeptigirl, you seem to be answering my post in terms of drkitten's posts. (FWIW, I'm a fan of Dawkins, I'm an atheist, my field is language [more reading and writing than voiced communication, but some of that, too] so most of my science training concerns how the brain processes language, but I do my own research in just about anything that interests me -- evolution, astronomy, subatomic physics, cignition, etc.)

From what you've said, it seems that meme theory is practical and useful, but I still wouldn't call it predictive.

And I do find the "meme" meme to be extremely useful. I think it's an accurate way of describing some very important aspects of the social/interpersonal transmission of concepts and language.

But I don't find it predictive. Can you think of a case in which we could examine a situation, apply meme theory, and make accurate predictions thereby?

[Piggy]

"Cignition" by the way, is not the study of how to light a smoke.... It's the study of how to set swans on fire.

Sorry.... Should have been "cognition". Which, as we all know, is the study of how small machine parts explode.

[Roboramma]

Skeptigirl, I think meme theory is quite cool, and probably useful, at least down the road.

However, I don't see that it's all that well supported yet. Meme theory is not unique in saying that there are reasons that people believe one thing rather than another - and so we don't need it to explain things like religion.
What is unique about it is the suggestion that ideas evolve through a selective process.

I guess this has been shown for things like chain letters, simply - but I don't know how well demonstrated it is for any complex ideas. Is it likely? I find it very likely, and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be so. But what predictions does meme theory make, for instance, about religion, that aren't made by other ideas of why people believe what they do?

What data shows meme theory to be better than other explanations?

Again, I'd have to say that I find meme theory to have at least a certain degree of truth in it's understanding of how ideas pass on and change. But it's the process of change that is truely unique about it. Hm.. I thought I had more of a point, but that seems to be it. :)

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sorry, I have melded your's and DrK's posts, Piggy. I was still replying to the "not predictive" along with replying to the "not impressed".

Keep in mind setting up a prospective study isn't practical, nor is the theory complete. If one were to make a prediction at this point a lot of the variables are not in place. But hypothetically, given those constraints, one prediction from the theory would be to predict the elements going into a rapidly spreading rumor vs one that doesn't get off the ground.

Likely there is a critical mass of people who must hear and believe the rumor. (With the Internet, factors affecting the spread of a rumor are completely different than prior to the Net.)

The rumor must contain an element of credibility. (No brainer here.)

And then one gets into all the factors that one developing meme theory would determine. So not being an expert there, let me go to examples.

Take oat bran and heart disease and vitamin C and the common cold.

In both cases, the results of a single study were reported in the news. In both cases the studies were pretty weak. With Linus Pauling's vitamin C results, the study was too limited, one virus, only college students, small sample size; with the oat bran study, the decrease in cholesterol was marginal and there was no evidence that decreasing one's cholesterol by that amount would actually impact heart disease.

In both cases the belief that the study results were valid and significant spread almost overnight. In both cases the results were important enough for many people that some of them changed their behavior. Both cases led to huge markets for the two products, oat bran and vitamin C in various forms. In both cases, the belief became entrenched despite overwhelming evidence the study results were not valid in the case of the vitamin C, and the widespread availability of the information that the oat bran study was not evidence to start eating oat bran to lower your cholesterol. People believe false information about both of these studies to this day.

So human behavior models can explain why people believe this nonsense. Maybe such theory can even explain why people ignore evidence to the contrary. But I'm not so sure human behavior theory completely predicts why the information in these two particular studies became common knowledge literally overnight. Whereas meme theory (when fully developed) could predict the next all encompassing health myth.

The elements of meme theory are already developed. Marketing theories, human behavior theories, propaganda theories and so on. What I think the idea of memes adds is how the information spreads from one person to the next. How the information is passed on to the next generation. Ask most people today why they believe vitamin C treats or prevents a cold or oat bran lowers cholesterol and they are not going to cite the studies. They probably will no longer say who told them unless they say rhetorically their mother did or something like that. Chances are they are going to say, "I don't know, I've just always heard that", or something to that effect.

So meme theories would predict which information and why that information will become ingrained in the "common knowledge" category. With a better understanding of this we might be able to correct common knowledge errors more easily.

[Piggy]

Keep in mind setting up a prospective study isn't practical, nor is the theory complete. If one were to make a prediction at this point a lot of the variables are not in place. But hypothetically, given those constraints, one prediction from the theory would be to predict the elements going into a rapidly spreading rumor vs one that doesn't get off the ground.
Hypothetically. So meme theory is hypothetically predictive. Which means it is not predictive (note tense).

Don't get me wrong... I'm a fan of memetics.

But at this point, it's not predictive, it's desriptive.

The rumor must contain an element of credibility.
Actually, memetics (as I understand it) does not demand that constraint. A meme does not have to be credible in order to survive. It can be totally ridiculous.

Keep in mind, too, that in pure memetics we're not concerned with content. Blowing out candles on top of a cake on your birthday is a meme. Other people giving you presents on your birthday is a meme. Alternately, having to buy everyone else drinks on your saint's day is also a meme.

The format of knock-knock jokes is a meme -- if you are aware of that meme, you respond to an out-of-the-blue "KNOCK-knock" with "Who's there?" and expect a particular type of call-response-response pun to ensue. If you don't have that meme, you wonder what the hell is going on.

But I'm not so sure human behavior theory completely predicts why the information in these two particular studies became common knowledge literally overnight.
A theory can't predict what's already happened. Again, you're talking about descriptive and interpretive power, not predictive power.

Whereas meme theory (when fully developed) could predict the next all encompassing health myth.
When meme theory begins to do this -- and I'm not saying it can't -- then I'll call it predictive.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ridiculous is relative in the case of a meme.

You are also using the terminology "predictive" in a way I would not use it. I took you to be saying it offered no additional insight from which to understand a process. You seem to have merely meant the theory isn't complete enough yet.

So what theory(ies) would you use to predict whether an unsubstantiated piece of information will become part of the collective "common sense"?

[Piggy]

You are also using the terminology "predictive" in a way I would not use it. I took you to be saying it offered no additional insight from which to understand a process.
Oh, sorry. No, I wasn't aware that "predictive" was ever used that way.

You seem to have merely meant the theory isn't complete enough yet.
No, simply that it isn't sufficient. I wouldn't add the "yet". I don't know that it ever will be, or can be, sufficient to be predictive rather than descriptive. Maybe it can and maybe it will. Maybe not.

So what theory(ies) would you use to predict whether an unsubstantiated piece of information will become part of the collective "common sense"?
If I knew of one that worked, I could become extremely wealthy.

Keep in mind that memetics is not restricted to unsubstantiated pieces of information, but can be applied to any "unit of cultural significance" (to use a rather loose term).

People in my current line of work spend a lot of money trying to predict which ideas, phrases, etc. will "catch" (including such memes as the vitamin C and oat bran examples you cited above, as well as purely verbal memes like "Got milk?"). Some of us choose to work for companies, gov't agencies, and industries that seek public benefit, while others -- Kevin Trudeau, and the creators of "Joe Camel", come to mind -- do not. But developing a sure method of doing it has proven as elusive as developing a method for predicting the stock market.

"Dark chocolate is healthy" is one I think is likely to gain fairly wide acceptance, specifically in terms of heart disease and cancer. So education in this area sooner rather than later would be useful.

The problem is, of course, people would rather hear that a sweet treat is "healthy" than that it isn't. And there is more money to be made from propagating this meme than countering it, so those who "zag" on this one have their work cut out for them. We can expect to see even more articles in popular zines, for example, especially from those controlled by publishing houses who also publish books that would contain this information, and those whose target market would respond to a positive headline on the cover for this meme.

It has a lot of things going for it. The "antioxidants are healthy" angle already has a solid chunk of mindshare, so the explanation can be provided in a mere half a column. Or the article can be expanded to include pages of recipes, pictures, and nostalgic stories. Once it has been disseminated widely enough, it can get nods in advertisements for dark chocolate and products containing dark chocolate (I doubt that direct claims will ever be allowed there).

It's contrarian, plays to the common confusion created by hearing seemingly contradictory health claims (e.g. the recent low-fat diet report aftermath), and has a built-in credibility factor of stipulating that only a relatively rare type of chocolate is actually good for you -- that provides the escape valve of potentially making the traditional wisdom and the new wisdom correct at the same time, which reduces cognitive dissonance and therefore skepticism.

The fact that dark chocolate is more expensive actually may work in its favor, by raising the perceived value and perception of quality. And of course the fact that it's chocolate is key -- just compare the quick rise of this meme to the slow creep of a similar meme regarding green tea, which btw got a nice "bump" from studies showing green tea extract to help with weight loss.

So the whole process is very convoluted and dicey, and who knows what's going to come along to knock a meme out of contention or replace it or kick the legs out from under it. And it is possible to describe all this without reference to memes per se. But the "meme" meme does make those conversations easier.

[drkitten]

So do you not buy the concept of self preserving Christian "faith" mechanism contained in the belief system, or, do you not find the concept useful in understanding why people believe weird things, or, did you already have a well defined concept of this self preserving mechanism without Dawkin's papers and if so how did you understand it, or, is there another reason for your failure to appreciate the theory of memes as it applies in the case of religious beliefs?

I already have a well-defined concept of a self-replicating idea, and Dawkins' ill thought-out, narrow minded, parochial screed adds nothing to it. Specifically, he's looking at a lot of the aspects of some forms of religious belief, generalizing wildly that these properties generalize to religious belief as a whole, and then generalizing even further that they are of interest to mimetics generally.

If I did biology the way Dawkins did mimetics (in this paper), I would look at neighbor's dog and generalize wildly that all animals are loud, foul-smelling, and like to knock over the rubbish cans in my back garden and root through the trash at night.

Religion is a meme. That's an worthwhile insight -- but nothing particularly fascinating. So is the latest anti-Bush joke -- in fact, one could argue that the latest anti-Bush joke is a more successful meme, based on its rate of spread. But having one's mind "infected" by the latest anti-Bush Joke "feels" and acts nothing like what he describes as characteristic of such "infection."

[Skeptic Ginger]

My my drkitten, your post reflects a lot of anger. I can't help but suspect there is something else bothering you than merely one social scientist's theory you don't accept.

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, simply that it isn't sufficient. I wouldn't add the "yet". I don't know that it ever will be, or can be, sufficient to be predictive rather than descriptive. Maybe it can and maybe it will. Maybe not.

Keep in mind that memetics is not restricted to unsubstantiated pieces of information, but can be applied to any "unit of cultural significance" (to use a rather loose term). Of course. I merely used two examples that weren't factual.


Marketing science is part of the basis of the memes. But you didn't address the fact that the vitamin C and the oat bran beliefs became self perpetuating. Marketing can get one to remember a brand name. And continual marketing might be one of the factors that establishes a meme. But the vitamin C and oat bran examples were not marketed until the beliefs were established.

With oat bran the case is less clear since the products were marketed in anticipation people would buy them and that marketing reinforced the spread of the information. But people consumed large doses of vitamin C long before it was marketed as a cold remedy.

So you described why people might use some product that had a health benefit and was enjoyable. And educating the public about the relationship between nutrition and heath has been ongoing. You don't have to eat right to believe you should.

What I don't see in your examples is an explanation of the process by which vitamin C became established as common knowledge and why it has remained despite the evidence against it. I realize there are lots of behavior science issues here and one can analyze those aspects. I think there is still additional insight to be gained by looking at the spread of the information itself.


On the question of predictive vs descriptive. First, descriptions provide insight as well as expand our understanding of things. But as far as human behavior science, what examples of theory in that field are predictive? Marketing and propaganda science I suppose is predictive. But I'm trying to get a better understanding here why you speak of predictive as useful and seem to dismiss descriptive. Give me an example of something predictive in the science of human behavior so I can compare that to my concept of memes.

[Piggy]

skeptigirl, why are you asking me to provide examples of predictions and predictive methods in these fields?

If there are no alternatives, that doesn't make memetics predictive by default.

If you propose that the theory is predictive, just point out where it has made verified predictions. These don't have to be 1-to-1, of course; they may be probabilities, like quantum predictions, but they should be demonstrable.

Btw, marketing starts much earlier than you appear to believe, and has a much wider scope than you seem to appreciate. Ideas like the C, oats, and chocolate examples do not move from the lab to the water cooler in a leap. They first must become "stories", and the primary vehicle for this process is commercial media.

(At this point, you may be thinking, "But this is meme theory, too". And you'd be right. As I've said, I'm in the pro-meme camp; I think it describes something real. But the question in the OP is: Does it tell us something we can't get to any other way, or is it a framework for more easily discussing and thinking about things? And the sub-question we're knocking around is: Is it predictive rather than descriptive? I'll get to self-perpetuation shortly.)

The commercial media are constantly crawling the infosphere for stuff that they believe people will be drawn to and want to read about, as well as stuff that goes in because it goes in -- comic strips, sports scores, stock prices, the names and photos of local kids who just became Eagle Scouts, and such. (We can use memetic terminology to talk about this... or not.)

One way or another (print ads, subscriptions, broadcast commercials) they're selling the information, so they have to give their target audience what they want, or even what they don't want (e.g. fear-mongering) as long as they feel compelled to read about it.

So the seminal propagation of these "health" stories -- their initial conversion into stories -- had everything to do with marketing, with selecting the journal reports, proposing that a story be written and run, choosing an angle, selecting the details to include and omit, framing and structuring it, etc., so that it would be of interest, so that it would "sell", so that it would get eyeballs.

How does a team make good guesses about what will sell? Usually from what has sold in the past, although many will employ marketing theory and psychology and will read up on these topics (see Cialdini's book "Influence", for example, and books by advertising gurus such as Joseph Sugarman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Lester Wunderman, Eugene Schwartz, Denny Hatch, and others). But as Lewis noted (and informally tested) even the best of the best cannot consistently predict what will ultimately win in the market-space.

There are lots of folks whose job it is to monitor the techie pubs for the sole purpose of turning salable info into stories -- and many of them grossly misrepresent the research in the process.

But researchers can do their own marketing by holding press conferences, granting interviews with the right people, and such.

I loved this from Aubrey de Gray (http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050411_aubrey_interview.html):

The first part of the project is to get really impressive results in mice. The reason that’s important is because mice are sufficiently furry and people can identify with them. If... you double the lifespan of a fruit fly, people aren’t going to be terribly interested.

Now, what I want to do in mice is not only develop interventions which extend their healthy lifespan by a substantial amount, but moreover, to do so when the mouse is already in middle age. This is very important, because if you do things to the mouse’s genes before the mouse is even conceived, then people who are alive can’t really identify with that.

There's a man who understands the importance and scope of marketing.

But you didn't address the fact that the vitamin C and the oat bran beliefs became self perpetuating.

This is unremarkable. Conversation is one of the primary occupations of humankind. And for reasons that can be understood in a purely psychological framework (the OP mentioned evolutionary psychology) we love to tell each other new stuff, interesting stuff, surprising stuff, and stuff that we think will be helpful.

The vitamin C and oat bran stories fit the bill. In fact, that's a big part of why they sell, and therefore why they get turned into stories in the first place. If you're selling a popular magazine, running a local news show, or circulating a newspaper, you want to run stories that generate buzz. If it's unusual (even contrarian), surprising, seemingly helpful or even necessary (in positive or negative ways), funny, emotional, sexy, and/or scandalous, it's likely to produce buzz.

The reasons why we so enjoy repeating these things lie in the realm of psychology.

What I don't see in your examples is an explanation of the process by which vitamin C became established as common knowledge and why it has remained despite the evidence against it.

I hope I've provided some of that here. As for why these rumors persist (and btw, I like Pinker's explanation of the ubiquity of rumor in human culture) despite contrary evidence, I see 2 primary and related reasons.

First, it's not very exciting or helpful to know that you can't really vastly improve your health and avoid debilitating disease by taking a vitamin pill and heating up some oatmeal in the microwave. Therefore, there's not much incentive to turn the contrary evidence into stories, and there's a heavy disincentive to bring it up in the breakroom.

If you're at the lunch table and someone from the department down the hall is talking about how he takes vitamin C and eats oat bran and that's why his annual physical went so well, if you chime in with debunking information, you sound like a crab and make him look foolish. That's frowned upon, so folks tend to keep those opinions to themselves. On the other hand, chiming in with "Yeah, my wife took lots of C when she was recovering from euphemititis and the surgeon was really impressed with how fast she healed" is considered friendly and is generally smiled upon, even if some folks at the table are silently thinking "Idiots".

Meanwhile, the stories continue to run, the magazines and books and talk shows continue to sell, which is a counter-pressure against the debunkers.


On the question of predictive vs descriptive. First, descriptions provide insight as well as expand our understanding of things.
Agreed.

Give me an example of something predictive in the science of human behavior so I can compare that to my concept of memes.
Ok. I don't have Cialdini handy, but he references some well-known studies which demonstrated that:

- Greater numbers of people in a crowd will be induced to jaywalk if a planted "leader" does so, and more people will jaywalk if the leader is in a business suit than if he is dressed shabbily.

- People are less likely to provide assistance to others in ambiguous situations as the number of concurrent witnesses increases.

It would be interesting to see if these observations could be quantified and truly predictive probabilities produced.

Cialdini also cited research demonstrating that apocalyptic cults are much more likely to become zealous recruiters *after* a specific doomsday prediction has passed without incident. This is one that certainly could be studied.

I'd be interested, anyway. And I'd be very excited if meme theory turned the corner and were able not simply to provide a language for discussing the transmission of ideas, but actually to distinguish in a testable way which memes are more likely to survive and to what degree.

[drkitten]

My my drkitten, your post reflects a lot of anger. I can't help but suspect there is something else bothering you than merely one social scientist's theory you don't accept.

I can't stop you from "thinking," no matter how wrong you happen to be. But I'd advise you against indulging in amateur psychoanalysis, since it almost always makes the practitoner appear a fool.

And, frankly, you couldn't be further off-base. I'm actually a tremendous fan of Prof. Dawkins (I have something like four of his books on the accessible stacks of my bookshelves), and I have a keen interest in self-replicating systems dating back to Hofstadter and Godel, Escher, Bach. I'm currently working on the chapter that includes Godellian logic for my next book, and my best-known research hinged crucially on genetic theory.

But that doesn't mean that "Viruses of the mind" isn't utter crap. And part of the reason I'm so unimpressed is precisely because I know that Dawkins can write well, and clearly, and persuasively, and he so completely failed to do so in that piece. And a screw-up of that magnitude, from a person in Dawkins' position, is actually likely to set the proto-discipline of mimetics, as well as the entire skeptical movement, back substantially. It simply provides ammunition for cheap shots by the theocrats that Dawkins understands neither biology, nor theology, nor psychology, nor philosophy. And if my only sample of Dawkins' writing had been that particular article, I'd be inclined to agree.

But let's look in detail at what you apparently gleaned from your readings. I submit -- as harshly as possible -- that all of the elements of "mimetics" you cite are either truism or error. As cases in point, you discuss "the elements going into a rapidly spreading rumor vs one that doesn't get off the ground." You cite two:

"There is a critical mass of people who must hear and believe the rumor" This is a truism, since by definition a rapidly spreading rumor will spread rapidly and thus widely. Any rumor that does not eventually reach "a critical mass" is by definition not spreading and has by definition not gotten off the ground.

The rumor must contain an element of credibility. (No brainer here.) No brainer, perhaps, but also obviously false unless you define "rumor" as a "a credible meme," in which case it again becomes a truism. But there are lot of simply ludicrous memes that nevertheless become widespread (Hitler's "Big Lie" comes to mind), and a vast majority of rapidly-spreading memes to which the concept of credibility doesn't even apply. Does one "believe in," for example, a hit song, or the trade-name of a popular product? (I use "kleenex" to blow my nose, even when the actual product is an off-brand. In parts of the States, any carbonated soft drink is "Coke," even if it's orange-coloured -- if I want a cola, I get "Coke Coke," and even then it's often a Pepsi.) Either way, it's not a useful insight, because it tells us that to spread rapidly, a meme must be at least partially credible except when it needn't be.

If that's the best that "mimetics" can offer, then Dawkins might as well have stayed at Oxford and watched the cricket matches in the University Parks.

I'm still waiting for a single genuine insight to have originated from the framework of "mimetics."

[Piggy]

One more point.... I don't think it's accurate to speak of memes as literally self-replicating. Viruses (biological or programmed) and DNA, for example, are literally self-replicating. But people are not merely hosts to memes, in the way that living bodies and computers are hosts to viruses. We pass on memes because it suits our purposes to do so. We replicate and pass them, and we do so consciously and voluntarily. The meme has no power to replicate itself whatsoever.

In the OP's terms, the "self-replicating" property of memes is metaphorical.

[Beth]

Excuse me, but I'm going to post here before I've read all the posts, so perhaps some of this is redundant. But memes is a subject I find quite fascinating.

Regarding the Vitamen C and Oat Bran memes, what is the probability that the consumption of those substances have some beneficial effect? If so, I think it is possible that their being sustained as a popular meme could be attributed to that.

If not, I wonder if there isn't some critical mass that they managed to reach in terms of percentage of the population that share the meme? If that's the case, then perhaps past data on surveys of the general spread of such memes (don't know what, if any, information would be available) might allow a researcher to develop a predictive theory about memes - i.e. once a mean reaches XX% of acceptance in the population, it will be around for at least YY years.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the thread as I was reading through it.

[UndercoverElephant]

Of course, it will take many generations for the meme of magical thinking and religion to die and be replaced by something else or even rational thought (though there is no assurance that rational thought will replace belief systems if they are removed).

Thoughts anyone?

Religion is no ordinary meme. You cannot wipe it out because it will keep spontaneuously regenerating.

[Piggy]

Religion is no ordinary meme. You cannot wipe it out because it will keep spontaneuously regenerating.
I agree. If it were erased today, it would be reinvented tomorrow. It arises from the way our brains are built.

[Piggy]

i.e. once a meme reaches XX% of acceptance in the population, it will be around for at least YY years.
That would be interesting.

[sphenisc]

My guess is that an understanding of population memetics is as dependent on cytomemetics as it is for the equivalent genetic concepts, i.e. until we have a better understanding how memes are stored and interact at an intercellular level, its going to be very difficult to predict their population level behaviour any better than we do now.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Excuse me, but I'm going to post here before I've read all the posts, so perhaps some of this is redundant. But memes is a subject I find quite fascinating.

Regarding the Vitamen C and Oat Bran memes, what is the probability that the consumption of those substances have some beneficial effect? If so, I think it is possible that their being sustained as a popular meme could be attributed to that.

If not, I wonder if there isn't some critical mass that they managed to reach in terms of percentage of the population that share the meme? If that's the case, then perhaps past data on surveys of the general spread of such memes (don't know what, if any, information would be available) might allow a researcher to develop a predictive theory about memes - i.e. once a mean reaches XX% of acceptance in the population, it will be around for at least YY years.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the thread as I was reading through it.The reason I bring those two examples up is precisely because the supposed benefit isn't there in the case of vitamin C, and wasn't significant in the case of the oat bran study that triggered the belief.

Linus Pauling's study on vitamin c was before my time. I don't know how fast that information was spread. It certainly has become part of the erroneous "common knowledge" base in America at least. Study after study has shown overwhelmingly that vitamin C has no affect on the immune system short of having a severe deficiency of the vitamin, and no effect on viral pathogens that has been found.

The follow up studies, including the accumulation of research has had minimal impact on dispelling the vitamin C myth. If an educational campaign were undertaken there might be an effect. I would guess that those distrustful of established medicine would discount the research in favor of their ingrained belief. It is harder to "unlearn" and relearn than to learn something correctly in the first place.

In the case of the oat bran, the speed with which the information was adopted was amazing to me. Also, the speed with which a large number of grain products appeared on the store shelves touting "oat bran" in the ingredients was most interesting.

But applying meme theories to this information, one can ask people where they acquired the information about vitamin C & colds and, oat bran & heart disease. You won't hear very many answers that, "I read the study". You won't hear very many answers that, "I heard it on the news" which is where the initial information was disseminated.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I can't stop you from "thinking," no matter how wrong you happen to be. But I'd advise you against indulging in amateur psychoanalysis, since it almost always makes the practitoner appear a fool.I was responding to the tone of your reply. There is information in the tone of your post, like it or not. Religion is the first thing that comes to mind since there are a lot of forum members with religious motivations. It has nothing to do with psychoanalysis.

But that doesn't mean that "Viruses of the mind" isn't utter crap. And part of the reason I'm so unimpressed is precisely because I know that Dawkins can write well, and clearly, and persuasively, and he so completely failed to do so in that piece.....
But let's look in detail at what you apparently gleaned from your readings. I submit -- as harshly as possible -- that all of the elements of "mimetics" you cite are either truism or error. As cases in point, you discuss "the elements going into a rapidly spreading rumor vs one that doesn't get off the ground." You cite two:

"There is a critical mass of people who must hear and believe the rumor" This is a truism, since by definition a rapidly spreading rumor will spread rapidly and thus widely. Any rumor that does not eventually reach "a critical mass" is by definition not spreading and has by definition not gotten off the ground.

The rumor must contain an element of credibility. (No brainer here.) No brainer, perhaps, but also obviously false unless you define "rumor" as a "a credible meme," ....

If that's the best that "mimetics" can offer, then Dawkins might as well have stayed at Oxford and watched the cricket matches in the University Parks.

I'm still waiting for a single genuine insight to have originated from the framework of "mimetics."Both you and Piggy are using a different definition of credibility than I was. I merely meant credible to the person passing it on. What you are missing is I merely wanted to get to the point of memes as a theory of information spread and becoming ingrained in the group's knowledge base as opposed to someone's individual belief or psychology behind that belief and so on.

I believe there is an element involved beyond just human psychology but I in no way claim to know the how or why of this spread of information. So you are discounting my view merely because I am looking at the system and can see it exists but don't know more about it. I think Piggy is expecting the same.

My field is infectious disease. I think Dawkin's idea of the virus was a very good analogy for religion. The religions that are currently dominating a large proportion of the population have the element that you must not doubt god. God wants you to prove your worthiness by believing against contrary evidence.

I believe Dawkins uses the following examples. There are two infectious organisms that affect the behavior of the host to take action against the survival benefit of the host. One is a parasite that infects ants. It literally causes the ants to climb to the top of a blade of grass and await a cow to come eat it. The parasite then perpetuates its life cycle in the cow intestine, is excreted to infect the next ant. The other is toxoplasmosis which when infecting rodents causes them to lose their fear of cat urine making it more likely the rodent will be eaten by a cat. Again, the parasite reproduces in the cat gut and the ova are excreted in cat feces to infect the next rodent.

Religious ideas can in many cases do the same. The religious idea takes over the person's life to a small or great extent. The person then acts on the belief where as if they didn't have the belief that would be doing something else. The second element in the dominating religions is the idea includes the need to spread it to others.

You can attribute all this to human behavior, marketing, propaganda science, social science and so on. I think that all those sciences miss the element that Dawkins describes as memes. I find it useful and insightful to explore that system, as a unique system.

You and Piggy will just have to disagree.

[Piggy]

I would guess that those distrustful of established medicine would discount the research in favor of their ingrained belief.
Probably so. And there are plenty of them. Just look at the success of Kevin Trudeau's book on natural cures "They" don't want you to know about.

I see mail pieces every week touting the craziest stuff, and some of these mailings endure for years (which means they're profitable for years). Some of these charlatans even brag that they're being threatened by the FDA. Why are the feds raiding their offices? Because the government is being paid off by "Big Pharma" and the AMA in order to keep these natural, God-given cures from the people, so that you'll stay sick and continue to pay the doctors and buy the medicines.

There's one guy who advocates "Coffee and Cigarettes for Breakfast". It's not really harmful. In another mail piece, he "debunks" the claim that we need to drink water. There's a certain paranoid/contrarian mindset that is attracted to these claims.


You won't hear very many answers that, "I read the study". You won't hear very many answers that, "I heard it on the news" which is where the initial information was disseminated.
But you will hear a lot of "I read it in a magazine" and "I heard it from a friend who read it in a magazine".

And from the magazine's point of view, the content is only there to "move paper". And the headline "A Bowl of Oatmeal Can Make You Heart-Attack-Proof!" moves more paper than "Preliminary Studies Suggest That Oat Bran May Help Lower Cholesterol, But It's Not Really Known Yet".

Also, some of these "articles" are really stealth advertisements for the publisher's books. Take, for example, "Men's Health" and "Prevention". There's lots of valid, helpful stuff in these magazines. But you'll also find, in "Prevention", Andrew Weil touting homeopathy. And in "Men's Health" you'll find dubious diet tips. The publisher of these zines also happens to publish at least one book by Weil (the "8 Weeks to Optimum Health Weekly Planner and Shopping Guide"), and had a huge hit with "The South Beach Diet".

There is crossover interest in promoting the books' underlying memes in the magazines.

[Piggy]

Actually, skeptigirl, I'm not sure I do disagree. I certainly don't disagree entirely.

What you are missing is I merely wanted to get to the point of memes as a theory of information spread and becoming ingrained in the group's knowledge base as opposed to someone's individual belief or psychology behind that belief and so on.
I have to ask you here, tho.... Do you see this "knowledge base" as an abstraction, a convenient construct, or as something with an independent existence?

To me, the process you describe here is analogous to a new term becoming "part of the language". That's a meaningful way to talk about it, but at the end of the day, "the language" exists nowhere but in all our heads. (It doesn't even exist on paper, really, because when it's no longer in anyone's head, it then ceases to become meaningful, as was the case for a long time with Egyptian and South American hieroglyphs.)

To say it's "part of the language" is just a way of saying that a lot of people know it, that its idiolectic base has achieved a certain mass.

I'd say it's the same with memes. There is no actual group knowledge base out there in the world. That's a metaphor, too, a convenient way of talking about things.

I believe there is an element involved beyond just human psychology but I in no way claim to know the how or why of this spread of information. So you are discounting my view merely because I am looking at the system and can see it exists but don't know more about it. I think Piggy is expecting the same.
Not exactly. We don't always have to know how or why to know a thing is real. Certainly people knew lightning was real, and not just a metaphor, before anyone figured out how or why it struck.

I also look at the system and say, "Yes, this is accurate, this describes something that really happens". But I don't know what this other "element" is you're referring to. I don't see any explanation of causation in memetics, just a very useful metaphor.

I think Dawkin's idea of the virus was a very good analogy for religion.
I agree with you here. But re the OP, I don't see any way to go beyond analogy.

You can attribute all this to human behavior, marketing, propaganda science, social science and so on. I think that all those sciences miss the element that Dawkins describes as memes.

Some folks in these fields speak in terms of memes, others don't. I think the language of memetics is useful in all of them.

I find it useful and insightful to explore that system, as a unique system.
I think this is where I'm not understanding you. What do you mean by "unique system"?

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
But you will hear a lot of "I read it in a magazine" and "I heard it from a friend who read it in a magazine".....I really don't think so. People have most often heard it from another person, or they have heard it from multiple sources all around them and cannot point to any one source.

Try a random sample and see what you get.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I do think there is a collective knowledge base. Maybe we think of this differently. I see it as an entity in itself.

There are things we teach our kids, things they learn in school and from peers. We all learn from experience. But when you look at societies, there is indeed a collective 'mind'. It is most often referred to as culture but there is a certain information set that goes with the culture.

Take something like the world being flat. At sometime in the past, (long before Columbus), a few people started to change their concept of the Earth. Eventually the rest of the population adopted the new paradigm. How did that occur? Was it just a matter of each individual learning something new until eventually most people had the new information? In my concept of things there is this collective mind. There are lots of individuals and individual beliefs among the collective mind. But you can still identify many concepts which we all mostly operate under and which evolve over time.

Is an ant colony tangible? Of course. In that case it is very clear there is a collective mind operating. Humans have something akin to that but with a completely different nature.

Another thing to consider which is looking at the system I see is the Internet. Think how that has changed the nature of this collective mind. Huge changes occurred and are occurring. Part of the ideas there fit into behavior and culture and media. But there is a whole different element here in that we are connected to extremely distant people and in completely different ways. You and I and all the other members on this forum are now communicating in writing instead of verbally. Look at how that impacts our information sharing.

I edit, link to citations, look stuff up as I go. I get into these intellectual discussions. I see more points of view. I can ask for a clarification I might not ask for if I were talking to someone. My son knows all kinds of stuff which surprises me because he seems to never go anywhere he would have learned those things. Then I remember, he's online with friends all over the world. They talk like we do.

And how about things like the dancing baby? I bet you know what I'm referring to. Or all the little clips you are supposed to look for something embedded when the screaming monster comes on? I saw one of those and that very night it was on Jay Leno.

Now Wikipedia is part of our information set. Look how that information is now part of so many people's vocabulary.


Knowledge base and describing a concept are two different things. I wasn't sure how you were overlapping them in your post.

Describing a concept can bring it into existence. That would be on an individual level. Having people using the concept on a regular basis would be the collective knowledge I speak of.

Once you describe plate tectonics, it exists. Before that it may have existed in the Universe, but not in anyone's reality. So both things occur there, collective knowledge base and new concept.

But take the nursing profession. We went through a period about 20 years ago when it dawned on someone we were doing a lot of things that went unrecognized because they weren't named. What we did couldn't be easily verbalized. So the scope of practice was better defined. Rather than just knowing someone looked bad, you identified what were the elements you were looking at. Those concepts gave nurses a way to share what they were doing and what they knew with everyone else. It was literally spoken of as a way to quit being invisible.

Now as a practitioner, if I learn about a new disease, it exists. Prior to that it didn't. That's more along the lines of just adding to my individual knowledge base. Have the new disease get headlines, like SARS or AIDS and now you've added it to the collective conscious.

Which made me think, there are also subsets of collective information. So with professions or sciences you get subsets of collective information. Medicine has evolved into evidence based medicine. The profession evolved. That change has been system wide. A paradigm shift in a profession, to me has meme elements involved.

[Piggy]

I do think there is a collective knowledge base. Maybe we think of this differently. I see it as an entity in itself.

There are things we teach our kids, things they learn in school and from peers. We all learn from experience. But when you look at societies, there is indeed a collective 'mind'.
I'm interested in reading the rest of your post, but I have to run right now. I do want to say, though, that we will indeed have to agree to disagree here. Being decidedly un-Jungian, I can't follow you down this road.

Will get back and catch up this evening.

Thanks for replying.

[Beth]

The reason I bring those two examples up is precisely because the supposed benefit isn't there in the case of vitamin C, and wasn't significant in the case of the oat bran study that triggered the belief.

Linus Pauling's study on vitamin c was before my time. I don't know how fast that information was spread. It certainly has become part of the erroneous "common knowledge" base in America at least. Study after study has shown overwhelmingly that vitamin C has no affect on the immune system short of having a severe deficiency of the vitamin, and no effect on viral pathogens that has been found.

The follow up studies, including the accumulation of research has had minimal impact on dispelling the vitamin C myth. If an educational campaign were undertaken there might be an effect. I would guess that those distrustful of established medicine would discount the research in favor of their ingrained belief. It is harder to "unlearn" and relearn than to learn something correctly in the first place.

In the case of the oat bran, the speed with which the information was adopted was amazing to me. Also, the speed with which a large number of grain products appeared on the store shelves touting "oat bran" in the ingredients was most interesting.

Thanks Skeptigirl, but what I was trying to get across was that if those substances have some overall beneficial effect on health and well-being (not necessarily that they perform as touted in the original studies) then many people would find that they feel better after adding Vitamin C or oat bran into their diets. I think this would have a sustaining effect on the meme regardless of whether or not they performed as advertised.

But applying meme theories to this information, one can ask people where they acquired the information about vitamin C & colds and, oat bran & heart disease. You won't hear very many answers that, "I read the study". You won't hear very many answers that, "I heard it on the news" which is where the initial information was disseminated.

This is an interesting idea. Has anyone actually asked this question in a survey? What were the results?

[drkitten]

I was responding to the tone of your reply. There is information in the tone of your post, like it or not.

There is. There's also a lot of information in your rush to interpret the information in the tone, instead of the content -- I could argue, for example, that it bespeaks a rush to find an excuse to dismiss the valid arguments because you're afraid that your illusions will be shattered against the harsh stones of reality.

Fortunately, I'm more polite than that.

Both you and Piggy are using a different definition of credibility than I was. I merely meant credible to the person passing it on.

No, I'm not using a different definition of "credible." I'm pointing out that a meme demonstrably need not be credible to be spread. Clinton's statement that he "didn't have sexual relations with that woman" spread partly because it was so incredible that everyone had to share it with their friends (and audiences on late-night TV). Ditto for his statement that he "didn't inhale."

And, of course, if we're talking about something like a catchy tune or a good joke, the very concept of credibility isn't applicable.


What you are missing is I merely wanted to get to the point of memes as a theory of information spread and becoming ingrained in the group's knowledge base as opposed to someone's individual belief or psychology behind that belief and so on.

Yes,.... but as a theory, it's not a particularly useful one, because the insights it offers are, so far, nothing but truism or error.



So you are discounting my view merely because I am looking at the system and can see it exists but don't know more about it.

No, I discount your view because it's wrong. Specifically, you believe that mimetics offers useful insights. I have seen no useful insights that it offers. I've read most of the primary literature on "mimetics" and continue to see no useful insights. You have (so far) been able to suggest no useful insights; the insights that you have suggested are truism or error.

If you tell me that something exists, but I can't find it for myself and you can't indicate it to me -- well, that's good enough for me to believe that you're wrong and to discount your belief.



My field is infectious disease. I think Dawkin's idea of the virus was a very good analogy for religion.

I don't. But even if it was, that doesn' t make his idea useful, precisely because it's an analogy of such limited scope. Not even all religions display the behaviors he cites as characteristic of memes-in-general.

To return to my biological example -- it's like he's done an superficial study of a particular dog, and then generalized wildly about "all animals" on the basis of it.


I believe Dawkins uses the following examples.

Not in either of the works you cited, he doesn't.

But beyond that.... so what?

What insights are offered by the analogy of a virus that causes behavioral change?

How can the observation that "[a] religious idea takes over the person's life," or that "the person then acts on the belief where as if they didn't have the belief that would be doing something else" be considered anything other than a truism.? In what way does it make "mimetics" useful? The ancient philosophers knew that what someone believed could have an influence on their behavior, and even recognized (cf. Plato's Republic) that people could be indoctrinate to believe certain things without regard to their truth or falsity, and that such a system of indoctrination could be a self-supporting, self-stabilizing system.

The interesting aspect of the analogy between viruses and beliefs is not that beliefs can mimic viruses in causing behavioral change, but that viruses can mimic beliefs in causing behavioral change. Now that is something that would have astonished Plato, and it offers some pretty stunning insights into the chemical and physical nature of "free will," a question that philosophers have been batting around for centuries. Now this new evidence suggests even more strongly that the ghost-in-the-machine is simply wrong. Now that isn't a truism!


You can attribute all this to human behavior, marketing, propaganda science, social science and so on. I think that all those sciences miss the element that Dawkins describes as memes.

I do not believe there is an elemet to miss. If I'm wrong, please describe it.

I find it useful and insightful to explore that system, as a unique system.

I do not. In particular, if it is useful, please describe the use.

If it is insightful, please describe the insight.

I suspect that your uses and insights will simply be more truism or error.

[drkitten]

I do think there is a collective knowledge base. Maybe we think of this differently. I see it as an entity in itself.

The "collective knowledge base" is simply the abstraction of the knowledge bases of the individuals who form the collection. In the same way that the knowledge contained in a library is simply the abstraction of the knowledge contained in the individual books.




Take something like the world being flat. At sometime in the past, (long before Columbus), a few people started to change their concept of the Earth. Eventually the rest of the population adopted the new paradigm. How did that occur? Was it just a matter of each individual learning something new until eventually most people had the new information?

Yes. In fact, the round world was explicitly taught to people, in the same way that the idea that Canada is north of the United States and that Germany is east of France are taught today. By the 1300's, no educated person believed the world was flat, precisely because the spherical world was part of the metaphysical education given at every cathedral school, and by extension became part of the literary and narrative tradition (see Dante's Divina Commedia). Even people who hadn't been educated and who couldn't read had at least heard stories from the Comedy or similar works, enough to understand that the world was round.

Are you suggesting otherwise? How do you think that a new belief becomes widespread, if not in the individual minds of the people who constitute "wide." Are you seriously suggesting that there is a "collective mind" that can somehow abstractly hold beliefs that are not held by any individual member of the underlying collective?

[Piggy]

This is an interesting idea. Has anyone actually asked this question in a survey? What were the results?
I don't know of such a survey. But I might could run one, with a true national random sample of several thousand people. I'll see what I can do. If I'm successful, it will take a few months to write, format, mail, receive, and tally.

[Beth]

I don't know of such a survey. But I might could run one, with a true national random sample of several thousand people. I'll see what I can do. If I'm successful, it will take a few months to write, format, mail, receive, and tally.

Cool! Please post the results if you do.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Thanks Skeptigirl, but what I was trying to get across was that if those substances have some overall beneficial effect on health and well-being (not necessarily that they perform as touted in the original studies) then many people would find that they feel better after adding Vitamin C or oat bran into their diets. I think this would have a sustaining effect on the meme regardless of whether or not they performed as advertised. I don't think any evidence like this has been detected. And the temporal sequence of events doesn't match such an hypothesis.

This is an interesting idea. Has anyone actually asked this question in a survey? What were the results?I have been asking students in the classes I teach on preventing the spread of infectious disease what they believe about vitamin C for 15 years. My questions were not put forth like one would with a real study and answers would have been influenced by students reaction to answering in class. And you can't say the samples questioned reflect any broader population. But I think it's pretty safe to assume the vast majority of believers in vitamin C have no reference for that belief.

It would be great to hear your results, Piggy.

[Skeptic Ginger]

...Are you seriously suggesting that there is a "collective mind" that can somehow abstractly hold beliefs that are not held by any individual member of the underlying collective?No you are missing the point.

What I'm saying is there is a system of dissemination of information and acquiring of beliefs operating. That system operates under a set of rules. Identifying the rules would be useful if one is interested in, for example, advancing the use of scientific principles over pseudoscience.

You could just look at education. You might believe that is the most affective area to work in.

You could look to the psychology of human belief systems. There you might identify the factors operating in the acquisition of false beliefs.

You could look at the social factors which influence beliefs.

But why leave out, or only look at pieces of the system of perpetuating and spreading information and beliefs. We are an accumulation of experiences, be they social, educational, or random. There are factors operating within that accumulation of experiences which highlight certain experiences and discount others. Yes, those factors are psychological and yes they are sociological and yes they are mechanical (communication itself). But is there anything to be gained by viewing the nature of the disseminating information itself? I certainly think so.

[drkitten]

What I'm saying is there is a system of dissemination of information and acquiring of beliefs operating.

For a sufficiently general definition of "system," this is probably true.

That system operates under a set of rules. Identifying the rules would be useful if one is interested in, for example, advancing the use of scientific principles over pseudoscience.[

Indeed, I would go further. The statement that "that system operates under a set of rules" is at this point just an assumption, albeit an interesting and provocative one. But there's actually rather little evidence available to support the assumption. Identifying the rules is premature if we don't have confidence that such rules actually exist to be identified. I'm not going to go unicorn hunting, no matter how cool it would be to have a stuffed unicorn in my den.

This is arguably the main problem with "mimetics." It's an explanatory framework desperately in search of something to explain.

But is there anything to be gained by viewing the nature of the disseminating information itself? I certainly think so.

Good. Now demonstrate so. So far, everyone who has attempted this particular exercise has come up dry; they've not really shown that there's anything to be gained by this particular approach.

In other words, the new explanatory framework hasn't actually offered any new explanations that weren't already available and well-understood in the old frameworks. And furthermore, the new explanatory framework demonstrably has led people into some errors that were avoidable in the old ones. So the overall effect is a net loss; it shows us things that we already knew to be true, and it also shows us things that we already knew to be false to be true, which is hardly an accomplishment. It hasn't yet found anything new and credible.

[Skeptic Ginger]

There is. There's also a lot of information in your rush to interpret the information in the tone, instead of the content -- I could argue, for example, that it bespeaks a rush to find an excuse to dismiss the valid arguments because you're afraid that your illusions will be shattered against the harsh stones of reality....And I would merely reply what I did above about the frequency of religious believers in the forums. Certainly religious bias will color how some people view Dawkin's treatment of religious beliefs.

Whatever you believe, assume or conclude about me does not offend me. Why should it? Either I can defend what I say, learn something new, or ignore your opinion.

No, I'm not using a different definition of "credible." I'm pointing out that a meme demonstrably need not be credible to be spread. Clinton's statement that he "didn't have sexual relations with that woman" spread partly because it was so incredible that everyone had to share it with their friends (and audiences on late-night TV). Ditto for his statement that he "didn't inhale."

And, of course, if we're talking about something like a catchy tune or a good joke, the very concept of credibility isn't applicable.While it still is a sidetrack from the point I was making in my post, since you clarified your context, I see your point. I was using myth or belief as my example and made the comment about credibility in that context and wasn't thinking in wider terms at the time.

.....No, I discount your view because it's wrong. Specifically, you believe that mimetics offers useful insights. I have seen no useful insights that it offers.
.....If you tell me that something exists, but I can't find it for myself and you can't indicate it to me -- well, that's good enough for me to believe that you're wrong and to discount your belief.There is still the possibility that I am correct but haven't provided the insights I perceive but haven't been able to successfully communicate. This is certainly common when one first learns new complex material, or when one knows a little about something but is not an expert in that area. You get it but don't yet know enough to describe it to another.

But carry on, it's your prerogative.

I don't. But even if it was, that doesn' t make his idea useful, precisely because it's an analogy of such limited scope. Not even all religions display the behaviors he cites as characteristic of memes-in-general.

To return to my biological example -- it's like he's done an superficial study of a particular dog, and then generalized wildly about "all animals" on the basis of it. Of course it doesn't apply to all religions. Why would you even think that's what Dawkins was saying. It might, however, distinguish the reason why some religions grow faster and wider than others. But just as in evolution, when there is more than one way to be selected, you get a variety of survival traits.

Not in either of the works you cited, he doesn't [use the parasite analogy]. It was Daniel Dennett, and it was in a talk, sorry. He has written of the concept as well but the talk is where I heard the analogy.

page 2, news article describing Dennett's lecture (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/01/29/supernatural_selection/?page=2) which looks to be similar to the one I heard. Dennett opens his book by comparing religion to a parasite. The lancet fluke is a microorganism that, as part of its unlikely life cycle, lodges in the brain of an ant, turning it into a sort of ant zombie that every night crawls to the top of a blade of grass and waits to get eaten by a grazing cow or sheep, in whose liver the lancet fluke can propagate. Dennett is being provocative, but he is also making a point: Certain religious behaviors-abstinence, for example, or martyrdom, or ritually sacrificing livestock in the middle of a famine-can look decidedly, almost inexplicably, irrational both to nonbelievers and behavioral scientists, so much so that it might be worth asking who or what is actually benefiting from them.

Yes,.... but as a theory, it's not a particularly useful one, because the insights it offers are, so far, nothing but truism or error.

...I've read most of the primary literature on "mimetics" and continue to see no useful insights. You have (so far) been able to suggest no useful insights; the insights that you have suggested are truism or error
....I do not believe there is an elemet to miss. If I'm wrong, please describe it.
...I do not. In particular, if it is useful, please describe the use.
...If it is insightful, please describe the insight.
...I suspect that your uses and insights will simply be more truism or error.

But beyond that.... so what?

What insights are offered by the analogy of a virus that causes behavioral change?

How can the observation that "[a] religious idea takes over the person's life," or that "the person then acts on the belief where as if they didn't have the belief that would be doing something else" be considered anything other than a truism.? In what way does it make "mimetics" useful? The ancient philosophers knew that what someone believed could have an influence on their behavior, and even recognized (cf. Plato's Republic) that people could be indoctrinate to believe certain things without regard to their truth or falsity, and that such a system of indoctrination could be a self-supporting, self-stabilizing system.

The interesting aspect of the analogy between viruses and beliefs is not that beliefs can mimic viruses in causing behavioral change, but that viruses can mimic beliefs in causing behavioral change. Now that is something that would have astonished Plato, and it offers some pretty stunning insights into the chemical and physical nature of "free will," a question that philosophers have been batting around for centuries. Now this new evidence suggests even more strongly that the ghost-in-the-machine is simply wrong. Now that isn't a truism!

Since I am not the expert in this field but am interested in what insights it may have to offer, here are some insights gleaned from Wiki's page on memes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) that struck me as useful and a different way of looking at the issue of entrenched misinformation and belief in myths (which BTW, I do view religion as).

Memetic evolution, like genetic evolution, cannot happen without mutation. Mutation produces the essential variations, whereupon those variations that prove "better" at replication will become more common and therefore have a greater chance at replication again.

Language most likely evolved by means of mutation from just a handful of primitive syllables (the original language phenotypes) into the modern wide array of dialects. Further mutations of language include writing, Braille, sign language, etc. Even the oft-cited "All your base are belong to us" meme produced variations such as "all your vote are belong to us". Other lines in the originating videogame's dialogue, such as "Someone set up us the bomb", have also replicated on the Internet, but with less success.

Dawkins observed that cultures can evolve in much the same way that populations of organisms evolve. Various ideas pass from one generation to the next; such ideas may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. This process affects which of those ideas will survive for passing on to future generations.

Both genes and memes can survive much longer than the individual organisms that carry them. ...Susan Blackmore has poignantly evaluated the legacy of Socrates. Since the 5th century BC Socrates' genes have become thoroughly diluted (dispersed); however, his memes still have a profound effect on modern thought and on contemporary philosophical discourse.

Memetic engineering consists of the process of developing memes, through meme-splicing and memetic synthesis, with the intent of altering the behavior of others. It consists of the process of creating and developing theories or ideologies based on an analytical study of societies, their ways of thinking and the evolution of the minds that comprise them.

One controversial application of this "selfish meme" parallel (cf. selfish gene) results in the idea that certain collections of memes can act as "memetic viruses": collections of ideas that behave as independent life forms which continue to get passed on — even at the expense of their hosts — simply because of their success at getting passed on. Some observers have suggested that evangelical religions and cults behave this way; so by including the act of passing on their beliefs as a moral virtue, other beliefs of the religion also get passed along even if they do not provide particular benefits to the believer.

Others maintain that the wide prevalence of human adoption of religious ideas provides evidence to suggest that such ideas offer some ecological, sexual, ethical or moral value; otherwise memetic evolution would long ago have selected against such ideas. For example, most religions urge peace and co-operation among their followers ("Thou shalt not kill") which may possibly tend to promote the biological survival of the social groups that carry these memes. However, the idea of group selection stands on shaky ground (to say the least) in the field of genetics. Accordingly, some consider the idea of selection of ideas beneficial to the group exclusively as unlikely.

A tendency exists in memetics to disparage religious memes. However, some speculate that traditional religions act as mental immune systems to suppress new and potentially harmful memes. Some compare this process to a scenario where the action of a virus (here a religion or a "bundle" of religious memes) proves ineffective and maladaptive if it kills its host(s), or to where the presence of less-harmful bacteria on the skin prevent infection by harmful organisms.

Criticisms:
the word "meme" lacks reasons why it is different and discernible from an "idea" or a "pattern of thought". This can be summarized in the question: How can it be proved that an idea or thought pattern is not a meme or vice versa *without* using the definition, proving that memes are an independent and meaningful concept ?

[Viral analogy is false because] the brain is a massively parallel-executing mesh of neurons where it is still unknown how exactly information is stored and retrieved....It is a well-known fact from witnesses that similar experiences of different people result in highly varied interpretations. Misunderstandings occur. Some concepts are so abstract or need so much mental capacity that they cannot be understood by the majority of people. So the question is: How can proponents of memes be sure that a "transfer" of a meme actually occurs in the sense that it is still the same entity ? If it is explained by a "new meme" or "imperfect copy", what is the core of the meme which is unchanged ? If nothing is unchanged, the claim of a transfer is highly dubious. If it is the same entity, how can the transferred part be identified ?

Furthermore, the lack of independent identification opens a plethora of ad-hoc excuses. A claimed meme stops propagation in a certain culture ? Meme resistance. A claimed meme changes the appearance radically ? Meme mutation. A claimed meme disappears ? Natural selection. There is no imaginable event which cannot be explained by memetics, it has therefore pseudoscientific traits.The criticisms seem to reflect yours.

I don't have the same concern that meme units are particularly hard to define. I would split them into two categories, those that reflect or incur belief and those that are simply information. Religious beliefs would be in the first category, the popular joke you noted as an example would be in the latter category. The effect of the hula hoop fad might be in the first category while the object and name would be in the second. In this case the behavior change and its elements would be the meme unit so memes are not limited only to information which is verbal.

As to the viral analogy being false, the element of being reproducible seems correct. In addition, a virus cannot replicate except with the host cell reproduction mechanisms. Perhaps one could say imperfect analogy, but I can't conclude false analogy.

The pseudoscience argument is not one I fully understand. It is apparently meaningful to you using the truisms test you posted about.

If meme theories provide testable hypotheses, (which to me is what one is looking for and maybe I'm confusing the term "predictive" with testable hypotheses), then it might be an indication there is something about the transfer of information among human beings that is worth investigating as an entity.

The one area I find most intriguing is the idea that a meme which propagates itself can spread without providing a benefit to the host. Which is also why religion memes and viral analogy make so much sense to me. This is also a concept that is unique as an insight into human behavior.

A martyr for example, might lead to more converts to a religion without benefiting the group from which the martyr belonged. In this case people who adopt the belief (the martyr's cause) may grow. The number of people in the group may grow. But did more people survive because of the belief? Or did the selection process act on the meme?

There are biological explanations one might use to explain the benefits of religion to group survival and you could develop all sorts of hypotheses to test why religious martyrdom occurs. But I'm wondering if expanding the hypotheses to include meme concepts might be the correct hypothesis in this case.

[Piggy]

I'll keep y'all posted re the survey. Will be interesting if I can get it mailed.

skeptigirl, I'm afraid I just can't relate to your terms or accept them, at least if there's an implication that there's something beyond analogy there.

However, if we can begin abstracting rule sets for propagation of memes, that will change things profoundly.

Just a note, too, regarding how memes are engineered.

I can't offer a link b/c it's ephemeral and would rot by tomorrow. But today, Yahoo! News's "Health Day" served up an article with this headline: "Lemonade Offers Sweet Relief From Kidney Stones".

Here are the 3 opening paragraphs:

Drinking lemonade could help prevent painful kidney stones, new research shows.

Regular consumption of the refreshing drink -- or even lemon juice mixed with water -- may increase the production of urinary citrate, a chemical in the urine that prevents the formation of crystals that may build up into kidney stones.

So conclude two studies presented Tuesday at the American Urological Association annual meeting in Atlanta.

It's not til the 3 final paragraphs (when many folks have stopped reading and clicked to another page) that we are told this:

Although the results of these two studies indicate that lemonade therapy may offer a simple alternative treatment to people with kidney stones who can't tolerate taking potassium citrate, much more research needs to be conducted, both study authors concluded.

"Both of these studies are addressing a very specific individual -- individuals with low urinary citrate. They're not suggesting that everyone with a stone problem try this," said Dr. Eric N. Taylor, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston.

Taylor also noted that the type of lemonade used in therapy may easily add extra sugar or calories to a person's diet. "The problem is, if someone would just drink 2 liters of lemonade, it could represent a significant amount of calories and sugar," he said. "When people think lemonade, they don't necessarily think of lemon juice. The key is you need real fruit," he said.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't think the lemonade will take off like vitamin C.

I understand your position better about the concept of memes after reading the criticisms. But I also side with Dennett and Dawkins and not with the critics at this time.

If we stick to one basic idea to keep it simple and test the ideas from there, it might be possible to test at least one hypothesis which is derived from meme theory. That is the idea that some religions produce new converts because the beliefs are selected by humans despite the beliefs either neutrality or detriment when other natural selection pressures are acting on humans. There might also be a natural selection pressure for religion but certain religions are selected at a rate greater than the selection benefit suggests.

There are a lot of confounding factors. Mainly scientific evidence over time discredits the religious beliefs. We have seen this with older religions that have become extinct such as ancient Greek and Egyptian religions.

There's a lot of work that would need to be done here to examine all the variables.

[Piggy]

skeptigirl, do you think there's something like a stockmarket dilemma looming within memetic models?

An example from marketing.... The surest way to kill a buzz-marketing campaign is to have it appear to be a marketing campaign.

Remember McDonald's offering to pay rap artists for any songs that chart w/ "Big Mac" in the lyrics? I can't think of a better way to guarantee that it'll never happen, except in a spoof.

There are many other examples like this.

Add this to the significant number of inherently unpredictable factors active in memespace, and we may discover that the barriers to prediction are insurmountable, and that even if they were not, that if we act on our predictions we disrupt the conditions that made the predictions viable to begin with.

If that turns out to be true, we're left with, at best, statistical predictions -- a certain percentage of memes with features a, b, and c will reach z% mindshare in 3 years -- but an inability to discern which turtles will make it to the ocean, so to speak. If that's the case, is it useful?

[sphenisc]

Add this to the significant number of inherently unpredictable factors active in memespace, and we may discover that the barriers to prediction are insurmountable, and that even if they were not, that if we act on our predictions we disrupt the conditions that made the predictions viable to begin with.

If that turns out to be true, we're left with, at best, statistical predictions -- a certain percentage of memes with features a, b, and c will reach z% mindshare in 3 years -- but an inability to discern which turtles will make it to the ocean, so to speak. If that's the case, is it useful?

So your suggesting 'that the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large and that they should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of memetic analyses.'?

That rings a bell...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional) :)

[JMA]

To me it seems (at times) to be little more than a metaphor. A nice metaphor granted - but a metaphor all the same.

I do feel the same about memetic. But maybe we just need to give it time, and a lot more philosophers working on that theory.

Seems to me memetic is still quite young...

[Dr B]

JMA - true it is a young idea. However, it has been with use for long enough to see or even ask "what does it give us that other frameworks do not"?

If we can find one aspect of memetics that makes it more explicit than current frameworks, more powerful, and increases its accuracy and scope - then it is likely it will become the dominant framework.

However, I still cannot see what it gives us that is new. This of course, does not make it wrong or unhelpful, but it is important context (at least for me).

I have really enjoyed the discussions above (and thanks to all) - I have been thinking about it in ways I had not considered before. I would like to thank all concerned here. However, I dont think the crucial question (which I outline above and at the begining of the thread) is any nearer an answer.....hhhmmm much to ponder.

[Soapy Sam]

:)

Blackmore's book is the The Meme Machine and I agree interesting but unconvincing.

Hah!

You fell for my double bluff!

(Mumble stupid 2 hour edit limit mumble mumble)

[Skeptic Ginger]

So your suggesting 'that the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large and that they should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of memetic analyses.'?

That rings a bell...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional) :)Your post is confusing as to whom you are quoting, could you delete the Skeptigirl from Piggy's quote? Thanks.

[Skeptic Ginger]

skeptigirl, do you think there's something like a stockmarket dilemma looming within memetic models?

An example from marketing.... The surest way to kill a buzz-marketing campaign is to have it appear to be a marketing campaign....I think you are looking more at marketing techniques as a way of disseminating information rather than meme theory as a way of explaining the adoption of information into the group's culture.

It's not just that people buy vitamin C. And it isn't simply that people believe a myth. Rather, meme theory seeks to explain how and why the belief in the myth of vitamin C has become "common knowledge" or rather a belief common to many people in a culture or group.

I'm waiting for that answer, "where did you learn that vitamin C treats or prevents a cold?" I can tell you I likely heard about Listerine from a commercial. I can't tell you when the first time I heard about it was. For Listerine, we can use marketing theory to examine how it became part of the culture. (Listerine is an equivalent myth, BTW, it doesn't even really kill enough germs to be considered an antiseptic.) We can trace the Listerine meme back and look at the steps. I think it's pretty basic, repetition. For the vitamin C myth though, marketing cannot explain it.

So meme theory includes marketing theory, but only as a subset.

[sphenisc]

Your post is confusing as to whom you are quoting, could you delete the Skeptigirl from Piggy's quote? Thanks.

I'm not able to edit it - so I've put in a request to a mod.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not able to edit it - so I've put in a request to a mod.That's OK. I forgot about the time limit on edit. It wasn't a big deal, it's just that as I read your post at first I thought you were quoting me and I knew I hadn't posted that. People will figure it out.

[JMA]

Is there a scientific paper about meme theory?

This one don't seems to exist anymore: http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/

And what do you thing that all the leader of the memetic mouvement (Blackmore, Dawkins, Dennet...) seems to do something else than memetic now, like if that doesn't interrest them anymore?

[Piggy]

I think you are looking more at marketing techniques as a way of disseminating information rather than meme theory as a way of explaining the adoption of information into the group's culture.
Not exactly. I'm just using examples from marketing to illustrate various points. I don't see that meme theory is "a way of explaining the adoption of information" at all. I see it as a way of describing, or tracking, or talking about that adoption. I don't find any explanatory power there. And I haven't seen any in this thread, either, so my mind remains unchanged.

It's not just that people buy vitamin C. And it isn't simply that people believe a myth. Rather, meme theory seeks to explain how and why the belief in the myth of vitamin C has become "common knowledge" or rather a belief common to many people in a culture or group.
Does it? If so, I believe it has failed miserably. If we want to understand how and why, we have to look at psychology, sociology, marketing, linguistics, cognitive science, etc. Meme theory will not tell us this.

I'm waiting for that answer, "where did you learn that vitamin C treats or prevents a cold?" I can tell you I likely heard about Listerine from a commercial. I can't tell you when the first time I heard about it was. For Listerine, we can use marketing theory to examine how it became part of the culture. (Listerine is an equivalent myth, BTW, it doesn't even really kill enough germs to be considered an antiseptic.) We can trace the Listerine meme back and look at the steps. I think it's pretty basic, repetition. For the vitamin C myth though, marketing cannot explain it.
Oh, yes, it certainly can. The vitamin C myth was actively marketed, and (more importantly) continually remarketed.

But that's not really my point, anyway. My point is this: Meme theory is properly considered -- with reference to the OP -- as a metaphor.

Why? Because it has no predictive power. Because memes do not literally self-replicate. Because it relies on abstractions such as a cultural knowledge base. Because, although it is extremely useful and may someday lead to a breakthrough in our thinking about the transmission of ideas, the discipline as it stands does not add to our knowledge, but merely streamlines our ways of thinking and discussing. So far, I've seen no concrete examples here to contradict this.

As for the vitamin C and colds meme, I have no idea where I heard it. Probably by word of mouth. But word of mouth transmission of ideas is not in any way unique to meme theory, so that example has no supportive value at all.