Notes of Interest on Memetics, Part I

1. Apparently, while the term 'meme', and the idea behind it were coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, he didn't originally play a central role in the development of memetics as a nascent theoretical discipline. Instead, the idea of memetics as a field, beyond speculation on memes, was propagated by cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstader in his Scientific American column, Metamagical Themas, and his book of the same name. However, as time passed, Dawkins reentered the discussion, and contributed further to the theory of memes.

2. Susan Blackmore is a research psychologist who published what seems to be the primary popular source summarizing two decades of developed theory of memetics, called The Meme Machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meme_Machine). She also summarizes well the idea of meme as analogous to a gene, and how each is transmitted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics#Maturity).

3. Between 1993 and 2005, there was an organized scholastic effort to advance memetics as a field. It started with a usenet group, and eventually grew into an online academic publication. The academic journal ceased publication in 2005. No further efforts have been made.

4. For those interested in reading up on 'memetic engineering', my impression, based upon a cursory survey of the Wikipedia article alone, would be that a better starting point than trying to follow what appears to be the dismal state of coordination on memetic engineering would be to study contributing fiels separately (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetic_engineering#Applied_memetic_engineering). From there, I presume one could synthesize the insights from various fields to learn how memetic engineering might actually work. Relevant fields of inquiry include intelligence operations, social psychology and anthropology, and marketing. An understanding of game theory may lend a quantitative basis for understanding or practicing memetic engineering.

5. Within the field of memetics, there is a division between internalism and externalism. Internalists are those who believe that memetics can be discovered and theorized upon the basis of memes as they're represented within human minds. Externalists believe that the theory of memes is better advanced by measuring and noticing the patterns among external memes, i.e., memes, or their representations, observable and external to the human mind. The debate of internalism vs. externalism essentially seems a corollary of the rationalism vs. empiricism debate typical of philosophy.

5. From Wikipedia:

 McNamara demonstrated in 2011 that functional connectivity profiling using neuroimaging tools enables the observation of the processing of internal memes (i-memes) in response to external e-memes.


This point seems underrated to me, even if it only is on the basis of a single academic study. In his paper' Can We Measusre Memes', the author proposes the concurrent scanning of two communicating individuals in two separate MRI machines, i.e., hyperscanning, as a key tool in the future for the quantitative investigation of mememtics. I couldn't access the article online from Wikipedia's citation, but it could be searched for from within a university portal, I presume:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics#cite_note-mcnamara-12

6.  The first culturally significant mention of memes, or memetics, in published fiction was in Neal Stepheson's science-fiction novel Snow Crash in 1994:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

7. One significant factual criticism of memetics is that it lacks a code script  for replication, as exists for genes in DNA, and that's its mutation mechanism appear too unstable. These together would render the evolutionary process of memes too chaotic, hence leading us to expect a poor rate of replication: the goal of memes. This comes from theorist Luis Benitez-Bribiesca.

8. Theoretical criticism of memetics come from Mary Midgley. Firstly, she posits culture is pattern-like, and more factors should be considered to explain its evolution than whatever particles a culture is built from. Secondly, if (internal) memes aren't thoughts, then their ontological status is open to question, and their very existence may be challenged. Further, the over-extended use of the metaphor may lead to a confusion of the map with the territory difficult to retract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics#Criticism).

9. New developments in memetics include alterations to the definition of meme, and thus also, how to measure them, on the basis of making the analogies of memetics to genetics, and cultural evolution to biological evolution by natural selection, more precise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics#New_developments).

10. If you've read this far, Wikipedia's executive summary of applications of memetics will interest you greatly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics#Applications

Thwink is a project to spread memes to solve the problem of environmental sustainability. Researcher Jack Harich has modeled corruption in politics happening because of "an inherent advantage of one feedback loop pitted against another".  Another model, "The Memetic Evolution of Solutions to Difficult Problems" (http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/007/MemeticEvolutionOfSolutions.htm) attempts to show how "complex solutions evolve over time", and the advantages and flaws of the current process. I haven't read this article yet as of the writing of this note. So, I can't and won't judge its quality. However, if acceptable, an exercise for the reader may be to think if this model would apply to other forms of activism.

In the activist field of environmental sustainability, the crowdfunded Climate Meme Project concluded in 2013 global warming, and related memes, are ineffective at spreading "because [they] cause emotional duress in the minds of people who learn about [them]. Five central tensions concerning discourse around climate change were identified. My impression is they essentially correspond to differences in thinking from either side of the right-left political spectrum, a la the findings of Jonathan Haidt, or other explanations of politics from evolutionary (bio)psychology. Read here for a summary of the latter:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/

11. The intersection of computer science and memetics as an area of research is represented by the idea of 'memetic algorithm':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetic_algorithm

I caution several friends (they know who they are) from clicking that link without ample free time lest they lose several hours to an information binge.

12. 'Meme pool' is an interesting term, describing an idea distinct from a 'memeplex'. A meme pool is "the sum total of all memes present in a given human population'. From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_pool): 

Examples of meme pools may include large Internet communities such as imageboards,online forums, and wikis. More tangibly, large shopping mallsschools, and other socialinstitutions may be included in the definition of a meme pool.

13. Funny terminology: a 'memeoid' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics#Terminology) is a person who has "been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential". Examples include the kamikaze pilots of World War II in the Pacific Theater, other suicide bombers, terrorists, or cult members who commit mass suicide.

In the future, I intend to survey more topics related to memetics. Remind me to do this in a week if you like, and I haven't done any more yet. In the mean time, this should suffice for intellectual digestion.