There are many things that cannot be fully isolated, but that we study nonetheless. In social sciences and genetics, for instance.
If we had enough large test populations, and enough resources to test, we could tell a lot of different stories each differing in only one aspect (1 color), each told to a lot of different groups. Isn’t this an isolation of one factor?
If part of that idea is to disagree, then sure. But that part only has relevance if the holder decides to implement that aspect. Again, it is not the idea, it is the person who decides what to do with the idea. Or, to put it another way, ideas don’t compete with one another, people with ideas compete with one another.
I’m saying that forgetting or failing to recall something is not a function of learning something new. There is not a “knowledge constant” in our brains, whereby we must forget one thing in order to learn something new. Thus, I do not accept the statement that ideas displace other ideas through some sort of inherent competitiveness.
Well, we already know that certain bits of information spread faster than others. What we don’t necessarily know, nor can we always reliably predict, is why. Surely, no one could have predicted beforehand that “Richard Gere shoved a gerbil up his ass” would become widespread “common knowledge”, especially given that it’s one for which there is no evidence.
Because one of Dawkins points about memes is that they are self-replicating and use us to spread. This implies some sort of direct influence from the idea in question on a person, which is what I was denying. It’s not the stories that determine which one wins, it’s the people relating the stories who determine which one they’d rather hear or tell.
And as I am not of the opinion that genes are the primary object of selection in evolution in the first place, I fully agree that genes do not play an evolutionary role in themselves. They are not the drivers of their own evolution, any more than ideas are. Genes are subject to selection based on phenotypic expressions (and really, mate selection in humans may or may not have anything to do with those expressions, as the case may be), ideas are subject to selection base on personal preferences. Neither genes nor memes are active combatants in any meaningful evolutionary sense.
Conceded. This is easily the best $15 I’ve ever spent.
If I believe that Pert Plus is a great shampoo and an advertisement convinces me that Suave shampoo is even better, I would say that Suave has subverted Pert Plus. I haven’t forgotten Pert Plus, but it’s now less likely to be recalled when I am asked about my favorite shampoo.
Ideas do take places in our sematic network, and it’s basic psychology that ideas which are most often heard or commonly paired together are easiest to recall, which plays nicely into the hypothesis that ideas which replicate with highest fidelity are most likely to succeed.
As for the rest of your post, I’ll be happy to start a thread on the gene-centric view of evolution as soon as my head stops hurting.
Certainly, and that could be due to any number of reasons (more effective marketing, more memorable jingle, actually better product, etc…whatever). But, on a similar note, if I’ve been using Product A for many years, and am convinced it’s the Best Product EVAR!, and I then hear about Product B which purports to do more or less the same thing, I will not immediately forget about Product A. It will only be after switching my allegiance to Product B that my former devotion to Product A will become a distant memory (i.e., because I use the new information more frequently, that information is more readily accessible). On the other hand, if I try Product B and find that the marketing was all hype, then I retain my knowledge of Product A. In other words, there is no de facto reason that learning new information necessitates the eradication of old information. Which, again, brings me back to my previous point that ideas, in themselves, do not actively compete for brain-space, or memory-space, or whatever-space in the brain, contrary to Dawkins’, etc., claims with regard to memes. If there is no inherent competition, then they cannot be likened to any process in biological evolution. Thus, memes cannot be the cultural equivalents of genes.
I have no beef with that. I merely object to the notion that memes, like genes, are physical entities that replicate and (according to Dawkins’ gene-centric theory of evolution) use us organisms specifically to that end, with all that implies.
Memes as units of cultural evolution, as scotandrsn mentioned above, I also have no objection to. But the important thing to realize is that cultural evolution is very Lamarckian with respect to mechanisms. As such, the analogies between genes and memes, as well as between biological evolution and cultural evolution, are strained, at best. The Dawkinsian meme simply doesn’t work – indeed, can’t work – given what we currently know.
Alright, I think we’re on the same level now. I have a clearer idea of what I believe about memes and I think you’re closer to the truth than I was at the beginning of this thread.
Please try to think of future “Memetics is silly because…” criticism in terms of an equivalent criticism of genetics or biological evolution or viral epidemiology or bacterial plasmid transfer.
Or some other accepted field. Someone made a “What use is it positing that memes actually exist?” comment that made me think of physics. Why think of electromagnetic radiation as if it really is a wave or a particle? Because many useful and coherent things can be discovered and described about the behaviour of EMR by pretending that it’s a wave or a particle. On the flip side, having been exposed to duality it’s hard to imagine what the true nature of EMR actually may be… and this has likely impeded progress because discoveries are unintelligible to the “wave/particle” way of thinking. Which is another thing memetics might shed some light on!
You could make the identical criticism of genetics. And you’d still be wrong for many of the same reasons.
Genes increase in frequency in a population because a random groups of individuals having those genes discovered a previously unpopulated area and are reproducing to the limits of the available unexploited resources… the increase in these genes has nothing to do with their effect on the relative fitness of their carriers OR on the overall relative fitness of the carriers. The founders of the population are, by chance and circumstance, more able to “push the message” (reproduce).
Also, a gene that does nothing in particular in terms of mortality or fecundity may, none the less, be widespread because it’s locus is right next to another gene on the same chromosome that does reduce mortality or increase fecundity. Similarly, close association with the idea “Oprah”, for example, might improve the fecundity of a meme… though the meme itself isn’t special (well, beyond the fact that it succeeded in reproducing through Oprah… which I doubt all ideas are equally capable of doing).
I prefer to think of it in terms of equivalent criticism towards phlogiston theory or ether theory.
Ether. I wonder if theoretical physicists of decades hence will mention Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the same manner.
Is there a place where I can find these wrong assertions in Cosmos described? I’m re-watching the series now, and I would like to avoid infection by any false memes :).
In many ways, “ether” is a more valid concept than memes. First of all, it answers a question. (“What medium carries light?”). Second, you can do a test to see whether it exists or not. (The famous Michaelson Morely experiment).
“Memes” doesn’t really answer any question, since it’s been long known that ideas can go from person to person. And when you think about it, it’s obvious that there must be some physical structure in one’s brain that represents a certain idea.
Second, what experiment can one do to test for memes? A lot of experiments, I suppose, but given what’s already known about ideas it seems kinda pointless.
The one that sticks in my mind is in regard to the heikegani crab. As the Wikipedia article notes, the shell of the crap has a fair resemblence to a human face, and Sagan concludes that this is due to artificial selection of fisherman throwing the most human-looking ones back. However, this is completely unfounded in evidence, and there are other natural species of crab with similar markings. Although artificial selection is a real phenomena, this is a tragically weak and flawed example of it.
Sagan also discusses the viability of a Bussard-type fusion ramship and the ORION nuclear pulse propulsion rocket for interstellar travel, with wildly optimistic estimates of performance. It’s generally acknowledged (outside the small community of science fiction authors) that the fusion ramship is non-viable for a number of technical reasons, and while the ORION has been demonstrated to a limited (non-nuclear explosive) proof-of-concept, it’s propulsive efficiency is nowhere near enough to get up to reasonable speeds for interstellar transportation and slow down again, notwithstanding all of the other problems with interstellar transit (the hazard of high speed impact, radiation of excess waste heat, life support and provisioning, et cetera).
In general, Cosmos (both the book and the series) are quite good, and Sagan is on point when it comes to areas in his domain of knowledge (astronomy and planetary science), with errors in those areas limited to more recent information and clarification. But when he gets outside of his area, he sometimes flubs a bit, not dissimilar to Dawkins and his memes.
Returning to the topic of memes for a moment, it’s pretty clear that Dawkins is speaking entirely speculatively about something he views as a fairly concrete concept, i.e. that a meme is a real, discrete, measurable unit of concept, directly analogous in the evolution of ideas to a gene in biological evolution. Although the concept is appealing, and even useful in an abstract sense to tracking the progression of an idea from conception to mass consumption, there is no evidence that there is anything “real” about memes, or that an individual meme produces some kind of common pattern of activity in the brain. This isn’t to say that this couldn’t be the case–certainly Chomsky’s concept of “universal grammar”, if valid, would support the idea that there are some common fundamentals on how auditory information is processed and interpreted–but uur understanding of the workings of higher conceptual thought and consciousness are so primitive that these hypotheses are untestable from a neurological standpoint.
Stranger