Memetics is also a bunch of hooey

[Mijin]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Unambiguously? Nothing; no hypothesis ever does, else it’d be a fact.

Eh? You seem to be confusing ambiguity with absolute truth.

All I mean by unambiguous, is the normal meaning; a statement being unambiguous if it has a single (obvious) interpretation.

First of all, it provides a background framework for a dual inheritance theory, i.e. a link between cultural and biological evolution, which has been proposed independently of and I believe also prior to memetics. By identifying the unit of selection on the cultural side of this link, mutual influences are likely to be easier quantifiable than they are at present.

I think it’s pretty obvious that culture has had an impact on our evolution. But I think it’s simpler to just consider culture to be part of our environment in which genes are selected. If breaking down culture into units of selection can quantify the process, I’ve yet to see how.

Second, if memes undergo a selection process in an individual’s brain, this sheds light at the question of how exactly we arrive at a decision, and, since decision is the fundamental process of (intelligent) action, how our intelligence works.

Really? So if someone asks me if I’d like to go to the party at 7:00 or 8:00, what I’m actually doing is choosing between the 7 and 8 'o clock meme?

Third, and to me, that’s the biggie, because it’s so easily overlooked, yet rather fundamental: if memetics is correct, it might just give us a handle to answer the question of why we are conscious…

I don’t think there’s really a point to answer here yet. You haven’t put forward an unambiguous hypothesis.

But, suffice it to say, I don’t see how memetics implies a reason for consciousness.

As for ‘not producing any predictions’ – if memetics is indeed correct, then its predictions are basically our whole sphere of experience, which makes it kinda hard to determine any specific – and presently unknown – effects; if those indeed exist, they’d have to be pretty subtle to not be known by now.

So…no predictions.

And again to address the criticism of being too vaguely defined, take, for instance, a table – everyone knows what it is, but still, a general definition, based on its physical properties, is elusive: the number of legs seems to vary between 0 and n, it can be made out of nearly every material, comes in every imaginable colour and with every decorative pattern imaginable, varies in shape from triangular to circular, and so on and on. It doesn’t seem like a simple, all-encompassing definition of ‘table’ exists, since for nearly every definition I can think of, I can immediately find a counter-example; yet nobody would argue that the label ‘table’ is, therefore, useless.

This is a little different.

Personally I believe that we define objects in relation to certain properties. For a table it might be having a flat top, having legs (particularly four), being about waist high, having a space underneath etc.
Now, any given object need not have all of these properties, but may still be considered a table, because it has some of the properties.

OK…some philosophers take a different view, and how exactly, concepts and objects are defined is still debatable.

But this is cannot be a “get out of jail” for any vague theory I might cook up.

It’s like coming up with a theory for the current economic crisis of “Well, some real bad stuff happened at some banks and stuff. And then it snowballed” and then when challenged on how vague the theory is, say “Oh, well, the definition of a table is vague!”.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Mijin

All I mean by unambiguous, is the normal meaning; a statement being unambiguous if it has a single (obvious) interpretation.

Maybe I misunderstood, then; I thought by ‘unambiguously explain’ you meant ‘explain without uncertainty’, which would make it the only possible explanation, and hence, true, thus, a fact.

I think it’s pretty obvious that culture has had an impact on our evolution. But I think it’s simpler to just consider culture to be part of our environment in which genes are selected. If breaking down culture into units of selection can quantify the process, I’ve yet to see how.

So… where does this cultural environment come from, then? The reason I like memetics (or, more generally, dual inheritance) is because I – in part – reject the notion from evolutionary psychology/sociobiology which essentially relegates culture to the status of a genetic by-product. In that vein, I think memetics is to dual inheritance what gene-centrism is to biological evolution.

Really? So if someone asks me if I’d like to go to the party at 7:00 or 8:00, what I’m actually doing is choosing between the 7 and 8 'o clock meme?

Nope; you’re not choosing between memes at all, is what I’m saying. Memes compete, and the winner is what you’ve ‘chosen’. It’s a mechanism for choice, not an instance of it, and, frankly, the only hypothesis I know of that doesn’t amount to postulating a near-supernatural ‘choosing’ entity that for unknowable reasons prefers one thing over another. If you know of one, I’d appreciate to be pointed towards it.

I don’t think there’s really a point to answer here yet. You haven’t put forward an unambiguous hypothesis.

But, suffice it to say, I don’t see how memetics implies a reason for consciousness.

It’s not absolutely compelling yet, no (and I was at pains to point that out), but it’s not just bullshit, either – absent any other explanations, consciousness as a meme-propagator is at least something worth looking into, which is all I’m saying.

See, actually, my main argument for continuing memetic research is quite simply that it won’t hurt, and may help; cutting it off means that we’ll at best gain nothing.

So…no predictions.

Well, I could predict that, provided with two different designs for a paper flyer, the one accomplishing its goals (which may include more than just the length of its typical flight path – one might look much nicer, for example) the best will replicate more efficiently. But then that’s just common sense, because it happens all the time around us, we’re used to it.

Personally I believe that we define objects in relation to certain properties. For a table it might be having a flat top, having legs (particularly four), being about waist high, having a space underneath etc.
Now, any given object need not have all of these properties, but may still be considered a table, because it has some of the properties.

So, what’s wrong exactly with defining a meme as an information pattern that causes its own replication in a suitable host? That was precisely the point of my analogy!

It’s like coming up with a theory for the current economic crisis of “Well, some real bad stuff happened at some banks and stuff. And then it snowballed” and then when challenged on how vague the theory is, say “Oh, well, the definition of a table is vague!”.

No, its not; I was specifically reacting to the criticism, voiced earlier and several times in the thread, that the definition of a meme is too vague to be useful. Hence, I submitted that the definition of a table is just as vague, yet generally considered useful – because it’ll tell you what is and what isn’t a table, which is all a definition needs to do.

I think the main difference between the two of us is that you seem to consider certain things – culture, choice, consciousness – as elementary entities in and of themselves, essentially describing human development before that static background, while I want to explain them, which memetics does reasonably well for culture, still pretty alright for choice, and maybe even a bit for consciousness, and, most of all, seems currently the only theory capable of that.

[Mijin]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Maybe I misunderstood, then; I thought by ‘unambiguously explain’ you meant ‘explain without uncertainty’, which would make it the only possible explanation, and hence, true, thus, a fact.

No, I meant that it shouldn’t be ambiguous what the explanation is. Perhaps my statement was a little ambiguous.

In other words, it’s not enough to say that Memetics explains all kinds of things, and then when pressed for these explanations, engage in obvious ad-hockery. The theory should be clear enough that it would be obvious what the model would suggest for various phenomena.

So… where does this cultural environment come from, then? The reason I like memetics (or, more generally, dual inheritance) is because I – in part – reject the notion from evolutionary psychology/sociobiology which essentially relegates culture to the status of a genetic by-product.

I similarly don’t believe that culture is merely a by-product. We’re a social species and it is patently obvious that there has been some feedback between culture and own evolution.

Nope; you’re not choosing between memes at all, is what I’m saying. Memes compete, and the winner is what you’ve ‘chosen’.

So, broadly, what is happening in my mind when I choose between the 7 and 8 'o clock options? I may have reasons for choosing one time over another, but it certainly doesn’t seem like memes competing.

It’s a mechanism for choice, not an instance of it, and, frankly, the only hypothesis I know of that doesn’t amount to postulating a near-supernatural ‘choosing’ entity that for unknowable reasons prefers one thing over another. If you know of one, I’d appreciate to be pointed towards it.

But how memes compete is via conscious agents, and they win or lose based on whatever objectives the conscious agent has at the time; whether we want to make a flyer go far, or have the prettiest flyer, for example.

Erm, so doesn’t memetics require the same, “near-supernatural” choosing entity?

Oh, and this might be slightly off-topic, depending on what you’re implying, but I don’t believe in free will, at least not as it’s normally defined.

It’s not absolutely compelling yet, no (and I was at pains to point that out),

I know, I was trying to be clear I’d understood you.

…consciousness as a meme-propagator is at least something worth looking into, which is all I’m saying.
See, actually, my main argument for continuing memetic research is quite simply that it won’t hurt, and may help; cutting it off means that we’ll at best gain nothing.

Meh. I see no reason to value it yet. We might as well continue fairy research; it doesn’t hurt, and it may lead us to a magical kingdom.

Well, I could predict that
…
But then that’s just common sense, because it happens all the time around us, we’re used to it.

So…no predictions.

I submitted that the definition of a table is just as vague, yet generally considered useful – because it’ll tell you what is and what isn’t a table, which is all a definition needs to do.

That’s the point at issue. Is it really just as vague? Can we tell what is, and what isn’t a meme?

I’d submit that we can’t. The definition of a meme is more vague than the definition of a table, is my position.
How many memes is the paper flyer again?

I think the main difference between the two of us is that you seem to consider certain things – culture, choice, consciousness – as elementary entities in and of themselves, essentially describing human development before that static background

I just don’t think reductionism is always the right way to go. But I don’t think culture is a static background, or side-product, by any means.

[Darwin_s_Finch]

@jackdavinci

You said “Labeling the tune as a virus-like entity that seeks to reproduce itself” which seems to imply, to me, that the quality which you refer to as “virus-like” is that it “seeks to reproduce itself”. Perhaps I parsed your sentence differently than you intended. But if this is not correct, than what are the qualities of viruses you are claiming are attributed to memes?

The “virus-like” quality that I was mentioning was being attributed by others in this thread (see, in particular, post #13); I was disagreeing with the notion that memes can or do act in such a manner, and made no comment regarding how viruses actually operate, as I do not believe they are relevant (memes are, after all, supposed to be analogous to genes, not to viruses!).

I should, perhaps, have quoted the phrase, so as to indicate that it was not my own idea (but neither was it an actual quote…). It was a paraphrase of some analogies that had been tossed around, is all.

[Darwin_s_Finch]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

They don’t, obviously. But you might as well ask: how does a gene compete with other genes, independent of the lifeforms ‘housing’ them? The genes themselves play no part in their success; the resulting phenotype does.

Well, again, they don’t. I don’t subscribe to Dawkin’s “selfish genes”, and I believe that the primary locus of selection is on the individual, not the gene. So I do not accept that competition occurs at the genetic level, either.

I believe that this is perhaps the key disagreement here: if you accept that genes compete, you probably have no difficulty accepting that memes compete in some fashion. I’m more of a Mayr / Gould man, so I think that the gene-as-primary-locus-of-selection crowd is mistaken. I don’t accept that genes compete, nor do I accept that memes compete in a Dawkinsian sense (though ideas surely do in a Darwinian sense).

[RaftPeople]

@Mijin

But this hypothetical falls down because a meme doesn’t actually map to any brain input, even in an indirect way. What particular sights and sounds can you associate with a meme? None, because it’s conceptual.
Therefore the state system analogy, with memes as inputs, just doesn’t work.

A meme can be communicated from one brain to another via a sequence of sights and sounds over time. Calling the meme the input was a shorthand way of describing the entire process that results in the introduction of new information into a brain.

It seems reasonable to consider the entirety of that communication process and assimilation of information into the brain as “input” and the specific content (change in state of the brain) as the “meme”, would you disagree?

In my opinion, memetics is too vague to be a scientific hypothesis. It makes no clear predictions, and is un-falsifiable.
So it’s perhaps just a metaphor. But it’s a metaphor that I can’t see the use of. What does memetics explain (unambiguously) that can’t be explained without it?

Perhaps at some future time, someone will formulate a more clearly defined version of this concept.

All of this may be true, I’m not a meme-ologist so I can’t argue what predictions it may make. My primary interest in this debate relates to my view of information transmission and the reactive nature of everything in the universe (brains, humans, genes, etc.). I don’t honestly think I can choose a different course than the one I will choose in any given situation, and I see memetics as an extension of this view, the entire universe is just a series of state transitions.

[ITR_champion]

@Dr.Love

INonsense. If I claim that the “Obama would make a better president than McCain” meme (using your definition of memes) exists with, say, 55% frequency, evidence can be gathered to support this claim. Depending on the time of year and the method of data collection, these tests would be called either “polls” or “elections.”

My complaint is that such an understanding of the relationship between the human mind and ideas oversimplifies the mind and ignores many important things. Given a particular idea and a particular person, there’s no guarantee that the person either holds or does not hold the idea. Sometimes a person’s opinions rotate very rapidly. For example, a man may think that smoking is bad most of the time, but also experience moments of weakness where he breaks down and smokes a cigarette. So how can we quantify the “smoking is bad” meme? Does the meme continually fade out of existence and then suddenly pop back up from nowhere? If so, that doesn’t fit into an evolutionary model.

(This may well happen without the man interacting with any other person, so it’s not possible that the meme gets destroyed over and over and gets reproduced from someone else’s mind each time.)

Furthermore, it’s entirely possible for a person to believe contradictory things at the same time. Hence you would have a meme existing and not existing in a mind simultaneously. Obviously this can’t fit with any attempt to make an evolutionary analogy. In any particular lake at a particular time, you either have a fish or do not have a fish. You can’t have one existing and not existing simultaneously.

[jackdavinci]

@Darwin_s_Finch

(memes are, after all, supposed to be analogous to genes, not to viruses!).

I would say that they are analogous to anything at all that has the qualities of reproduction, mutation, and natural selection. Things that qualify would include, in my opinion, include memes, genes, individuals, certain computer programs, etc.

@Darwin_s_Finch

I should, perhaps, have quoted the phrase, so as to indicate that it was not my own idea (but neither was it an actual quote…). It was a paraphrase of some analogies that had been tossed around, is all.

Sorry for the misinterpretation. It sounded more like you were arguing against memes being like viruses than that both do not have agency. FWIW, I think the poster in that case was using ‘trying’ also in the metaphorical sense and not in the true agency sense.

[quote=“Darwin_s_Finch, post:85, topic:466070”]

So I do not accept that competition occurs at the genetic level, either.

This might be true if individuals replicated without sex, and if all changes in the genome were completely random mutation. But certain genes replicate themselves to the benefit of themselves, and to the detriment of the organism. There are some examples here.

@Darwin_s_Finch

nor do I accept that memes compete in a Dawkinsian sense (though ideas surely do in a Darwinian sense).

I don’t think the Darwinian sense is in opposition to the Darwinian sense. Darwin is just saying that reproduction + mutation + selection = evolution. Dawkins is just saying that genes also follow this equation. And that memes also satisfy those criteria.

@Mijin

In other words, it’s not enough to say that Memetics explains all kinds of things, and then when pressed for these explanations, engage in obvious ad-hockery. The theory should be clear enough that it would be obvious what the model would suggest for various phenomena.

Well what does genetics and evolution explain about lifeforms that memetics doesn’t about ideas?

@Mijin

So, broadly, what is happening in my mind when I choose between the 7 and 8 'o clock options? I may have reasons for choosing one time over another, but it certainly doesn’t seem like memes competing.

Can you viscerally feel and be aware of the particular neurons firing when you make that choice? How is that any different?

@Mijin

But how memes compete is via conscious agents, and they win or lose based on whatever objectives the conscious agent has at the time; whether we want to make a flyer go far, or have the prettiest flyer, for example.

Some of our decisions are conscious, but not all of them are. And many of our conscious decisions are based on previous assumptions, inclinations, and knowledge that were influenced by meme selection and aren’t being challenged during the current decision.

@Mijin

So…no predictions.

Again, what do genetics and evolution predict about their domain that memetics doesn’t about it’s domain?

@Mijin

That’s the point at issue. Is it really just as vague? Can we tell what is, and what isn’t a meme?

A meme is the smallest reproducible/reproducing element of communicated information. The nuances of what exactly can qualify as that is an important question, but isn’t the major focus of memetics. The major focus is on what qualities of memes (or groups of memes, whatever is reproducing more or less intact) make them more or less likely to reproduce, mutate, and evolve.

@ITR_champion

Furthermore, it’s entirely possible for a person to believe contradictory things at the same time. Hence you would have a meme existing and not existing in a mind simultaneously. Obviously this can’t fit with any attempt to make an evolutionary analogy. In any particular lake at a particular time, you either have a fish or do not have a fish. You can’t have one existing and not existing simultaneously.

I’m not sure why this is a complaint. You can easily have one gene that is say, increasing insulin, and another gene that is decreasing insulin. This doesn’t invalidate genetics. You can only have a fish or no fish, but you can also only have a brain or no brain. But the fish can have two genes that are odds with each other.

That said, there are ways in which memes and genes are not perfectly analogous to each other, of course. Memes have a much more influential extended phenotype than genes, they are subject to a greater mutation rate, and they are less contained. But they still satisfy the same criteria of reproduction + mutation + selection = evolution.

[Mijin]

@RaftPeople

It seems reasonable to consider the entirety of that communication process and assimilation of information into the brain as “input” and the specific content (change in state of the brain) as the “meme”, would you disagree?

Yes.
I don’t consider it reasonable to consider the entirety of the communication process and change in state of the brain a meme, because this is a yet more vague definition of a meme, and because we clearly cannot be talking about any particular state change in the brain as every time an idea is “reproduced” in a brain, is unique.
My point was simply that the state system metaphor is inappropriate, because a meme can neither map to a brain state nor any particular brain input.

the entire universe is just a series of state transitions.

It’s not helpful to look at reality in this way, IMO.
It’s like explaining the workings of a car by looking at the interactions of individual molecules. It’s better to understand a car in terms of pistons, axles, exhausts etc. And it’s better to understand the universe, again IMO, as including conscious brains.

@jackdavinci

Well what does genetics and evolution explain about lifeforms that memetics doesn’t about ideas?

Well, firstly, you can’t seriously be asking what genetics explains about lifeforms.
It explains the structure and much of the chemistry of all living things.

Of course, I’m sure you’d argue that memetics does the same for the brain / ideas.

The difference though, is that we can have confidence in the models of genetics / evolution, because these models make many testable predictions, that have been tested and validated. I won’t insult you by listing examples, because we both know there are thousands of examples a google search away.

Contrast this with memetics, where I’ve yet to hear a way it could make a prediction (that we wouldn’t otherwise trivially know to be true) even in principle.

Can you viscerally feel and be aware of the particular neurons firing when you make that choice? How is that any different?

The difference is, we have objective evidence that neurons exist, and that they fire in relation to stimuli and processes within the brain.

In any case, this is another dodge. I was asking the question, because it’s still unclear to me how memes are supposed to relate to my decision-making process in the hypothetical.
In other words, I’m asking a question about the model. Not merely expressing incredulity at something unseen.

A meme is the smallest reproducible/reproducing element of communicated information. The nuances of what exactly can qualify as that is an important question, but isn’t the major focus of memetics.

I rest my case.
I was arguing that the meme is a more vague concept than the table example, because we cannot say what is and what is not a meme. And it seems you agree.

I note also that you didn’t attempt to tackle the question of how many memes the paper flyer constitutes. You didn’t try because you would have no idea how to even begin answering such a question.

@Darwin's Finch

if you accept that genes compete, you probably have no difficulty accepting that memes compete in some fashion.

Actually, I walk this particular tightrope.
I think genes competing can be a useful metaphor, whereas memes competing is not (at this time).
I also think evolutionary psychology has some merit, it was just taken too far when it was in vogue.

[jackdavinci]

@Mijin

Well, firstly, you can’t seriously be asking what genetics explains about lifeforms.
It explains the structure and much of the chemistry of all living things.

Of course, I’m sure you’d argue that memetics does the same for the brain / ideas.

Pretty much, although at the current stage of research, memetics is is still fairly broad - more akin to evolutionary theory than to biochemical genetics.

@Mijin

The difference though, is that we can have confidence in the models of genetics / evolution, because these models make many testable predictions, that have been tested and validated. I won’t insult you by listing examples, because we both know there are thousands of examples a google search away.

No please do. Don’t worry about insulting me. You can’t really complain about others not satisfying you in terms of testable predictions for memes if you can’t come up with something similar in the realm of genetics for us to start a comparative discussion with.

@Mijin

Contrast this with memetics, where I’ve yet to hear a way it could make a prediction (that we wouldn’t otherwise trivially know to be true) even in principle.

So you claim. Have you actually tried the magic google button that you praised for leading to innumerable examples for genetics, and searched for the same in memetics? I’ll give you a hint: there’s many different searches you can try, but just “memetics testable prediction” seemed to come up with quite a few hits for me. Did you even bother?

@Mijin

The difference is, we have objective evidence that neurons exist, and that they fire in relation to stimuli and processes within the brain.

I agree that ideas seem a little hard to quantify, but you think ideas don’t exist? Seriously? At it’s most basic level, memetics says this:

1. information is copied (reproduction)
2. that information is modified (mutation) between copies
3. the rate that information is reproduced is influenced by it’s fitness for that task (natural selection)
4. information evolves (survival of the fittest, etc)

Which of those 4 things do you have a legitimate argument against? Arguing about the nuances of where to draw the line between a meme and a memeplex is academic and besides the point. Evolutionary theory was enhanced of course by what we now know of the detailed genetic processes, but there was plenty science there to research when it was still just natural selection and inheritance of traits.

@Mijin

In any case, this is another dodge. I was asking the question, because it’s still unclear to me how memes are supposed to relate to my decision-making process in the hypothetical.
In other words, I’m asking a question about the model. Not merely expressing incredulity at something unseen.

My point is the same though - do you understand how neurons are related to your decision making process? Do you understand how output creation in a large complex computer program works? Similarly, the brain is huge and complex, as are the number and types of memes. We could discuss a hypothetical situation but that would be like going through computer code line by line, or dissecting the brain and examining it one neuron at a time. And memes don’t just reproduce do to focused conscious decisions. They get copied through regular communication, and any behavior that results whether intentionally or not, in the transmission of information. If you don’t believe memes are a viable model, what superior alternate model do you prefer, and how does it satisfy your criteria? Do you really not think ideas influence your decisions? Are you really not aware of the basic ways in which they do so?

@Mijin

I rest my case.
I was arguing that the meme is a more vague concept than the table example,

That’s necessarily so. “Table” is a specific example or incidence of a meme. In a categorical hierarchy, lower order items are by definition more specific. This is merely a truism.

@Mijin

because we cannot say what is and what is not a meme.

of course we can. but what are you asking for exactly?

1. a formal definition of a meme? we have that, as already stated several times, as well as a more casual definition that applies more broadly.
2. a method to determine if something is a meme or not? we have that too, more or less. it’s hard to say what the smallest possible unit of information is that can be communicated (except in computational terms), but it’s easy enough to point to what information happened to have been transmitted in any particular context where we are capable of perceiving or detecting that information.

@Mijin

I note also that you didn’t attempt to tackle the question of how many memes the paper flyer constitutes. You didn’t try because you would have no idea how to even begin answering such a question.

“Meme” is a fairly arbitrary term of convenience. It’s defined more formally as the smallest unit of reproduced information, but it’s also used more casually to describe any information that’s reproduced in whole as a memeplex, whether or not components can be reproduced separately as well. Before we knew about genes, we studied ‘inherited traits’. Memetics is still at this stage of higher level systemic study. Getting down to the meme level will probably require more work in the area of brain science. But just because brain science hasn’t 100% been completely solved and understood yet doesn’t mean that brain science is somehow not valid. And memetics is not solely the study of individual memes. At this point it’s much more the study of larger memeplexes. It’s sort of like complaining that inherited traits such as hair color and race are so arbitrarily defined as to prove that genes can’t exist.

@Mijin

I think genes competing can be a useful metaphor, whereas memes competing is not (at this time).

What do you think they do all day at ad agencies, campaign headquarters, and marketing firms?

It seems like people have a few basic problems with memes:

1. its wrong to anthropomorphize them.
   well yeah it is. and no serious scientist does, with the exception of in the metaphorical sense.

2. memes are vague! well yeah, but this is really a few different concerns:

A) we haven’t yet worked out the complete mechanics of memetics from highest level to the lowest in fine detail.
true! but we haven’t done that either in many other disciplines that are considered legitimate, especially in the closely related field of brain science.

B) memes are kind of fuzzy.
while memes are comparable to genes in many ways, mostly with regard to their evolutionary aspects, they aren’t a perfect analogy, for reasons I’ve listed previously. most importantly, they probably aren’t as “digital” or compartmentalized as genes. although it’s possible that if we knew more about the brain, we could tell whether they manifest there in a more concrete fashion or not. but they are more analog than genes. which doesn’t invalidate them. it just makes them a little more complex and interesting. any complex system will be harder to understand than a simpler one. that doesn’t mean studying the simpler system is somehow more valid or scientific.

3. memes are stupid videos on youtube!
   that’s a related, but different sense of the word.

4. memetics is the study of memes - if we don’t understand memes then memetics is invalid
   it’s not the study of memes per se - not in the formal sense of the mechanics of individual memes. memetics is the study of the evolution of information, which can include memes but is more appropriately focused on memeplexes, groups of memes, and information/ideas in general. memetics is more akin to evolutionary science than to genetics. so this would be like saying evolution is invalid if we didn’t understand the gene yet. and even genetics is about a lot more than individual genes.

[Mijin]

@jackdavinci

So you claim. Have you actually tried the magic google button that you praised for leading to innumerable examples for genetics, and searched for the same in memetics? I’ll give you a hint: there’s many different searches you can try, but just “memetics testable prediction” seemed to come up with quite a few hits for me.

Ok, so I’ve tried that search. The very first hit was interesting; a possible methodology for testing memetics. It’s too long for me to read and evaluate right now, but I’m genuinely interested.
Seriously: I’m not anti-memetics, I just see no value in it yet, and wonder why people are backing it so fervently.

Almost all of the other hits though, were just quotes of Susan Blackmore claiming to have a testable theory. However, searching through the links, I could only find one testable prediction: that organisms with good imitation skills should have proportionally bigger brains.
I would have thought this prediction is patently false, since there is now good evidence of imitation skills in birds such as crows.

On the other hand, a google of “evolution predictions” returns lots of examples of how evolution can make predictions in principle, and real-world examples of predictions made and validated. I can’t be arsed to list them, the very first hit should do: cite

I agree that ideas seem a little hard to quantify, but you think ideas don’t exist? Seriously?

:rolleyes:
We were talking about whether memes are clearly defined.

Which of those 4 things do you have a legitimate argument against?

1. information is copied (reproduction)

Obviously organisms can communicate information to other organisms.
But is that really “copying” in the sense required for a process like natural selection to take place? If I tell the same idea to two people, there are no “duplicates” anywhere in existence; just a similar understanding in both individuals.

2. that information is modified (mutation) between copies

Well, it’s always modified. Contrast this with genetics where alleles mutate very rarely.

3. the rate that information is reproduced is influenced by it’s fitness for that task (natural selection)

Well, as you’ve already agreed, “fitness” in this context is entirely arbitrary and depends on an individual’s objectives at the time.

4. information evolves (survival of the fittest, etc)

Information evolves? Do you mean ideas evolve?
Well, we have good and bad ideas, and we tend to build on the good ideas. And so humans progress.
When it comes to ideas in the cultural sense, as used often in memetics, it’s hardly clear what a good idea is, and it’s largely subjective.
But in any case ideas themselves have no independent existence and do not evolve in a formal sense.

My point is the same though - do you understand how neurons are related to your decision making process?

No. I don’t even know if the neuronal level is appropriate for understanding consciousness. What’s your point?

Do you understand how output creation in a large complex computer program works?

Well I’m a computer programmer, and yes I can understand how output creation works in every complex computer program that I’ve needed to analyse. Again, where are you going with this?

If you don’t believe memes are a viable model, what superior alternate model do you prefer, and how does it satisfy your criteria?

As a viable alternative for what? What unexplained phenomenon does memetics purport to explain?

In any case, the onus is not on me to provide an alternative. The onus is on supporters of memetics to show why that it is a useful (or at least, clearly defined) hypothesis.

Do you really not think ideas influence your decisions? Are you really not aware of the basic ways in which they do so?

Do you have an army of straw men at your disposal?

“Table” is a specific example or incidence of a meme. In a categorical hierarchy, lower order items are by definition more specific. This is merely a truism.

Fine.
But, returning to computer science, the concept of an “object” is well-defined even though it is very high level concept. I can certainly tell whether a given entity is an object, a part of an object or a set of objects. Unlike memes, which aren’t clearly defined.

“Meme” is a fairly arbitrary term of convenience. [bolding added]

I agree. For a start, it’s arbitrary whether something is a meme, part of a meme, a “memeplex”, or even, in some cases, two people could disagree on whether something is a meme at all.

What do you think they do all day at ad agencies, campaign headquarters, and marketing firms?

Is what they do proof of memetics?

[RaftPeople]

@Mijin

Yes.
I don’t consider it reasonable to consider the entirety of the communication process and change in state of the brain a meme, because this is a yet more vague definition of a meme, and because we clearly cannot be talking about any particular state change in the brain as every time an idea is “reproduced” in a brain, is unique.

It sounds like you are saying it is impossible to break down (and describe, with language or math) the information stored in our brains into components. That we can only treat the human brain and the information in it as 1 monolithic entity. Is this correct?

My point was simply that the state system metaphor is inappropriate, because a meme can neither map to a brain state nor any particular brain input.

I assume you make this statement due to the uniqueness requirement. Are all crows made up of the same molecules, no. But we still consider them to be crows, right?

You seem to be arguing that it is impossible to categorize and name sets of information unless the underlying storage mechanism is identical, as opposed to commonality being determined at a higher level of abstraction.

It’s not helpful to look at reality in this way, IMO.
It’s like explaining the workings of a car by looking at the interactions of individual molecules. It’s better to understand a car in terms of pistons, axles, exhausts etc. And it’s better to understand the universe, again IMO, as including conscious brains.

That is exactly the goal, discuss information flow at a higher level of abstraction than the underlying storage mechanism.

Whichever level we talk at, it’s still states, inputs and outputs. If you want to include “consciousness” that’s fine, but it doesn’t change the deterministic nature of the decision making process. Input is introduced to the brain/conscious self, and the machinery cranks away, producing output. The combination of certain inputs and certain brain states results in communication of information to other brains.

[jackdavinci]

@Mijin

Seriously: I’m not anti-memetics, I just see no value in it yet, and wonder why people are backing it so fervently.

I’m sure for many people it’s just the coolness factor. For many people in this thread, their fervent promoting might just be a reaction to the fervency of the opposition. For me, I’ve always been interested in evolution and also genetics, both of which have really revolutionized biology. I see memetics as potentially doing the same for the human communication / information science / brain modeling.

@Mijin

I can’t be arsed to list them, the very first hit should do: cite

That’s a good list. It’s really specific though. I was hoping to find something more generic or theory based, from which to make a conceptual comparison with memetics. I guess to see if memetics is useful, we’d have to come up with a list of unanswered questions within the same domain of inquiry as memetics, and then see what kind of predictions it makes for those.

To be honest, I haven’t done a lot of research on memetics. But it seems obvious to me that 1) memes follow similar rules to genes in the evolutionary sense and 2) the cultural transmission of information is an important area of inquiry that still has a lot of open questions. Those two criteria alone are enough for me to find memetics important and potentially valuable.

I do have Susan Blackmore’s book. Maybe I’ll try and go through that and come back with some better info.

Two predictions I can think of on my own:

1. Marketing, politics, and PR all use the principles of memetics. If you make a superbowl ad, you know that you’ll sell more beer if you have a sexy supermodel than if you have an ugly old man.

2. We would expect genes that are bundled together to affect the success of each other. For example, sickle cell gets propagated despite it’s detrimental affects because it’s bundled with a resistance to malaria. In a similar fashion, abortion and gun control tend to affect the success of each other despite their general unrelatedness, because they both are bundled into the Republican platform.

@Mijin

:rolleyes: We were talking about whether memes are clearly defined.

Actually it was about whether memes have, in your words, “objective existence”.

@Mijin

But is that really “copying” in the sense required for a process like natural selection to take place? If I tell the same idea to two people, there are no “duplicates” anywhere in existence; just a similar understanding in both individuals.

The fidelity is lower, but I would still call it duplication.

@Mijin

Well, it’s always modified. Contrast this with genetics where alleles mutate very rarely.

So it’s speedy evolution. Still evolution.

@Mijin

Well, as you’ve already agreed, “fitness” in this context is entirely arbitrary and depends on an individual’s objectives at the time.

Fitness is very clearly defined, and is the same as it is for biological systems. Fitness is the ability to produce more copies.

@Mijin

Information evolves? Do you mean ideas evolve?

Ideas are information and are made up of memes. All the same stuff.

Genes don’t evolve either. It’s groups of genes, especially the group at the organism level that evolve. So yeah the individual components of ideas don’t evolve, but higher level ideas so evolve.

@Mijin

When it comes to ideas in the cultural sense, as used often in memetics, it’s hardly clear what a good idea is, and it’s largely subjective.

Good is measured as fitness, which is the ability to create the most copies.

@Mijin

But in any case ideas themselves have no independent existence and do not evolve in a formal sense.

Genes don’t really exist independently of cells, organs, and bodies. Genes depend on the support system of the mechanisms of the cell and the higher functions of the organism they help create and reside in. Similarly, memes depends on the existence of brains and other storage and transmission objects to do what they do. Waves cannot exist without the bodies of water that transmits them.

@Mijin

No. I don’t even know if the neuronal level is appropriate for understanding consciousness. What’s your point?

Exactly that. There’s more to brain science than the intimate details and mechanisms at the finest level. There’s plenty of useful science to be done on the higher levels. Imagine (easy for you!) that we are never able to pinpoint how memes work at the finest level or even define what the smallest meme unit is exactly. There’s still plenty of useful work to be done in memetics.

@Mijin

As a viable alternative for what? What unexplained phenomenon does memetics purport to explain?

On a high level, what it best explains is why some ideas and information are more successful at being transmitted culturally.

@Mijin

In any case, the onus is not on me to provide an alternative. The onus is on supporters of memetics to show why that it is a useful (or at least, clearly defined) hypothesis.

This particular point wasn’t about who has the burden of the proof. It was me wondering what kind of criteria would satisfy you, so that I could provide a convincing argument catered to you personally.

@Mijin

But, returning to computer science, the concept of an “object” is well-defined even though it is very high level concept. I can certainly tell whether a given entity is an object, a part of an object or a set of objects. Unlike memes, which aren’t clearly defined.

That’s a conveniently artificial and formal system. I would say that “object” in the real world sense is equally ill defined.

@Mijin

I agree. For a start, it’s arbitrary whether something is a meme, part of a meme, a “memeplex”, or even, in some cases, two people could disagree on whether something is a meme at all.

I think that’s a semantic issue. In formal memetics the terms are more strictly defined.

@Mijin

Is what they do proof of memetics?

I think so. See my example above with the beer ad.

And hey, look at the ironic example of the term ‘meme’ itself. Before Dawkins coined it, the principles of memetics had already been studied for ages under the guide of cultural transmission. But the term ‘meme’ is both catchy, and draws attention to the similarities between cultural transmission and gene transmission. This made is both more popular and more talked about by lay people.

My basic point though, is just to refute the OP’s assertion that memetics is ‘hooey’. Three main reasons:

1. Clearly there are mechanisms involved in cultural transmission that are worthy of study and there are many open questions in that field.

2. Although there are clear differences, the way that information is transmitted culturally is similar enough to the systems of biological evolution and genetics to examine their commonalities and try to see what happens when we apply the principles of the one onto the other.

3. The field has advanced already past the stage of when Dawkins coined the term. There’s been enough research for a multitude of academic papers and several books to be written on the subject.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Mijin

In other words, it’s not enough to say that Memetics explains all kinds of things, and then when pressed for these explanations, engage in obvious ad-hockery.

To not engage in obvious ad-hockery, further down, jackdavinci offers up one thing explained by memetics:

@jackdavinci

On a high level, what it best explains is why some ideas and information are more successful at being transmitted culturally.

I would supplant this by “…even when those ideas are not directly or indirectly beneficial to the ones that hold them”, essentially drawing up a concept of selfish memes. This, I believe, should be an unambiguous prediction: if memetics is right, there ought to be instances of memes perpetuating themselves regardless of benefit for or even at the expense of their hosts, and I do believe there is at least one – the celibate priest. Biologically, he commits the ultimate sacrifice; his genes will not proliferate. And he does so in the name of perpetuating a pervasive memeplex, namely religion.

@Mijin

So, broadly, what is happening in my mind when I choose between the 7 and 8 'o clock options? I may have reasons for choosing one time over another, but it certainly doesn’t seem like memes competing.

Yep, they’re cunning like that. What I mean by saying that memetic competition is a mechanism for choice perhaps becomes a bit more clear if you consider your reasons for making a choice to be memes (or at least caused by memes – according to the above definition, if they don’t cause you to replicate them, they’re not memes, but the point stays the same), also. What we then get is a picture of a human mind as a sort of memetic ‘landscape’, what I’ve previously called memetic environment. This environment, however, dictates which memes can proliferate in it, and whatever meme does that best, i.e. wins out, becomes prevalent, whatever, is what ‘you choose’. Regarding your party example, it might be that you think it favourable to arrive early because then there’ll be more booze left, or that you’d rather go later because you want to see some series on TV – both of those are memes, part of your inner memetic landscape, within which the memes for going at seven or eight compete.

But how memes compete is via conscious agents, and they win or lose based on whatever objectives the conscious agent has at the time; whether we want to make a flyer go far, or have the prettiest flyer, for example.

But the objectives of conscious agents are memes, as well. You’re still trying for some ‘fixed background’ explanation, by setting those objectives apart from memetics; obviously, under such circumstances, memetics seems trivial, but merely because of your own assumptions.

Meh. I see no reason to value it yet. We might as well continue fairy research; it doesn’t hurt, and it may lead us to a magical kingdom.

Yeah, you’re right there; that was pretty much a non-argument on my part.

I’d submit that we can’t. The definition of a meme is more vague than the definition of a table, is my position.

Why? When can you not tell if something is a meme?

I rest my case.
I was arguing that the meme is a more vague concept than the table example, because we cannot say what is and what is not a meme.

Even if, by the way, the definition of meme was unclear to such a degree as you imply, talking about memetics would still not necessarily be meaningless, just like it’s not meaningless to talk about trait inheritance without having a clear concept of a gene.

How many memes is the paper flyer again?

I would argue that the instructions for building it are one meme, since only in its entirety does it provide incentive to copy it. ‘Build it out of paper’, though, may be thought of as a separate, yet linked meme; a supportive meme, even, since paper is generally well suited for the building of paper flyers.

Well, it’s always modified. Contrast this with genetics where alleles mutate very rarely.

That’s not really true, I think. Certain kinds of ideas will need to vary very little – take, again, the paper flyer (and lets leave prettiness out of it): once the information has degraded to a point where the flyer will no longer work, the incentive for reproduction is gone. A lot of memes that take the form of ideas meant to achieve a certain goal work that way – once the goal can’t be reached anymore (and no new ‘substitute’ goal crops up by chance), the meme will die out, so there needs to be some fidelity in the copying process, in some cases a fairly high degree (incidentally, that’s part of what I believe consciousness does for memes).

@Darwin_s_Finch

Well, again, they don’t. I don’t subscribe to Dawkin’s “selfish genes”, and I believe that the primary locus of selection is on the individual, not the gene. So I do not accept that competition occurs at the genetic level, either.

I think we narrowly missed each other communicatively there – I was also arguing that competition doesn’t occur at the genetic level, but that genes compete via the resulting phenotypes, much like memes compete via the resulting paper flyers. (Gene-centrism, as far as I know, doesn’t put the genes in the line of fire, so to speak, either – genes only present themselves to natural selection in the form of their phenotypic effects.)

---

There was more I meant to reply to, but I kinda lost track of where I was, and I hope I at least managed to not bungle up the quote attribution. Maybe I’ll try and sort through everything later, the posts in this thread have gone up to hardly manageable lengths…

[Mijin]

I’ll try to keep this post (relatively) short. I’d like to do a point by point reply to all 3 preceding posters, but I think such a grand posting would obscure the central points.
If you think that I’m trying to dodge any question in particular feel free to point it out.

#############################

RaftPeople, of course I do not believe that the brain and all the information it contains is one, atomic entity.
My point was simply that your state system metaphor doesn’t work.

As I’ve alluded to with jackdavinci, my background is in computer science, and the concept of a state system is formally defined.

If the input to a system is, say, a photo of a blue cube, then that input is wholly different than an input of a photo of a red cube. There’s no notion in a state system of “similarity” of inputs, and certainly not of “conceptual similarity”.
The same is the case for the states within the system.

Wherever you put the concept of a meme in a state system would mean saying that every meme only has one, completely unique, instance. I don’t think that’s what you want to say.

#############################

jackdavinci, first of all, I note that the tone of your post is not at all defensive. This debate had started to sound increasingly like an argument between two warring sides, and it’s a good gesture.

In response to your point: the thing is, I don’t think we’re at the opposite ends of the spectrum on this debate. I agree that ideas evolve in some sense. My issue is with the usefulness of the memetics model, and whether it’s a metaphor taken too far.

You gave the example of the beer commercial. But this is not an unexplained phenomenon. I could quite easily explain the success of such an idea without recourse to memetics. What does memetics bring to the table?
If it’s that it brings the discussion into sharp focus, and let’s us make quantititve predictions, then great. But I don’t see that it does.

#############################

Half Man Half Wit, the example of religion is interesting.

To an atheist like me, a celibate priest is indeed enduring a great deal for no benefit whatsoever. The priest however, believes that his actions are indeed for his best interest (though, that’s not necessarily his reason for doing it).

So…there’s actually a disagreement about whether this “memeplex” is pathological or not, and that means it can’t be held up as an uncontroversial example.

I like the idea though: if the spread of ideas is wholly attributible to how well the idea spreads (and things like how useful an idea is are just things that can contribute to how well an idea spreads), then in theory there should be examples of ideas / concepts that are useless to the individual by the individual’s own admission but that spread very well anyway.
If there are good examples of this phenomenon, then I’m happy to do a full U turn.

In response to some of the points you made about breaking down the decision-making process, and so on, I can’t help thinking: is any process / information in the brain not a meme?
Something is wrong with the concept, IMO, if every process on every scale is called a meme.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Mijin

Half Man Half Wit, the example of religion is interesting.

To an atheist like me, a celibate priest is indeed enduring a great deal for no benefit whatsoever. The priest however, believes that his actions are indeed for his best interest (though, that’s not necessarily his reason for doing it).

You’re still trying to separate the memes from the person – the question is: why does he believe that? Religion makes certain promises, and offers certain benefits, like spiritual fulfilment or armament against the notion of the meaninglessness of life. But those are purely subjective, and part of the memeplex of religion! Indeed, religion often creates the very needs it fulfils: without god, your life is empty, so you need god. In this view, adopting religion is beneficial, because now, with god in your life, it’s no longer empty. But for you as a biological entity, nothing has been won, at least nothing I can discern. And your genes, due to celibacy, actually lose out, and if you, as you said, subscribe to gene-centrism, that should give you some pause, at least.

Let’s take this one step further still: Martyrs. They don’t merely choose to not reproduce in order to further a meme/memeplex, they actually get themselves killed, often to become a great symbol for their cause. I fail to see any benefit to them.

Even further down the line is where memes become auto-toxic, i.e. they cause the demise of their host without ensuring their own propagation – think Jim Jones and the like. Obviously, and thankfully, those memes die out fairly quick.

I like the idea though: if the spread of ideas is wholly attributible to how well the idea spreads (and things like how useful an idea is are just things that can contribute to how well an idea spreads), then in theory there should be examples of ideas / concepts that are useless to the individual by the individual’s own admission but that spread very well anyway.
If there are good examples of this phenomenon, then I’m happy to do a full U turn.

Well, as I’ve tried to illustrate above, usually the ‘host’ will think themselves benefitted by the meme, but, as is easiest to see in the extreme cases like Jonestown, may be deluded about that; thus, you’ll only see an admission of a memes uselessness/harmfulness after the host has rid themselves of it – an example of that would be a number of ex-scientology members, so, if after-the-fact admission counts…

In response to some of the points you made about breaking down the decision-making process, and so on, I can’t help thinking: is any process / information in the brain not a meme?
Something is wrong with the concept, IMO, if every process on every scale is called a meme.

The way I see it, what’s inside your head is more or less a memetic world, and thus, anything is at least connected to memetics in some way; so your question is a bit like asking whether there’s not anything that doesn’t obey the laws of physics in the ‘real’ world (every process on every scale is called ‘physical’, though I personally tend to call those on the quantum level thatdoesn’tmakeanyfuckingsense-ical).
However, as I said before, any information that doesn’t cause its own replication wouldn’t be a meme, and I guess for any given person, there’s tons of things they never felt compelled to share with anyone. Still, it seems to me that these things do influence memetic propagation, much the same way that non-living things influence the propagation of lifeforms.

And sorry if I came over as overly argumentative, I certainly didn’t mean it, in fact I’ve been enjoying this discussion tremendously so far.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Mijin

Half Man Half Wit, the example of religion is interesting.

To an atheist like me, a celibate priest is indeed enduring a great deal for no benefit whatsoever. The priest however, believes that his actions are indeed for his best interest (though, that’s not necessarily his reason for doing it).

You’re still trying to separate the memes from the person – the question is: why does he believe that? Religion makes certain promises, and offers certain benefits, like spiritual fulfilment or armament against the notion of the meaninglessness of life. But those are purely subjective, and part of the memeplex of religion! Indeed, religion often creates the very needs it fulfils: without god, your life is empty, so you need god. In this view, adopting religion is beneficial, because now, with god in your life, it’s no longer empty. But for you as a biological entity, nothing has been won, at least nothing I can discern. And your genes, due to celibacy, actually lose out, and if you, as you said, subscribe to gene-centrism, that should give you some pause, at least.

Let’s take this one step further still: Martyrs. They don’t merely choose to not reproduce in order to further a meme/memeplex, they actually get themselves killed, often to become a great symbol for their cause. I fail to see any benefit to them.

Even further down the line is where memes become auto-toxic, i.e. they cause the demise of their host without ensuring their own propagation – think Jim Jones and the like. Obviously, and thankfully, those memes die out fairly quick.

I like the idea though: if the spread of ideas is wholly attributible to how well the idea spreads (and things like how useful an idea is are just things that can contribute to how well an idea spreads), then in theory there should be examples of ideas / concepts that are useless to the individual by the individual’s own admission but that spread very well anyway.
If there are good examples of this phenomenon, then I’m happy to do a full U turn.

Well, as I’ve tried to illustrate above, usually the ‘host’ will think themselves benefitted by the meme, but, as is easiest to see in the extreme cases like Jonestown, may be deluded about that; thus, you’ll only see an admission of a memes uselessness/harmfulness after the host has rid themselves of it – an example of that would be a number of ex-scientology members, so, if after-the-fact admission counts…

In response to some of the points you made about breaking down the decision-making process, and so on, I can’t help thinking: is any process / information in the brain not a meme?
Something is wrong with the concept, IMO, if every process on every scale is called a meme.

The way I see it, what’s inside your head is more or less a memetic world, and thus, anything is at least connected to memetics in some way; so your question is a bit like asking whether there’s not anything that doesn’t obey the laws of physics in the ‘real’ world (every process on every scale is called ‘physical’, though I personally tend to call those on the quantum level thatdoesn’tmakeanyfuckingsense-ical).
However, as I said before, any information that doesn’t cause its own replication wouldn’t be a meme, and I guess for any given person, there’s tons of things they never felt compelled to share with anyone. Still, it seems to me that these things do influence memetic propagation, much the same way that non-living things influence the propagation of lifeforms.

And sorry if I came over as overly argumentative, I certainly didn’t mean it, in fact I’ve been enjoying this discussion tremendously so far.

[Darwin_s_Finch]

I’m not able to respond much right now, or probably for the next few days, but I do wish to address a couple items:

@jackdavinci

Fitness is very clearly defined, and is the same as it is for biological systems. Fitness is the ability to produce more copies.

Fitness is a tricky thing, but this is a popular misconception (and, ultimately, has led many to propose that natural selection, aka “survival of the fittest”", is a tautology). “Survival of the fittest” is better expressed as “survival of those better designed for a local, immediate environment”. Fitness can either exist as an exaptation (a pre-existing state which yields an advantage when environments change) or an adaptation (a changing state which yields an advantage in a given environment).

Thus, it is not sufficient to merely produce more copies to be considered “fit”. A meme, or anything else, must have an inherent advantage in a particular environment to be considered fit. To me, this presents a problem for memes, as there is nothing inherently superior or inferior about a given meme until it is evaluated. All information can be copied; not all information persists in culture. And even then, good ideas can, and have been, lost, while bad ideas can persist.

@Half Man Half Wit

Let’s take this one step further still: Martyrs. They don’t merely choose to not reproduce in order to further a meme/memeplex, they actually get themselves killed, often to become a great symbol for their cause. I fail to see any benefit to them.

There is no biological benefit for them, but there is almost certainly a psychological benefit for them: if they believe that they will be remembered by those who come after, or that they will receive a spiritual reward in the Hereafter, then they may see either or both of those as overall benefits, and thus more likely to be willing to die for their cause.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

A meme, or anything else, must have an inherent advantage in a particular environment to be considered fit. To me, this presents a problem for memes, as there is nothing inherently superior or inferior about a given meme until it is evaluated. All information can be copied; not all information persists in culture. And even then, good ideas can, and have been, lost, while bad ideas can persist.

This seems somewhat contradictory to me: if there’s nothing inherently superior or inferior about a given meme in regards to another, what’s the difference between good and bad ideas? How do you decide whether an idea is good or bad anyway? And where is the inherent superiority or inferiority in genes? Both memes and genes only show their advantages when tested against their environment via their effects: phenotypes in the genetic, and behavioural traits/ability to attain certain goals in the memetic case.

There is no biological benefit for them, but there is almost certainly a psychological benefit for them: if they believe that they will be remembered by those who come after, or that they will receive a spiritual reward in the Hereafter, then they may see either or both of those as overall benefits, and thus more likely to be willing to die for their cause.

Well, I’d argue that the cost of their lives (and their chances at reproduction, most likely) outweighs those supposed benefits; but I think to meaningfully argue that point, we’d need a more precise definition of beneficiality. I don’t think ‘it feels good to them’ is sufficient here, since you can most certainly be deluded in that regard, and I’d argue that martyrs, and to a certain extent and strictly biologically speaking priests also, are.

[jackdavinci]

@Darwin_s_Finch

Fitness is a tricky thing, but this is a popular misconception (and, ultimately, has led many to propose that natural selection, aka “survival of the fittest”", is a tautology).

I disagree, and so does wiki: "Although fitness is sometimes colloquially understood as a quality that promotes survival of a particular individual - as illustrated in the well-known phrase survival of the fittest - modern evolutionary theory defines fitness in terms of individual reproduction. " and “It describes the capability of an individual of certain genotype to reproduce, and usually is equal to the proportion of the individual’s genes in all the genes of the next generation.”