Susan Blackmore: How Memetics Works

One critical point here: Blackmore compares and constrasts memes with the theories of Boyd and Richerson. Around 6 minutes in she says that other cultural evolution theorists argue that culture is for us, for our genes. That's not really right. Numerous theorists (including Boyd and Richerson) appreciate that culture can be and sometimes is genetically maladaptive. There might be a difference in emphasis here, since memetics, for good reasons has been much more interested in maladaptive culture than many other cultural theorists - but this isn't really a qualitative difference, IMO.

Meme theorists have historically emphasized the similarities with DNA-based evolution - since that lets us lever our existing knowledge and theories, while Boyd and Richerson tend to emphasize the differences - on the grounds that that is what is new and different about cultural evolution. Here is a summary of that from me: Differences remain exaggerated.

Here is one attempt by me to articulate the problem: The host-centric approach to cultural evolution. It's not so much that the models are wrong, it is more to do with their interpretation.

Ben Cullen nailed the issue as well as anyone, I think. See my review of Contagious Ideas for the details.

IMO, meme theorists should try and get onto the same page about what went wrong with cultural evolution in academia. If meme proponents produce criticisms that are invalid, that's not going to help to sort things out.

Susan Blackmore - Artificial Intelligence - What is Our Role in the Future?

Susan speculates about machine intelligence and the future. Thanks to Adam Ford for the video.

I don't disagree with very much here. Susan seems a bit more pessimistic than me. Also, it seems to me that she exaggerates the extent to which machines are currently creating themselves. At the moment, I would emphasize that humans are still in the loop. Machines creating themselves will be a reality one day, but today the idea is a bit of a cartoon caricature. I also suspect that I spend less time than Susan thinking about whether the internet is conscious.

Susan Blackmore: From Memes to Tremes

Susan Blackmore - Consciousness in treme machines?

Susan Blackmore talks to a student group as part of CogNovo Summer School "ColLaboratoire" from CogNovo on Vimeo.

Susan makes an extended argument for 'tremes' - a third replicator.

Susan Blackmore: Multiple videos from 2010

Blackmore: Memetics as science still to be developed from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Humans as meme-machines - Memes using us to fill planet from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Third replicator - Digital info copied by machines from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Imitation crucial in human evolution from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Replicators - Origin of the gene and meme from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Memes are information copied with variation and selection from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Thinking memetically - Think about your own thoughts from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Seeing third replicator gear up - Crucial to understand the future from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Out of control - New evolutionary process from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Memeplex - Complex of memes as the self from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Biology and technology blurred - Redefining consciousness and self from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Sustainability in relation to the three replicators from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Danger of third replicator - Using up all natural resources from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Third replicator as the true second replicator from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Copying of third replicator - Full circle back to genes from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Susan Blackmore: A new form of evolution

Here's Sue in 2016:

Susan appears to have renamed "temes" as "tremes".

More from Sue on that topic:

Susan says:

I first called these replicators the ‘temes’ – for ‘technological memes’ – but people were so confused by the spelling that I have changed the name to ‘tremes’. I am very sorry if this causes any more confusion!

Susan Blackmore: Humans as meme-machines

Susan Blackmore: Humans as meme-machines - Memes using us to fill planet from FutureStudies on Vimeo.

This video is from 2010.

Susan Blackmore on machine ethics

Susan Blackmore weighed in recently on the topic of machine ethics - in article titled: It’s too late to give machines ethics – they’re already beyond our control.

While I generally think that students of cultural evolution ought to be well placed to contribute to prediction of the consequences of our actions in this area, I found several things to object to in Sue's analysis. On problem is the article's title. It strikes me as being defeatest. We ought to at least try.

Later in the article, Susan writes:

Replicators are selfish by nature. They get copied whenever and however they can, regardless of the consequences for us, for other species or for our planet. You cannot give human values to a massive system of evolving information based on machinery that is being expanded and improved every day. They do not care because they cannot care.

This seems like confused reasoning to me. We have examples of companies, governments and other organizations which have codified various human values. These are often in the form of 'laws' or 'rules'. If the argument is that memes and genes 'cannot care' because they are selfish replicators, then we have many examples of complex meme or gene products which do care - or behave as though they care.

Blackmore looks as though she is arguing from selfish memes to selfish organisms here. If so, that is a mistake parallel to the mistake that Richard Dawkins made in The Selfish Gene. Dawkins (1976) wrote:

I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals.

...and then...

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

He subsequently had to back-pedal, writing the following belated retraction (2006):

I do with hindsight notice lapses of my own on the very same subject. These are to be found especially in Chapter 1, epitomised by the sentence ‘Let us try to teach generosity and altruism because we are born selfish’. There is nothing wrong with teaching generosity and altruism, but ‘born selfish’ is misleading. In partial explanation, it was not until 1978 that I began to think clearly about the distinction between ‘vehicles’ (usually organisms) and the ‘replicators’ that ride inside them (in practice genes: the whole matter is explained in Chapter 13, which was added in the Second Edition). Please mentally delete that rogue sentence and others like it.

Selfish memes could result in selfish companies, governments and organizations - but it ain't necessarily so. Saying that such complex entities 'cannot care' seems like an unwarranted generalization to me. Maybe memes "cannot care" - but so what? It is memeplex products that we are mostly interested in when discussing machine intelligence. There's no good reason why they can't care.

Anyway, this topic is an important reason to study memetics. We need the best science has to offer to help us predict the consequences of our actions. The existing man-machine symbiosis probably won't last forever - there will probably be a merger or one side will assimilate the other. It looks as though we have enough power to be able to influence the outcome in a variety of ways - to the extent that technological determinism leaves some aspects of the outcome open. There's a lot at stake - and we should try our best to figure out what we should do.

My take on Susan Blackmore's 'big brain' hypothesis

My idea that memes led to big brains has been compared to Susan Blackmore's idea that memes led to big brains - as presented in The Meme Machine - and some earlier essays of hers. I got the idea that memes might have been responsible for the great human cranial expansion from reading Susan's book. However, it seems to me that my idea is a bit different to hers.

Susan emphasizes that true behavioural imitation is hard - so hard that only a very smart primate mastered it. It requires the complex skill of putting yourself in someone else's shoes - in order to repeat their actions. Interestingly, this is almost the same ability that leads to empathy. For Susan, the difficulty of imitation is significant. SHe writes:

The first three processes alone will produce the selection pressures required to drive a runaway increase in brain size - if one further small assumption is made. That is that being good at imitation requires a big brain.

By contrast, my idea is more that ancestral human crainia were completely filled with memes. Memes were on average beneficial - and the more of them you had space for the fitter you were.

In my book, I compare the human skull to ant domatia, figs and Alder tree root nodules - all structures produced by plants to house symbionts. The human skull houses cultural symbionts - and that is the main reason why it grew so dramatically over the last three million years.

For a while I didn't realise that I had mutated her idea. I thought I had got my idea directly from her. Later, when I reread The Meme Machine I noticed that there were some differences between her idea and mine. Some mutations had taken place in my brain.

I'm not saying that Susan's idea is wrong - but I still like my take on the idea more. One of the virtues of my idea is that it is pretty specific - which should help with testing it. The idea of the big brain as a meme nest does not require Susan's additional "small assumption" that "being good at imitation requires a big brain".

Since practically every difference between us and our nearest primate relatives is down to our cultural symbionts, it is no big surprise that our big brains are too. However - as far as I know, Susan Blackmore was the first person who really took this idea seriously and promoted it.

I find it distressing to see the extent to which her contribution has been written out of scientific history. We have many modern papers on the idea that the enlargement of the human brain was caused by cultural transmission [see references here]. Few or none even mention Susan Blackmore's contribution. It seems like a revisionist history.

Susan Blackmore on naked memes

Here's Susan:

for most of memes’ relatively brief life there has been no germ-line phenotype distinction and so no meme vehicles or interactors. However, as one might expect, they have recently appeared and are spreading fast. Printing presses, car factories and computer software all copy the instructions for making more books, cars and digital products rather than copying the products directly.

I'm drawing attention to this because I think it is wrong.

I think that the best way to divide phenotype from genotype in biology is using information theory - as follows: genotypes are inherited from, phenotypes are genotype products that are not inherited.

If you adopt this perspective, there are very few "naked memes". Most memes have associated phenotypes that are not copied. For example, many memes have emotional salience - creating pleasure, fear - or some other emotion. These are meme products and are not themselves copied from / inherited.

I think that the idea that "naked memes" were important historically has to be based on some other conception of what "genotype" and "phenotype" refer to - and I think that all the proposed alternative conceptions are inferior. Sue appears to be using her "copy the instructions" / "copy the product" distinction - but this is a bit vague: what exactly are "instructions" and "product"? The information theory conception of the "genotype" / "phenotype" split is very crisp. In its terms, "instructions" refers to heritable information and "product" refers to the things it influences - but then there are hardly any 'naked memes'.

Evolution can destroy design - as well as create it

Susan Blackmore has many good memes - as well as a few more dubious ones. In her recent description of her experience lecturing on memes in Oxford (recounted in A hundred walked out of my lecture), there was one of the more dubious ones. Susan said this:

I persevered, trying to put over the idea that evolution is inevitable – if you have information that is copied with variation and selection then you must get (as Dan Dennett p50 puts it) ‘Design out of chaos without the aid of mind’. It is this inevitability that I find so delightful – the evolutionary algorithm just must produce design, and once you understand that you have no need to believe or not believe in evolution.

She presented the same idea at TED. The problem with the idea is devolution. In a nutshell, whether evolution results in the accumulation or the destruction of design depends a lot on the mutation rate. In a sufficiently hostile and mutation-rich environment, living systems do not undergo cumulative adaptive evolution - instead they exhibit devolution - progressive loss of function, possibly culminating in eventual extinction. It isn't really very accurate to say that "evolutionary algorithm just must produce design". It can also destroy and extinguish all appearance of "design" - and often does so, in hostile environments.

If evolution only created design, living systems would have a rosy future. As it is, they could easily be wiped out by a stray solar mass. Evolution can destroy - as well as create.

Susan Blackmore: Meme machine

Here's Susan Blackmore on memes in 2013:

Memetic drive

Susan Blackmore is the best known user of the term "memetic drive". She wrote:

Successful memes changed the selective environment, favouring genes for the ability to copy them. I have called this process memetic drive.

However, that's not an obvious way to use the term - and there are other competing possibilities:

• "Memetic drive" is quite a good term for meme-led meme-gene coevolution.
• "Genetic drive" is most commonly used to refer to "meiotic drive".
• "Genetic drive" is also fairly commonly used to refer to instincts.

These all seem better than Sue's proposal to me. In case anyone is wondering how "meiotic drive" applies to memes, memetics doesn't prominently feature meiosis, but it does feature cooperative memeplexes where some specific memes gain a transmission advantage. The GPL is a good example of this. It is included in complex software packages, but it hitchhikes on all the other memes it is packaged with, and uses legal threats against users to promote its own propagation.

"Memetic drive" seems to be a conflicted term. Though it has some possibilities, I don't personally use it. I encourage users to offer a definition if they do so. Also, I recommend against using the term with Sue's proposed meaning - we can surely manage to do better than that.

Memes and the inner voice

The invention of speech was a fantastic boon to memes, leading directly to writing, the modern era and its revolutionizing of the biosphere. As well as leading to external dialog, speech led to an internal monologue - which is the topic of this post.

Many modern humans constantly talk to themselves. Some seems to be usefully rehearsing future conversations, while some is devoted to imaginary arguments and analysis. Some seems to be humans applying meme therapy to themselves - with affirmations and the like. Others seems to be the product of fear, paranoia, depression and self-punishment. Some of it is cached thoughts. Some is prayers and mantras. Some of it is advertising jungles, pop songs and political slogans - memes and their psychological productions.

The chatter is continuous - and for many it is hard to shut off. Often years of training in meditation is required before people can shut off their internal voices at will.

It's not easy to imagine the human brain was like before language colonized many of the brain's areas of higher function. Perhaps there were 'pre-speech' mental languages, which we now find difficult to imagine. Or perhaps there were just more non-verbal thoughts.

Speech represents a programming language for the mind. It's Turing complete and can express practically anything. It seems likely that speech radically revolutionized the internal organization of the human mind. Certainly language profoundly affects thought.

References

• Blackmore, Susan (2002) Meditation as meme weeding
• Blackmore, Susan (1999) Waking from the Meme Dream

Susan Blackmore - short videos about memes

Here is Susan Blackmore in quite a number of short videos about memes:

• What are memes?
• The idea of memes
• Memes and the internet
• Memes today
• Avuncular advice from Daniel Dennett
• Richard Dawkins writes a foreword for The Meme Machine
• Imitating and memes are human-only features
• Serious illness and Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea

These are all probably from around the year 2000.

Susan Blackmore - 2011 Creativity Forum

Creativity Forum - Susan Blackmore.

Susan discusses memes, religion and creativity.

Susan Blackmore interview in 2012

Susan Blackmore interview in 2012

Susan Blackmore: The Meme Machine.

Sue talks about memes, temes and ego.

A glowing review of The Meme Machine

This fellow certainly sounds as though he enjoyed The Meme Machine.

Maybe I should send him a copy of my book on the topic.

---

Update 2014-01-02 - this video now seems to be a dead link - sorry 'bout that.

Memes in the driving seat

It is widely believed that cultural evolution goes much faster than the evolution of human DNA can manage.

In my book on memetics, I discuss the "upright gait hypothesis" and the hypothesis that much speciation in the hominid lineage was assisted by memes.

Looking at the changes memes have produced in us, I think it is reasonable to propose the following bold hypothesis:

Practically all the significant differences between chimpanzees and modern humans are the consequences of human cumulative cultural evolution.

We can see the normal rate of morphological and behavioural change in primate lineages - by looking at our nearest relatives. Human evolution has been like a rocket by comparison - and memes explain why.

Much modern evolution is cultural evolution - memes explain all the interesting evolutionary change, while genes plod along at a glacial rate which is hardly noticable.

Coevolution between memes and genes mostly takes the form of memes dragging genes around in the adaptive landscape. The memes lead, while the genes follow. Genetic evolution is thus the delayed consequence of cultural evolution. The practice of drinking milk led to lactase genes being active an adults; the practice of talking led to larynx changes, and the practice of walking upright led to modified knees and ankles - and so on.

This idea also explains why our brains swelled up and why humans are ultrasocial.

It is an old idea in memetics. For example, Susan Blackmore (1999 p.80) raps on the Lumsden-Wilson "leash" metaphor - of memes being held on a leash by genes - saying:

In this way the memes are, as it were, dragging the genes along. The leash has been reversed and, to mix metaphors, the dog is in the driving seat.

The hypothesis here is the polar opposite of the position of Coyne 1999 who wrote:

Similarly, the self replication of memes does not mould our biology and culture; rather, our biology and culture determine which memes are created and spread.

Of course memes and genes coevolve, but the point is that the memes lead, and the genes are dragged along in their wake. This is an example of large organisms using small symbiotes to adapt quickly.

Since this "memes-lead" hypothesis explains so much of human evolution so well, I think the challenge is to look for puzzle pieces which it doesn't explain. I've looked, and haven't found very much - thus the bold hypothesis above.

Dawkins and Blackmore discuss memetics

This event: Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore in conversation was held yesterday.

This blog post describes the discussion.

It was recorded, so let's hope for a video soon.

If I was still in Bristol I would have gone.