I read Max Tegmark's article in Scientific American promoting his book, Life 3.0.
Tegmark proposes the following classification scheme:
In summary, we can divide the development of life into three stages, distinguished by life’s ability to design itself:
- Life 1.0 (biological stage): evolves its hardware and software
- Life 2.0 (cultural stage): evolves its hardware, designs much of its software
- Life 3.0 (technological stage): designs its hardware and software
This isn't a classification scheme I have heard of before. Tegmark introduces the scheme by saying:
I find it helpful to classify life forms into three levels of sophistication: Life 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.
My first reaction was that these categories were three of the floors in the Tower of Optimization classification scheme I proposed back in 2011.
My second reaction was that Tegmark's numbering scheme seems pseudoscientific. I named my tower floors, rather than numbering them to better allow for future insertions and deletions. However Tegmark only has three categories.
There's an existing literature on the major evolutionary transitions. To say that scientists don't agree with Tegmark's classification scheme seems like a big understatement to me. Numbering schemes seem rather premature.
In my essay, I at least cited some prior work in the field - while Tegmark doesn't seem to have any citations at all. Presumably Max Tegmark made this classification scheme up. It seems like an example of how not to perform scientific classification to me.
 If cultures are composed of cultural organisms, what is their anatomy like, and how can they be dissected?
One of the first meme enthusiasts to propose a way of subdividing cultural entities was Douglas Hofstadter, who promoted an "anatomical breakdown" involving the concepts of "bait" and "hook". For more details, see the article: Douglas Hofstadter's contribution to memetics.
In his 2004 book, Ely Asher proposed another "anatomical breakdown" - involving "anchors", "payloads" and "carriers".
The concepts of "promises" "threats", "rewards" and "punishment" also seem appropriate as common components of many cultural creatures. Emotions are often involved in motivating humans to propagate memes, and this basic Pavlovian approach is one of the most common ones.
There's also the genotype/phenotype split to consider. In some cultural creatures there's a well-defined split between what is inherited and its associated products. Such cases typically involve an irreversible developmental program. Think of a cake and its recipe, for example - or server-side software and the web sites they produce.
I think it would be fair to say that cultural creatures come in many varieties, and that it makes sense for some anatomical structures to be domain specific. To give my usual example of different species of culture, FORTRAN programs and origami patterns need not have the same anatomical structures. However, having said that, the search for common anatomical structures in cultural creatures seems like an important one.
In some cases we can classify cultural organs as follows:
- Sensory organs;
- Motor organs;
- Information processing organs;
- Resource processing organs;
Think of robots, for example, for a place where such classification is appropriate. This path gets us into territory already explored by cybernetics and systems theory.
 In evolutionary processes, sometimes parents and offspring are indistinguishable and other times, they are very different.
Newborn human offspring are very different from their parents. They are much smaller and more helpless. By contrast, bacteria generally reproduce via binary fission - and parent and offspring are identical. DNA molecules produce offspring DNA molecules where it makes no sense to ask which molecule is the parent and which is the offspring.
In cultural evolution we also have a mixture of parent-offspring symmetry and asymmetry. Copies of the GPL are mostly identical and they spread via cloning rather like a virus. By contrast, many complex human memeplexes undergo a developmental process within the human mind. It is usually pretty easy to distinguish between the memes in the teacher and the memes in the student: the student's memes are less mature and well developed.
I think whether that newborn offspring identical to their ancestors (or not) is a reasonable classification criterion for evolutionary entities.
However, there can sometimes be some issues. For example, sometimes what seems to be a newborn which is identical to its parent can - on closer inspection have some systematic differences. FOr example, with DNA strands there is a parent-offspring relationship: the 'parent' strand is used as the template for the formation of the 'offspring' strand. However, this relationship is not obvious unless the copying process itself is witnessed. Once the copy has been made it is hard to distinguish it from the original - unless the copying fidelity involved is poor.
A similarly problematical example from the cultural realm is photocopying. A photocopy might appear to be identical to the original document. However a detailed examination will probably reveal some differences - allowing the original to be distinguished from the copy.
This issue is an imperfection in this classification scheme - but hardly a terminal one. It is useful to distinguish between
organisms that develop significantly after birth from those that do not.
 I think that memetics should cover all of cultural evolution. However various more narrow kinds of study have also been proposed:
- Diffusion of innovations;
- Evolution of norms;
- Evolutionary epistemology;
While specialization has its merits, it seems to be that there's too much Balkanization here. I've long been aware of the work on diffusion of innovations - and how it myopically parallels the cultural evolution literature. However, there appears to be a similar phenomenon going on within sociology - where a whole raft of researchers obsessively focus on the evolution of social norms. I'm sure that the evolution of norms is a very interesting topic. However, most of its regularities and rules apply to other forms of culture as well - and it often seems as though that isn't being appreciated.
Looking at the literature on norms and innovations it is hard to avoid the conclusion that many of those involved often don't see the bigger picture of cultural evolution.
The overall picture is reminiscent to biology before Darwin. The topic was fragmented. Darwin brought a theoretical framework that unified it all.
Even among those who understand cultural evolution, Blackmore (1999) and Boyd and Richerson (1985) once proposed that only imitation and teaching were significant - and that these should be the main objects of study for cultural evolution. Yet culture that is transmitted in other ways mostly obeys the same rules. I think these folk have now mostly retracted their earlier opinions on this topic.
 The 2014 annual question at The Edge is: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?
Looking at the responses shows that many of the nominations are misguided. One wonders if they are XKCD386-like attempts to troll the internet in an attempt to attract attention. For example, people take on entropy, altruism, computer science, artificial intelligence, causality - and many other silly candidates.
The concept of 'culture' got nominated for retirement three times, as follows:
As subscribers can probably guess, I am not impressed. Two of the authors raise similar objections. Pascal Boyer writes:
But culture is splendidly diverse only because it is not a domain at all, just like there is a marvelous variety in the domain of white objects or in the domain of people younger than Socrates.
John Tooby writes:
Attempting to construct a science built around culture (or learning) as a unitary concept is as misguided as attempting to develop a robust science of white things (egg shells, clouds, O-type stars, Pat Boone, human scleras, bones, first generation MacBooks, dandelion sap, lilies…).
I think these objections are ridiculous - and unscientific. Living things are diverse too - ranging from elephants to bacteria. However that doesn't mean that we can't have a science of biology - we do, in fact have such a science. It's the same with evolution and genetics - the diverse subject matter involved actually has relatively uniform and comprehensible roots and can be covered by general principles.
The same goes for culture, cultural evolution and memetics. It's embarrassing for me to see that some people think we shouldn't even try for a science of culture. Culture is big and important. It should be - and indeed is - an obvious target for scientific investigation.
Tooby compares the study of cultural interactions with the hypothetical study of "building interactions", saying:
Consider buildings and the things that allow them to influence each other: roads, power lines, water lines, sewage lines, mail, roads, phone landlines, sound, wireless phone service, cable, insect vectors, cats, rodents, termites, dog to dog barking, fire spread, odors, line of sight communication with neighbors, cars and delivery trucks, trash service, door to door salesmen, heating oil delivery, and so on. A science whose core concept was building-to-building influence ("building-culture") would be largely gibberish, just as our "science" of culture as person to person influence has turned out to be.
This analogy has some issues. We do in fact, have a science of biological interactions, called symbiology. One reason we have a science of organism interactions and not a science of building interactions is because organisms are central in biology - while buildings are not. Another reason is that organisms interact more than buildings do. We have a well-known science of brain behaviour (psychology) and not such a well-known science of buildings (though of course some scientists do study buildings). In short, this analogy gets most of the intuitive force that it posesses from the significance and status of buildings in science - and their static, separated nature - and not from the intrinsic silliness of sciences that study interactions.
In fact, a science of culture would cover buildings and many of their interactions - along with many, many other things. It is deep and general - in contrast with the proposed science of "building interactions", which is narrow and specific.
It is a little strange how so many evolutionary psychologists systematically don't understand cultural evolution. You would think that - with their interests in psychology and the mind - people like Pinker and Tooby would be well placed to understand a domain adjacent to their own. Instead, they seem to be among those most confused about it.
As I understand it, the history here is that evolutionary psychologists - like memeticists - have put up with a lot of misguided nonsense about culture from anthropologists over they years. The anthropologists involved usually think that "culture did it" - and can point to the cultural variation that makes them believe this. This irritates the evolutionary psychologists - who seek the shared genetic basis of traits. From this perspective, cultural variation is irrelevant noise that you have to filter out. Enthusiasts for the significance of culture thus seem like the "other team" to the evolutionary psychologists. Since they have spent so long battling bad cultural science from anthropology, they generalize to: all cultural science is bad.
This is unfortunate. Evolutionary psychology has historically studied human universals coded in DNA genes. Memetics has studied human similarities (and differences) transmitted via human culture. Both topics are important ones. These perspectives are both firmly grounded in evolutionary theory - and they should not be in conflict.
Other "Edge annual question" entries relevant to the topic of this blog include:
I reply to Michael McCullough's article in more detail here.
Update 2015-01-06: Alberto Acerbi also responds - Culture: A scientific idea "ready for retirement"?
 Arbitrary document modifications can be modeled as a series of insertions and deletions.
This sort of scheme works pretty well as the basis for a mutation classification scheme - in both organic and cultural evolution.
Sometimes it is useful to model a combined insertion and deletion as a replacement.
With insertions and replacements, the source of the introduced information can be used to sub-classify. The most obvious sub-classification involves whether the inserted information comes from self or other. A replacement of material from yourself could be classified as a rearrangement. An insertion of material copied directly from yourself would be a duplication. A movement of material is commonly called a translocation.
This scheme is similar in some respects to the existing one used to classify organic mutations - though my proposal is substrate neutral.
An orthogonal classification scheme is whether the mutations are accidental or deliberate. Deliberate mutations are seen in the immune system, for example. They are also a common feature of cultural evolution.
Mutations can also be classified by their effect on function, by their effect on fitness and by whether they are inherited. These classification schemes work equally well in the organic and cultural realms.
 A possible alternative to having a science of heredity is to have a science of memory and a science of copying (since memory and copying are the main components of heredity). In a number of respects, this would be good - since memory and copying are pretty different phenomena.
We already have a science of memory: "mnemology". This is named after Richard Semon's fine concept of the "mneme" - which was great, but ultimately lost out to the "gene". Unfortunately, mnemology does not seem to be a well-known subject area. There are also "memory studies" and "memory theory" - which don't quite seem to be the same thing. The science associated with memory seems to be a bit fragmented. Animal memory seems to have been assimilated into psychology and cognitive science - and not given a name of its own. The topic of "genetic memory" has been assimilated into genetics.
If you look for a science of copying, there doesn't seem to be much out there - except for evolutionary theory, biology, genetics and "epigenetics" [sic]. There is information theory - perhaps that is the nearest thing.
A science of copying would probably have two foundations: the concept of mutual information - from Shannon information theory - and the concept of causality. I've gone into this in more detail in my article: What are inheritance and copying?
Since one way for patterns to persist is via copying, we could have the science of memory including the science of copying. That way we could still call it the "science of heredity", "science of persistence", or "genetics". Persisting without copying is a topic unto itself - but perhaps one that is not worthy enough one to have its own separate field.
This whole situation seems rather unfortunate. The sciences of persistence and memory seem fragmented, while the science of copying barely seems to exist - outside of biology.
Perhaps my perspective on this is a bit different from other scientists. For me, storage and copying are fundamental operations. They are certainly fundamental operations inside computers. If you think about it, they are pretty fundamental operators in the rest of the world as well. To have a science of memory and a science of copying seems like a natural way to carve the world up to me. However, what we currently have seems to be a long way from this.
One of the nice bits of Peter Godfrey-Smith's book Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection is his three-dimensional diagrams of Darwinian processes.
However, he doesn't draw what seems to me to be the most obvious diagram - featuring fidelity, fecundity and longevity. So, I rendered it myself:
 Lewontin's pioneering 1970 article " The Units of Selection" was an important milestone for universal Darwinism, and helped to promote the science of cultural evolution. Lewontin wrote:
Darwin's scheme embodies three principles (Lewontin 1):
- Different individuals in a population have different morphologies, physiologies, and behaviors (phenotypic variation).
- Different phenotypes have different rates of survival and reproduction in different environments (differential fitness).
- There is a correlation between parents and offspring in the contribution of each to future generations (fitness is heritable).
These three principles embody the principle of evolution by natural selection. While they hold, a population will undergo evolutionary change. It is important to note a certain generality in the principles. No particular mechanism of inheritance is specified, but only a correlation in fitness between parent and offspring. The population would evolve whether the correlation between parent and offspring arose from Mendelian, cytoplasmic, or cultural inheritance.
Lewontin's principles boil down to variation, selection and heredity.
Lewontin offers a description of evolution by natural selection. However, other types of evolution don't require fitness to be heritable - namely genetic drift. In some respects, it would be better to have a characterization of evolution, rather than just one mechanism of evolution.
Note that Lewontin's principles don't guarantee that adaptations will accumulate. The conditions required for cumulative adaptive evolution are much more demanding. Lewontin's principles cover devolution and the loss of adaptations as much as adaptive evolution.
Lastly, Lewontin's principles tend to lead to a kind-of distorted neo-Darwinian perspective. They are a bit vague about what counts as a "parent" and what counts as an "offspring" - but they clearly include splitting, but make no reference to "joining". Merging is very important in evolution - and should be classified as a form of evolutionary change. Merging includes symbiosis and sex. The most common forms of merging involve parasitism by viruses - which are ubiquitous.
Merging has been systematically neglected by evolutionary theorists in the past. It still needs more emphasis.
 In the chapter in my memetics book about classification I proposed classifying memes by substrate. Substrates can be usefully grouped into types as follows:
- Memes
- Neuromemes (brains)
- Artimemes (artifacts)
- Actimemes (behaviours)
This is proposed as a more modern-sounding alternative to the (rather dubious) mentifact / artifact / sociofact classification scheme - originally proposed by Julian Huxley.
We may additionally need names for memes inside computers (a subset of artimemes) and memes represented as signals.
For signals, there's maybe "vibramemes" - since most signals take the form of waves (audio, visual, radio and electrical signals are all mediated by waves).
Or maybe we could have a category that grouped memes inside minds and memes inside computers together.
 Memetic linkage uses a distance metric to help determine the chance of two contiguous pieces of cultural information being inherited together. Where you have a distance metric, you can use it to do a kind of dimensional analysis. Not the kind of dimensional analysis where you compare the units of different quantities, but the kind where you calculate the number of dimensions from multiple distance measurements. This is sometimes known as a Hausdorff dimension.
Dimensional analysis of memes clearly shows that most memes are one or two dimensional.
Speech is one dimensional. Images are two-dimensional. Writing consists of two-dimensional
characters, arranged in a one-dimensional stream, coiled up in two dimensions on pages.
Videos are mostly two dimensional. The limit on the dimensionality of memes generally
matches the dimensional limits on our audio and visual sensors.
Are there any higher dimensional memes? In theory, brains and computers can
create simulations of higher-dimensional spaces. The brain routinely constructs a
three-dimensional model of the world, and movie directors could potentially
transmit their three-dimensional models to others - in which case maybe there
will be some three-dimensional memetic linkage.
Maybe. It's not easy to produce compelling examples of cases where three-dimensional
linkage inside brains has been significant. Another main case for higher dimensional memes
involves computers. Computers can potentially create hyperspaces with large numbers of
dimensions, and transmit these verbatim to other computers. No doubt in the future
there will be good examples of higher dimensional memes inside computers. Another potential case of three-dimensional memes is three-dimensional artifacts. While such objects are clearly three-dimensional, the memes that produce them are rarely three-dimensional. Instead, they often reside in factories and manufacturing facilities as one-dimensional construction recipies and two-dimensional plans. However, perhaps it can be granted that some three-dimensional artifacts probably represent three-dimensional memeplexes.
However, I think that today, the bottom line is that one- and two-dimensional memes and memeplexes dominate the ideosphere.
In Three Waves of Evolutionary Thought, David Sloan Wilson proposes a classification scheme for Darwin's progress:
- Evolution in the life sciences;
- Evolution in the human sciences;
- Evolutionary engineering.
This isn't completely unreasonable, but it seems more regular to me to classify Darwin's progress by application domain:
- Organic evolution;
- Cultural evolution;
- Psychological evolution;
- Developmental evolution;
- Physical evolution.
Cultural evolution is what memetics is all about - that's the revolution that's going on now.
Psychological evolution seems to me to be lagging behind cultural evolution. It's the next big domain where Darwinian evolutionary theory will be applied.
Developmental evolution covers psychological evolution, immunological evolution, and other aspects of development.
Physical evolution could be seen as being a synonym for universal Darwinism. It's an umbrella category which includes all evolving phenomena. This seems to have been the area of Darwinism which has proved hardest for people to grasp.
 From time to time, I have pondered whether memetics could best dispense with its baggage by rebranding itself.
A bunch of dubious ideas have been promoted under the memetics banner - including the idea that memes should be based on imitation above other forms of social learning, the misleading "replicator" terminology and the internalism school.
Perhaps - I thought - the nonsense could be ditched with a rebranding exercise: "rigorous memetics" - or something like that.
The problem with this idea is that there isn't really anything wrong with memetics, except in the eyes of its critics. Neomemetics would have just been practically the same thing as memetics - with some helpful "clarifications" - to stop the critics targetting the nonsense.
Of course, there's a precident for doing just that - in the form of neo-Darwinism - though neo-Darwinism has not worked out too well.
Anyway, if individual learning is to be included under the memetics umbrella, that would be a radical change - affecting the very foundations of the field.
I think the case for doing this is fairly strong - and my proposal for how to do it actually makes few changes to memetics - although it does involve the definition of "culture".
The other issue - if we are considering expanding the domain of the meme - is to consider a further expansion - to include all environmental inheritance. That would make memes synonyms for my proposed unit of environmental inheritance: xemes.
However, the concept of "environmental inheritance" cross-cuts the propsed idea of "neomemetics". Social learning fits into the "environmental inheritance" category - while copying of ideas during individual learning does not - and yet social learning and individual learning are deeply interconencted processes. "Environmental inheritance" is still an interesting category - but giving it an elevated role is just not going to work very well - because it does not include individual learning.
At the moment, neomemetics is just an idea. I am not convinced that a rebranding exercise would help more than it would hinder. However, the possibility is something to think about.
 One of the most obvious classification schemes for memes places them into categories of "beneficial" and "deleterious". From the perspective of the host, memes are usually either good for the host, or bad for them. However, there are some issues associated with how to measure the value of memes. One issue is what we are calculating "benefit" with respect to. Host genetic fitness is the most obvious candidate - but there are some other possibilities. Perhaps we should be considering the values of the host's brain. For example, contraceptives might have a negative effect on host fitness - but a host might still want to use them to fulfill percieved goals - for example of having fun while not having kids. Another issue is that "benefit" is rather subjective. Obesity and smoking memes are bad for most people - however, the bosses of the companies that promote associated products benefit from them receiving a wide circulation. The government is one candidate perspective to consider. For example, polygamy memes may benefit a minority of male polygamists, but are judged in many areas to be detrimental to society - and the practice is often banned by the government. Bad memes are sometimes called "toxic memes". Toxic memes are sometimes subcategorised according to who they are bad for - as follows: - Auto-toxic memes are bad for their own host;
- Exo-toxic memes are bad for others.
Memes vary considerably in the level of evangelism they produce in their hosts. As a result there is a spectrum of evangelism.
  On one end of the spectrum are highly evangelical memes - which are good at using host resources to spread between hosts. Religions and causes tend to be evangelical.
At the other end are secretive memes - memes that the hosts mostly try to keep to themselves. For example, trade secrets are sometimes only socially transmitted between a highly select group of family members. There's a spectrum of evangelism between these two extremes. There are memes that are paid for - for example in the form of mathematics tuition. There are copyrighted memes - which can be copied at the risk of punishment from the government. Although there's a spectrum of evangelism, it has rather a binary flavour. At one end are memes whose hosts want to spread them. At the other are memes whose hosts want to keep them secret. These are secretive memes and evangelical memes respectively. Of course the memes themselves are not "secretive" - they are named after the class of behaviours they induce in their hosts. Memes that are at an intermediate position on the evangelism spectrum often induce both evangelical and secretive behaviours in their hosts. For example, authors may simultaneously hawk their wares to consumers while sending DMCA takedown notices to pirates. Secretive memes usually arise because of the value of information scarcity. When information in a domain is scarce, it becomes more valuable. For those that have it there is sometimes an incentive to not spread it around - in order to preserve its value. Obviously, secretive memes face a serious disadvantage as a result of them lacking mechanisms for getting their hosts to spread them. One might wonder how they spread at all. However, usually the information they contain is valuable - so others are motivated to try and obtain it without the permission of its hosts. Industrial espionage is one way that trade secrets become liberated, for example. Also, hosts may sometimes pass the secrets on to trusted parties - so they are not lost when they die.
 Douglas Hofstadter proposed that memes use "bait" as an incentive to get people to adopt them. He did this in the chapter entitled: On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures in his 1985 book Metamagical Themas. That chapter included an anatomical breakdown of memes - which included the concepts of "bait" and "hook".
The idea of "bait" seems as though it can be usefully broken down further, as follows: - Attract attention;
- Hold attention while pitch is delivered;
- Pitch;
There are two main ideas here: - Attracting attention is a ubiquitous component of memes. Visual memes use sharp edges, bright colours, motion and sometimes reflective elements that sparkle to attract people's attention.
- Delivering a pitch often takes time, and memes often need to hold people's attention, while it is being delivered.
 One of the deepest classification divisions in the science that studies heredity is the split between things that can be copied, and things that can't be copied.
Everyone is familiar with heritable elements that can be copied. DNA genes and memes fit this description. However, there are also things that persist across the generations that can't be copied. Ming vases, for example, are inherited down the generations - but attempts to copy them create items which are worthless. Brains are another item which persists across multiple generations (for example, my grandmother's brain still exists) - but cannot yet be fully copied. Fingerprints can't be fully copied either and nor can retinal vein patterns. Nor can I copy my mother. There are numerous other examples.
Uncopyable heredity is the less interesting kind. Heredity without copying is less common and it doesn't result in cumulative adaptations. However, it is essential for properly understanding evolution.
The division between copyable and uncopyable heredity elements is not necessarily a fixed one. Once we could not copy music very well - and now we can. Progress results in more things becoming copyable.
However, split between things that can be copied, and things that can't be copied still seems to be pretty deep and fundamental. I think we need terminology to describe copyable and uncopyable heredity elements.
Dawkins proposed the term "replicator" for heritable elements that can be copied. In his 1982 book, "The Extended Phenotype" he defined the term, as follows: I define a replicator as anything in the universe of which copies are made. Blackmore (1999, p.5) endorses this definition, saying: A replicator is anything of which copies are made However, the term seems to have led to much confusion among scientists, and we have multiple rebuttal papers claiming that replication is not necessary - for example, this one: Why replicators are not necessary for cultural evolution.
On one hand this seems to be obviously a misunderstanding - the critics are not paying attention to the definition that Dawkins is using - but on the other hand, the terminology Dawkins proposes does invite this kind of misunderstanding.
As I have explained in my video/essay Against Replicator Terminology - and also in my book - the replicator terminology has some serious issues - and should probably be abandoned.
However, this would leave a terminological void. What we really need is replacement terminology to refer to copyable and uncopyable heredity elements.
There is the term "reproducer". This is the solution proposed by Griesemer (2000a, 2000b) That term is rather overloaded - but it seems to be one of the best terms we currently have for copyable heredity elements. References
 Intracranial memetics is the subfield of memetics that deals with the dynamics of ideas and memes inside a single mind. Memes and ideas compete with other memes and ideas inside minds. Intracranial memetics studies these dynamics - and the other forces on memes while they are inside minds. Intercranial memetics is the subfield of memetics that deals with the dynamics of memes between minds. It covers interactions between memes and their environment while the memes are not inside minds. The dynamics of intercranial memetics and intracranial memetics have some differences - because the environments involved are very different. Intracranial memetics Intracranial memetics deals with memes inside a single mind. The memes compete with other memes for space and attention. They also compete with protomemes and other ideas for resources. Intracranial memetics deals with these dynamics. Intercranial memetics Intercranial memetics ideals with memes when they are between minds. Many of the selective forces that act on memes do so while they are not inside human minds. Many memes can be copied without being inside minds. They can also be destroyed, damaged, put into storage and transported around. Intercranial memetics deals with these dynamics. MiscThere's a nice Linus Pauling quote that refers to intracranial memetics: The way to get good ideas, is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. Martine Rothblatt's idea of "bemes" also relates to intracranial memetics. References
 Protomeme
is an abbreviation of prototype meme. It refers to a meme which
is under construction.
Before memes become fully-fledged memes they are protomemes. The definition of a meme
involves social sharing - but before memes can be shared they must first be
created - and often the creation takes place in a single mind. When a
meme is under construction it is called a protomeme.
Protomemes are usually part of what I have called
intracranial memetics -
the area of memetics that deals with memes when they are inside human brains.
Not all memes make it into the annals of history. Some protomemes go on to become failed memes.
As far as I know, the term "protomeme" was first used by Liane Gabora in 1997.
References
 The epidemic threshold refers to a threshold above which agents can spread explosively and cause epidemics. It is usually expressed in terms of the ratio between birth rate and death rate. If the ratio is larger than one, then an epidemic may result. If it is less than one then an epidemic becomes extremely unlikely. The epidemic threshold is an important concept in epidemiology. It has previously been applied to cultural evolution - for example by Seth Godin in Unleashing the Ideavirus (p.77) - though he called it the magic-number. Many factors influence the birth rates - including their level of virulence, their lifespan, whether they are defeated by attacks from the host immune system - and so on. Being above the epidemic threshold does not guarantee that an epidemic will result. Statistical fluctuations may result in extinction before an epidemic forms. Being below the epidemic threshold makes an epidemic extremely unlikely, though. The epidemic threshold is a pretty important idea in viral marketing. If your shareable item is below the threshold, and you get exponential decay - with negligibe viral effect. If it is above it, you could see exponential growth - as your marketing work is done for you by the masses. Diagram
Epidemic failure and success. This diagram shows the output from a very simple model of an epidemic. Infected hosts are plotted against time, from a fixed initial "seed" population. Different plot lines reflect different birth and death rates for the parasite. Economic significanceThe result of this is typically a non-linear R.O.I. on the marketing budget: - Below the epidemic threshold the effects are so small that you might as well not have bothered.
- Above the epidemic threshold you see explosive growth - then it is more likely that the marketing budget has been well spent.
Much the same model applies equally well to mutualists as well as pathogens. Big seed marketingA related idea is big seeding - which is another strategy for avoiding extinction. Tipping pointsMalcom Gladwell once wrote a book called The Tipping Point - which referred to essentially the same concept. For more about that, see our post on that topic. Note that the term epidemic threshold is also - rather confusingly - used to describe a number of hosts which need to be infected before an outbreak is classified as an epidemic. This post is not about that concept. References
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