Evolution's third replicator?

Sue Blackmore's latest article:

"Evolution's third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what?"

- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327191.500-evolutions-third-replicator-genes-memes-and-now-what.html?full=true

The article is another one based around Sue's own replicator classification scheme.

She defines memes in a way which few others seem to accept - in terms of behavioural imitation. This defines most modern culture as not being "memetic" - because the associated copying processes are often performed in a digital medium by computers - which are not "imitative" except in an extremely contrived sense.

Also, I find it extremely hard to credit that DNA was the first replicator. Wasn't there RNA before that? And PNA or TNA? And before that there were probably other replicators, based on crystal growth processes. The whole "third-replicator" terminology makes little sense to me.

I give Sue credit for recognising the significance of machines taking over from brains in the copying process. However, I think we differ on the issue of terminology.

Surely the most basic category here is that of cultural replicator - a replicator that can be deliberately written to by an intelligent agent. Whether the copier is a brain or a computer seems like a bit of an implementation detail to me. I think we should give replicators in this basic category our best name - namely "memes".

Replicators are informational - and so can be represented in any physical medium. Cultural replicators have existed in multiple media at least since the invention of writing, if not before.

A meme classification scheme that attempts to divide brains and computers would be challenging - since memes can replicate via both. Information can easily hop between different media - it is portable.

How companies have sex

"The new game is combining organizational DNA in unique and inventive ways."

- http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/05/sex.html

The anthropological perspective on memetics

A few critical articles on Neuroanthropology:

"We hate memes, pass it on...".

"Engaging & Dispatching Memetics";

"Brain-culture, memes, and choosing examples".

I looked briefly at the referenced "Engaging anthropology" By Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

There's too much here for me to bother addressing most of it - but it seems like a load of "sour grapes" and "not invented here" material from anthropologists. Apparently, memeticists do not make sufficient references to existing work on cultural diffusion by anthropologists.

We have seen this sort of thing before when Darwinism invaded the other social sciences - resistance from entrenched defenders of pre-Darwinian systems of thought who feel as though they are in a turf war.

Know your meme

There's a whole string of these videos.

They have a web site: http://knowyourmeme.com/

...and a Facebook fan site.

Perhaps start here:

Ex-Moonie on cult memes

She blames memes:

Matt Ridley on Evolution, Economics, and and "Ideas Having Sex"

Not much about memes - but it sounds as though there may be some in Matt's next book. See also:

Andrew Brown's "serious objections to memes"

In a recent article Andrew Brown published some supposedly "serious objections to memes".

He likened memes to phlogiston and said:

We're back to the invisible propagules. I don't believe they exist. I take a sky-fairyist view of their reality.

This is a simple misunderstanding. It is analogous to saying that information theory is wrong because it depends on mystical invisible propagules. There are no invisible propagules in information theory - or in memetics - except in Andrew Brown's imagination.

He writes:

What we know about the transmission of meaning, like that of memory, is that it involves continuous recreation rather than simple copying.

Since most cultural information has gone digital these days, it is indeed reproduced largely by simple copying - for example on peer-to-peer networks, or via "retweeting".

...but even back in the stone age, when that wasn't true, cultural evolution still took place. Evolution - by definition - doesn't depend on "simple copying". It involves the transmission of heritable information from one generation to the next. How that happens is an implementation detail, not a fundamental feature. So, this is not really a misunderstanding of memetics, it is a misunderstanding about the proper subject matter of evolutionary theory.

His other objection was that the term "meme" is redundant - since we already have the term "idea". The 213 million references to the term "meme" on Google give the lie to this critique. The term "meme" has different connotations to the term "idea". In particular "meme" invokes the concept of cultural evolution of shared information - whereas with the term "idea" there is no implication that it will ever make it out the head it arose in.

I wouldn't say Andrew's objections were "serious". "Vacuous" seems to be a more appropriate term.

List of all "Journal of Memetics" articles

A list of all the Journal of Memetics / Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission articles - with links to the papers.

Link: http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/all.html

Addendum: they have fixed the links on the front page now: http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/

Do Animals Have Memes?

Just to draw reader's attention to one of the "Journal of Memetics" articles - "Do Animals Have Memes?".

Article link: http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1999/vol3/reader_sm&laland_kn.html

It argues for the ubiquitous nature of memes among many animal species. It makes an excellent case that memetic transmission need not depend on imitation, and so that definitions of memes that invoke imitation are wrong.

The view the article criticises can be found here: Imitation and the definition of a meme.

Charles Darwin Tagged You in a Note on Facebook

The link: Charles Darwin Tagged You in a Note on Facebook

Subtitle: The evolutionary roots of Facebook's "25 Things" craze.

It is an article about the spread of infectious ideas through social networks.