Уничтожать; подбадривать, способствовать, подталкивать; авирулентность.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes.html
Dan DENNETT ON DANGEROUS MEMES
How many Creationists do we have in the room? Probably none. I think we're all Darwinians. And yet many Darwinians are anxious, a little uneasy -- would like to see some limits on just how far the Darwinism goes. It's all right. You know spider webs? Sure, they are products of evolution. The World Wide Web? Not so sure. Beaver dams, yes. Hoover Dam, no. What do they think it is that prevents the products of human ingenuity from being themselves, fruits of the tree of life, and hence, in some sense, obeying evolutionary rules? And yet people are interestingly resistant to the idea of applying evolutionary thinking to thinking -- to our thinking
Паук, бобер,; изобретательность; слушаться, подчиняться; (от глаг) сопротивляться
And so I'm going to talk a little bit about that, keeping in mind that we have a lot on the program here. So you're out in the woods, or you're out in the pasture, and you see this ant crawling up this blade of grass. It climbs up to the top, and it falls, and it climbs, and it falls, and it climbs -- trying to stay at the very top of the blade of grass. What is this ant doing? What is this in aid of? What goals is this ant trying to achieve by climbing this blade of grass? What's in it for the ant? And the answer is: nothing. There's nothing in it for the ant. Well then, why is it doing this? Is it just a fluke? Yeah, it's just a fluke. It's a lancet fluke. It's a little brain worm. It's a parasitic brain worm that has to get into the stomach of a sheep or a cow in order to continue its life cycle. Salmon swim upstream to get to their spawning grounds, and lancet flukes commandeer a passing ant, crawl into its brain, and drive it up a blade of grass like an all-terrain vehicle. So there's nothing in it for the ant. The ant's brain has been hijacked by a parasite that infects the brain, inducing suicidal behavior. Pretty scary.
Муравей, ползти, разновидность плоского глиста, ланцет; нерест; земной; средство передвижения; угонять
Well, does anything like that happen with human beings? This is all on behalf of a cause other than one's own genetic fitness, of course. Well, it may already have occurred to you that Islam means "surrender," or "submission of self-interest to the will of Allah." Well, it's ideas -- not worms -- that hijack our brains. Now, am I saying that a sizable minority of the world's population has had their brain hijacked by parasitic ideas? No, it's worse than that. Most people have. (Laughter) There are a lot of ideas to die for. Freedom, if you're from New Hampshire. (Laughter) Justice. Truth. Communism. Many people have laid down their lives for communism, and many have laid down their lives for capitalism. And many for Catholicism. And many for Islam. These are just a few of the ideas that are to die for. They're infectious.
Дело; сдаваться, капитулировать; подчинение;
Yesterday, Amory Lovins spoke about "infectious repititis." It was a term of abuse, in effect. This is unthinking engineering. Well, most of the cultural spread that goes on is not brilliant, new, out-of-the-box thinking. It's "infectious repetitis," and we might as well try to have a theory of what's going on when that happens so that we can understand the conditions of infection. Hosts work hard to spread these ideas to others. I myself am a philosopher, and one of our occupational hazards is that people ask us what the meaning of life is. And you have to have a bumper sticker, you know. You have to have a statement. So, this is mine. ;
Злоупотребление, неправильное использование; риск, опасность
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it. Most of us -- now that the "Me Decade" is well in the past -- now we actually do this. One set of ideas or another have simply replaced our biological imperatives in our own lives. This is what our summum bonum is. It's not maximizing the number of grandchildren we have. Now, this is a profound biological effect. It's the subordination of genetic interest to other interests. And no other species does anything at all like it.
Глубокий, подчинение ; конечная цель, итог
Well, how are we going to think about this? It is, on the one hand, a biological effect, and a very large one. Unmistakable. Now, what theories do we want to use to look at this? Well, many theories. But how could something tie them together? The idea of replicating ideas; ideas that replicate by passing from brain to brain. Richard Dawkins, whom you'll be hearing later in the day, invented the term "memes," and put forward the first really clear and vivid version of this idea in his book "The Selfish Gene." Now here am I talking about his idea. Well, you see, it's not his. Yes -- he started it. But it's everybody's idea now. And he's not responsible for what I say about memes. I'm responsible for what I say about memes.
Повторять, копировать, тиражировать, воспроизводить;
Actually, I think we're all responsible for not just the intended effects of our ideas, but for their likely misuses. So it is important, I think, to Richard, and to me, that these ideas not be abused and misused. They're very easy to misuse. That's why they're dangerous. And it's just about a full-time job trying to prevent people who are scared of these ideas from caricaturing them and then running off to one dire purpose or another. So we have to keep plugging away, trying to correct the misapprehensions so that only the benign and useful variants of our ideas continue to spread. But it is a problem. We don't have much time, and I'm going to go over just a little bit of this and cut out, because there's a lot of other things that are going to be said.
Неправильное использование; помешать, предотвратить; мерзкий, отвратительный; недоразумение; благоприятный;
So let me just point out: memes are like viruses. That's what Richard said, back in '93. And you might think, "Well, how can that be? I mean, a virus is -- you know, it's stuff! What's a meme made of?" Yesterday, Negroponte was talking about viral telecommunications but -- what's a virus? A virus is a string of nucleic acid with attitude. (Laughter) That is, there is something about it that tends to make it replicate better than the competition does. And that's what a meme is. It's an information packet with attitude. What's a meme made of? What are bits made of, Mom? Not silicon. They're made of information, and can be carried in any physical medium. What's a word made of? Sometimes when people say, "Do memes exist?" I say, "Well, do words exist? Are they in your ontology?" If they are, words are memes that can be pronounced.Нуклеиновая кислота; позиция, отношение,установка
Then there's all the other memes that can't be pronounced. There are different species of memes. Remember the Shakers? Gift to be simple? Simple, beautiful furniture? And, of course, they're basically extinct now. And one of the reasons is that among the creed of Shaker-dom is that one should be celibate. Not just the priests. Everybody. Well, it's not so surprising that they've gone extinct. (Laughter) But in fact that's not why they went extinct. They survived as long as they did at a time when the social safety nets weren't there. And there were lots of widows and orphans, people like that, who needed a foster home. And so they had a ready supply of converts. And they could keep it going. And, in principle, it could've gone on forever, with perfect celibacy on the part of the hosts. The idea being passed on through proselytizing, instead of through the gene line.
Вымерший; кредо; сирота; сиротский дом; неофит; привлекать на свою сторону, обращать в свою веру
So the ideas can live on in spite of the fact that they're not being passed on genetically. A meme can flourish in spite of having a negative impact on genetic fitness. After all, the meme for Shaker-dom was essentially a sterilizing parasite. There are other parasites that do this -- which render the host sterile. It's part of their plan. They don't have to have minds to have a plan.
Процветать; влияние; приводить в какое-либо состояние, превращать;
I'm just going to draw your attention to just one of the many implications of the memetic perspective, which I recommend. I've not time to go into more of it. In Jared Diamond's wonderful book, "Guns, Germs and Steel," he talks about how it was germs, more than guns and steel, that conquered the new hemisphere -- the Western hemisphere -- that conquered the rest of the world. When European explorers and travelers spread out, they brought with them the germs that they had become essentially immune to, that they had learned how to tolerate over hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands of years, of living with domesticated animals who were the sources of those pathogens. And they just wiped out -- these pathogens just wiped out the native people, who had no immunity to them at all
.Подтекст, смысл; перспектива; микроб, зародыш; стереть с лица земли (зд)
And we're doing it again. We're doing it this time with toxic ideas. Yesterday, a number of people -- Nicholas Negroponte and others -- spoke about all the wonderful things that are happening when our ideas get spread out, thanks to all the new technology all over the world. And I agree. It is largely wonderful. Largely wonderful. But among all those ideas that inevitably flow out into the whole world thanks to our technology, are a lot of toxic ideas. Now, this has been realized for some time. Sayyid Qutb is one of the founding fathers of fanatical Islam, one of the ideologues that inspired Osama bin Laden. "One has only to glance at its press films, fashion shows, beauty contests, ballrooms, wine bars and broadcasting stations." Memes.
Вдохновлять
These memes are spreading around the world and they are wiping out whole cultures. They are wiping out languages. They are wiping out traditions and practices. And it's not our fault, anymore than it's our fault when our germs lay waste to people that haven't developed the immunity. We have an immunity to all of the junk that lies around the edges of our culture. We're a free society, so we let pornography and all these things -- we shrug them off. They're like a mild cold. They're not a big deal for us. But we should recognize that for many people in the world, they are a big deal. And we should be very alert to this. As we spread our education and our technology, one of the things that we are doing is we're the vectors of memes that are correctly viewed by the hosts of many other memes as a dire threat to their favorite memes -- the memes that they are prepared to die for.
Хлам; пожать плечами настороже
Well now, how are we going to tell the good memes from the bad memes? That is not the job of the science of memetics. Memetics is morally neutral. And so it should be. This is not the place for hate and anger. If you've had a friend who's died of AIDS, then you hate HIV. But the way to deal with that is to do science, and understand how it spreads and why in a morally neutral perspective.
Get the facts. Work out the implications. There's plenty of room for moral passion once we've got the facts and can figure out the best thing to do. And, as with germs, the trick is not to try to annihilate them. You will never annihilate the germs. What you can do, however, is foster public health measures and the like that will encourage the evolution of avirulence. That will encourage the spread of relatively benign mutations of the most toxic varieties. That's all the time I have, so thank you very much for your attention.
Уничтожать; подбадривать, способствовать, подталкивать; авирулентность.
Answer the questions:
1. What is the difference detween Creationists and Darwinians?
2. Why does the lecturer resort to the example of an ant?
3. What are the examples of vehicles that can be hijacked?
4. How do ideas spread in our world? Describe the mechanism.
5. What is your idea of happiness?
6. What kinds of imperatives can govern a person’s life?
7. Could you replace (restructure) the list of your life’s priorities ?
8. What is summum bonum?
9. Who invented the term ‘memes’?
10. Are people responsible for the ideas that they give birth to? How should they protect the world against possible misapprehension of the term? Give examples of such cases.
11. Compare the definition of a virus and a meme. Comment on your opinion.
12. What is the Shaker’s creed?
13. What do you think about the idea of being passed on through proselytizing?
14. Can ideas flourish by themselves, without people who promote them?
15. Which is the strongest weapon – a gun or a germ?
16. Give examples of toxic ideas and your comment.
17. What would be your plan for protecting the world against infectious memes?
18. What is the lecturer’s idea of a healthy world?
19. Is it worthwhile trying to annihilate virulent memes? What should be done?
Meme
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
|
A meme ( 
/ˈmiːm/; MEEM)[1]) is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.[3]
The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "something imitated", from μιμεῖσθαι mimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμος mimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion and the technology of building arches.[6]
Proponents theorize that memes may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance, each of which influence a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.[7]
A field of study called memetics[8] arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that academic study can examine memes empirically. However, developments in Some commentators[who?] question the idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete unitsneuroimaging may make empirical study possible.[9]. Others, including Dawkins himself, have argued that this usage of the term is the result of a misunderstanding of the original proposal.[10]
Summum bonum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Summum bonum is an expression used in philosophy, particularly in medieval philosophy and in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to describe the ultimate importance, the singular and most ultimate end which human beings ought to pursue. The summum bonum is generally thought of as being an end in itself, and at the same time containing all other goods. In Christian philosophy, the highest good is usually defined as the life of the righteous, the life led in Communion with God and according to God's precepts. The concept, as well as the philosophical and theological consequences drawn from the purported existence of a more or less clearly defined summum bonum, could be traced back to the earliest forms of monotheism: for instance, Zoroastrianism and Judaism[citation needed]. In the Western world, the concept was introduced by the neoplatonic philosophers[citation needed], and described as a feature of the Christian God by Saint Augustine in De natura boni (On the Nature of Good, written circa 399). Augustine denies the positive existence of absolute evil, describing a world with God as the supreme good at the center, and defining different grades of evil as different stages of remoteness from that center[citation needed].
сущ.
She had the ingenuity to succeed where everyone else had failed. — У неё хватило ловкости преуспеть там, где другие потерпели неудачу. — human ingenuity Синонимы :
| ||||
| fluke [flu:k] | у |
- I сущ.; зоол.
o 1)
§ а) камбала, палтус
§ б) плоская рыба
o 2) трематода (вид плоского глиста)
o 3) (flukes) хвостовой плавник
·
o кита (сдвоенный)
- II сущ.; = flue
o 1) мор. лапа (якоря)
o 2) амер. зазубрина гарпуна
- III
o 1. сущ.; разг.удача, везение; счастливая случайность
by a (pure) fluke — по счастливой случайности, по чистому везению
by some amazing fluke — по поразительно удачному совпадению
It was a complete fluke that we just happened to be in the same place at the same time. — Это была абсолютная случайность, что мы оказались в одно время в одном месте.
o 2. гл.; разг.
§ 1) получить по счастливый случайности
§ 2) сделать удачный удар (во время игры в бильярд)
| lancet ['lɑ:n(t)sɪt] | у |
сущ.ланцет
| terrain [tə'reɪn] | у |
- 1. сущ.
o 1) местность, территория, район
harsh / rough terrain — суровая местность
hilly terrain — холмистая местность
mountainous terrain — гористая местность
smooth terrain — равнинная местность
terrain of attack — амер. район наступления
Синонимы:
region, district
o 2) физические особенности местности; топография
- 2. прил.земной
— terrain flying
retorted abuse — ответное оскорбление shower / stream of abuse — поток брани, ругательств a term of abuse — ругательство to bombard smb. with abuse — осыпать кого-л. оскорблениями to break out into abuse — разразиться бранью to exchange abuse — оскорблять друг друга to heap, shower abuse (up)on smb. — осыпать, поливать бранью кого-л. to receive abuse — подвергаться нападкам She took a lot of abuse from him. — Она терпела от него бесчисленные оскорбления. Синоним: insult
child abuse, abuse of children — жестокое обращение с детьми This car has taken a lot of abuse. — С этой машиной очень плохо обращались. — domestic abuse
abuse of power — злоупотребление властью alcohol abuse — злоупотребление алкоголем drug abuse — употребление наркотиков drug of abuse — наркотик
abuse of words — неправильное или необычное употребление слов abuses of figures — подтасовка статистических данных
— sexual abuse
to abuse smb. left and right — честить кого-л. на чём свет стоит It is the characteristic of the English drunkard to abuse his wife and family. — Для английского пьяницы типично орать на своих родных. Синонимы: blackguard, clapperclaw
— abuse a child — abuse alcohol — abuse a horse
to abuse one's eyesight — перенапрягать зрение Синонимы: wrong, misuse
to abuse one's rights — злоупотреблять правами to abuse one's authority — превышать свои полномочия to abuse smb.'s complaisance — злоупотреблять чьей-л. любезностью I dare not promise that I may not abuse the opportunity so temptingly offered to me. — Я просто не смею пообещать, что не злоупотреблю столь соблазнительно открывшейся мне возможностью. The greatest increase in libido was often noted in women, especially those who had been relatively frigid prior to abusing amphetamines. — Но наибольший рост либидо часто отмечался у женщин, особенно у тех, кто страдал фригидностью до того, как стал принимать в чрезмерных количествах амфетамины.
And abused her all the night until the morning. (Bible) — И ругались над ней всю ночь до утра. (Книга Судей, гл. 19, ст. 25)
прил.
dire consequences — печальные последствия Синонимы: dreadful 1., evil 2., horrible 1., mournful, terrible
dire days — тяжёлые дни Синонимы: dismal 1., oppressive
dire necessity — жестокая необходимость dire need — крайняя нужда Синоним: extreme 2.
I didn't say anything so dire, did I? — Я ведь не сказал ничего такого страшного, не так ли?
сущ.
in germ — в зародыше, в зачаточном состоянии wheat germ — пшеничный зародыш
germs multiply — микробы размножаются (some) germs cause disease — (некоторые) микроорганизмы вызывают болезни germ warfare — война с применением бактериологического оружия Синонимы: microbe, microorganism, bug
прил.
Синонимы: good, kind, humane
His affairs began to wear a more benign aspect. — Его дела стали налаживаться.
сущ. неправильное представление; недоразумение to be under misapprehension — быть в заблуждении We labored under the misapprehension that we would receive help. — Мы работали, надеясь, что нам окажут помощь, но мы заблуждались.
гл.
Синоним: nurture 2.
Синоним: encourage
the proper / right / true perspective — верная, правильная перспектива from a perspective — с точки зрения in perspective — в перспективе the wrong perspective — неправильная, неверная перспектива to look at smth. in perspective — смотреть на что-л. в перспективе to view a situation from a new perspective — увидеть ситуацию под новым углом, с новой точки зрения
perspective drawing — рисунок, сделанный по законам перспективы perspective geo Memetics is a controversial theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene .[1] It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. The meme, analogous to a gene, was conceived as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.) which is "hosted" in one or more individual minds, and which can reproduce itself, thereby jumping from mind to mind. Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen—when adopting the intentional stance[1][2]—as an idea-replicator reproducing itself in a new host. As with genetics, particularly under a Dawkinsian interpretation, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host. Memetics is also notable for sidestepping the traditional concern with the truth of ideas and beliefs. Instead, it is interested in their success. The Usenet newsgroup alt.memetics started in 1993 with peak posting years in the mid to late 1990s.[3] The Journal of Memetics was published electronically from 1997 to 2005.[4]
History of the term In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins used the term meme to describe a unit of human cultural transmission analogous to the gene, arguing that replication also happens in culture, albeit in a different sense. In his book, Dawkins contended that the meme is a unit of information residing in the brain and is the mutating replicator in human cultural evolution. It is a pattern that can influence its surroundings – that is, it has causal agency – and can propagate. This created great debate among sociologists, biologists, and scientists of other disciplines, because Dawkins himself did not provide a sufficient explanation of how the replication of units of information in the brain controls human behaviour and ultimately culture, since the principal topic of the book was genetics. Dawkins apparently did not intend to present a comprehensive theory of memetics in The Selfish Gene, but rather coined the term meme in a speculative spirit. Accordingly, the term "unit of information" came to be defined in different ways by many scientists. The modern memetics movement dates from the mid 1980s. A January 1983 Metamagical Themas column[5] by Douglas Hofstadter, in Scientific American, was influential as was his 1985 book of the same name. "Memeticist" was coined as analogous to "geneticist" originally in The Selfish Gene. Later Arel Lucas suggested that the discipline that studies memes and their connections to human and other carriers of them be known as memetics by analogy with 'genetics.'"[6] Dawkins' The Selfish Gene has been a factor in drawing in people of disparate intellectual backgrounds. Another stimulus was the publication in 1991 of Consciousness Explained by Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett, which incorporated the meme concept into a theory of the mind. In his 1991[7] essay "Viruses of the Mind", Richard Dawkins used memetics to explain the phenomenon of religious belief and the various characteristics of organised religions. By then, memetics had also become a theme appearing in fiction (e.g. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash). However, the foundation of memetics in full modern incarnation originates in the publication in 1996 of two books by authors outside the academic mainstream: Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by former Microsoft executive turned motivational speaker and professional poker player, Richard Brodie, and Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch, a mathematician and philosopher who worked for many years as an engineer at Fermilab. Lynch claimed to have conceived his theory totally independently of any contact with academics in the cultural evolutionary sphere, and apparently was not even aware of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene until his book was very close to publication. Around the same time as the publication of the books by Lynch and Brodie the e-journal Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission appeared on the web. It was first hosted by the Centre for Policy Modelling at Manchester Metropolitan University but later taken over by Francis Heylighen of the CLEA research institute at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The e-journal soon became the central point for publication and debate within the nascent memeticist community. (There had been a short-lived paper memetics publication starting in 1990, the Journal of Ideas edited by Elan Moritz.[8]) In 1999, Susan Blackmore, a psychologist at the University of the West of England, published The Meme Machine, which more fully worked out the ideas of Dennett, Lynch, and Brodie and attempted to compare and contrast them with various approaches from the cultural evolutionary mainstream, as well as providing novel, and controversial, memetic-based theories for the evolution of language and the human sense of individual selfhood. The term is a transliteration[citation needed] of the Ancient Greek μιμητής (mimēt ḗ s), meaning "imitator, pretender", and was used in 1904, by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon, best known for his development of the engram theory of memory, in his work Die mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen, translated into English in 1921 as The Mneme. Until Daniel Schacter published Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory in 2000, Semon's work had little influence, though it was quoted extensively in Erwin Schrödinger's prescient 1956 Tarner Lecture "Mind and Matter". Internalists and externalists The memetics movement split almost immediately into two. The first group were those who wanted to stick to Dawkins' definition of a meme as "a unit of cultural transmission". Gibran Burchett, another memeticist responsible for helping to research and co-coin the term memetic engineering, along with Leveious Rolando and Larry Lottman, has stated that a meme can be defined, more precisely, as "a unit of cultural information that can be copied, located in the brain". This thinking is more in line with Dawkins' second definition of the meme in his book The Extended Phenotype. The second group wants to redefine memes as observable cultural artifacts and behaviors. However, in contrast to those two positions, Blackmore does not reject either concept of external or internal memes.[9] These two schools became known as the "internalists" and the "externalists." Prominent internalists included both Lynch and Brodie; the most vocal externalists included Derek Gatherer, a geneticist from Liverpool John Moores University, and William Benzon, a writer on cultural evolution and music. The main rationale for externalism was that internal brain entities are not observable, and memetics cannot advance as a science, especially a quantitative science, unless it moves its emphasis onto the directly quantifiable aspects of culture. Internalists countered with various arguments: that brain states will eventually be directly observable with advanced technology, that most cultural anthropologists agree that culture is about beliefs and not artifacts, or that artifacts cannot be replicators in the same sense as mental entities (or DNA) are replicators. The debate became so heated that a 1998 Symposium on Memetics, organised as part of the 15th International Conference on Cybernetics, passed a motion calling for an end to definitional debates. McNamara demonstrated in 2011 that functional connectivity profiling using neuroimaging tools enables the observation of the processing of internal memes (i-memes) in response to external e-memes.[10] An advanced statement of the internalist school came in 2002 with the publication of The Electric Meme, by Robert Aunger, an anthropologist from the University of Cambridge. Aunger also organised a conference in Cambridge in 1999, at which prominent sociologists and anthropologists were able to give their assessment of the progress made in memetics to that date. This resulted in the publication of Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science, edited by Aunger and with a foreword by Dennett, in 2000. Maturity In 2005, the Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission ceased publication and published a set of articles on the future of memetics. The website states that although "there was to be a relaunch...after several years nothing has happened".[11] Susan Blackmore has left the University of the West of England to become a freelance science writer and now concentrates more on the field of consciousness and cognitive science. Derek Gatherer moved to work as a computer programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, although he still occasionally publishes on memetics-related matters. Richard Brodie is now climbing the world professional poker rankings. Aaron Lynch disowned the memetics community and the words "meme" and "memetics" (without disowning the ideas in his book), adopting the self-description "thought contagionist". Lynch lost his previous funding from a private sponsor and after his book royalties declined, he was unable to support himself as a private memetics/thought-contagion consultant.[citation needed] He died in 2005. Susan Blackmore (2002) re-stated the definition of meme as: whatever is copied from one person to another person, whether habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said that memes, like genes, are replicators in the sense as defined by Dawkins.[12] That is, they are information that is copied. Memes are copied by imitation, teaching and other methods. The copies are not perfect: memes are copied with variation; moreover, they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Only some of the variants can survive. The combination of these three elements (copies; variation; competition for survival) forms precisely the condition for Darwinian evolution, and so memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called co-adapted meme complexes, or memeplexes. In her definition, the way that a meme replicates is through imitation. This requires brain capacity to generally imitate a model or selectively imitate the model. Since the process of social learning varies from one person to another, the imitation process cannot be said to be completely imitated. The sameness of an idea may be expressed with different memes supporting it. This is to say that the mutation rate in memetic evolution is extremely high, and mutations are even possible within each and every interaction of the imitation process. It becomes very interesting when we see that a social system composed of a complex network of microinteractions exists, but at the macro level an order emerges to create culture. Criticism See also: Criticism of meme theory This evolutionary model of cultural information transfer is based on the concept that units of information, or "memes", have an independent existence, are self-replicating, and are subject to selective evolution through environmental forces.[13] Starting from a proposition put forward in the writings of Richard Dawkins, it has since turned into a new area of study, one that looks at the self-replicating units of culture. It has been proposed that just as memes are analogous to genes, memetics is analogous to genetics. Memetics has been deemed a pseudoscience on several fronts.[13] Its proponents' assertions have been labeled "untested, unsupported or incorrect."[13] Luis Benitez-Bribiesca, a critic of memetics, calls it "a pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the serious study of consciousness and cultural evolution" among other things. As factual criticism, he refers to the lack of a code script for memes, as the DNA is for genes, and to the fact that the meme mutation mechanism (i.e., an idea going from one brain to another) is too unstable (low replication accuracy and high mutation rate), which would render the evolutionary process chaotic.[14] Another criticism comes from semiotics, (e.g., Deacon,[15] Kull[16]) stating that the concept of meme is a primitivized concept of Sign. Meme is thus described in memetics as a sign without its triadic nature. In other words, meme is a degenerate sign, which includes only its ability of being copied. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs. Mary Midgley criticises memetics for at least two reasons: One, culture is not best understood by examining its smallest parts, as culture is pattern-like, comparable to an ocean current. Many more factors, historical and others, should be taken into account than only whatever particle culture is built from. Two, if memes are not thoughts (and thus not cognitive phenomena), as Daniel C. Dennett insists in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", then their ontological status is open to question, and memeticists (who are also reductionists) may be challenged whether memes even exist. Questions can extend to whether the idea of "meme" is itself a meme, or is a true concept. New developments Dawkins responds in A Devil's Chaplain that there are actually two different types of memetic processes (controversial and informative). The first is a type of cultural idea, action, or expression, which does have high variance; for instance, a student of his who had inherited some of the mannerisms of Wittgenstein. However, he also describes a self-correcting meme, highly resistant to mutation. As an example of this, he gives origami patterns in elementary schools – except in rare cases, the meme is either passed on in the exact sequence of instructions, or (in the case of a forgetful child) terminates. This type of meme tends not to evolve, and to experience profound mutations in the rare event that it does. Some memeticists[who?], however, see this as more of a continuum of meme strength, rather than two types of memes. Another definition, given by Hokky Situngkir, tried to offer a more rigorous formalism for the meme, memeplexes, and the deme, seeing the meme as a cultural unit in a cultural complex system. It is based on the Darwinian genetic algorithm with some modifications to account for the different patterns of evolution seen in genes and memes. In the method of memetics as the way to see culture as a complex adaptive system, he describes a way to see memetics as an alternative methodology of cultural evolution. However, there are as many possible definitions that are credited to the word "meme". For example, in the sense of computer simulation the term memetic algorithm is used to define a particular computational viewpoint. The possibility of quantitative analysis of memes using neuroimaging tools and the suggestion that such studies have already been done was given by McNamara (2011).[10] This author proposes hyperscanning (concurrent scanning of two communicating individuals in two separate MRI machines) as a key tool in the future for investigating memetics. Memetics can be simply understood as a method for scientific analysis of cultural evolution. However, proponents of memetics as described in the Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission believe that 'memetics' has the potential to be an important and promising analysis of culture using the framework of evolutionary concepts. Keith Henson who wrote Memetics and the Modular-Mind (Analog Aug. 1987)[17] makes the case that memetics needs to incorporate evolutionary psychology to understand the psychological traits of a meme's host.[18] This is especially true of time-varying, meme-amplification host-traits, such as those leading to wars.[19][20] Recently, Christopher diCarlo has developed the idea of 'memetic equilibrium' to describe a cultural compatible state with biological equilibrium. In "Problem Solving and Neurotransmission in the Upper Paleolithic" (in press), diCarlo argues that as human consciousness evolved and developed, so too did our ancestors' capacity to consider and attempt to solve environmental problems in more conceptually sophisticated ways. Understood in this way, problem solving amongst a particular group, when considered satisfactory, often produces a feeling of environmental control, stability, in short—memetic equilibrium. But the pay-off is not merely practical, providing purely functional utility—it is biochemical and it comes in the form of neurotransmitters. The relationship between a gradually emerging conscious awareness and sophisticated languages in which to formulate representations combined with the desire to maintain biological equilibrium, generated the necessity for memetic equilibrium to fill in conceptual gaps in terms of understanding three very important aspects in the Upper Paleolithic: causality, morality, and mortality. The desire to explain phenomena in relation to maintaining survival and reproductive stasis, generated a normative stance in the minds of our ancestors—Survival/Reproductive Value (or S-R Value). The application of memetics to a difficult complex social system problem, environmental sustainability, has recently been attempted at thwink.org. Using meme types and memetic infection in several stock and flow simulation models, Jack Harich has demonstrated several interesting phenomena that are best, and perhaps only, explained by memes. One model, The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace, argues that the fundamental reason corruption is the norm in politics is due to an inherent structural advantage of one feedback loop pitted against another. Another model, The Memetic Evolution of Solutions to Difficult Problems, uses memes, the evolutionary algorithm, and the scientific method to show how complex solutions evolve over time and how that process can be improved. The insights gained from these models are being used to engineer memetic solution elements to the sustainability problem. Francis Heylighen of the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies has postulated what he calls "memetic selection criteria". These criteria opened the way to a specialized field of applied memetics to find out if these selection criteria could stand the test of quantitative analyses[disambiguation needed In Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution,[21] Austrian linguist Nikolaus Ritt has attempted to operationalise memetic concepts and use them for the explanation of long term sound changes and change conspiracies in early English. It is argued that a generalised Darwinian framework for handling cultural change can provide explanations where established, speaker centred approaches fail to do so. The book makes comparatively concrete suggestions about the possible material structure of memes, and provides two empirically rich case studies. Australian academic S.J. Whitty has argued that project management is a memeplex with the language and stories of its practitioners at its core.[22] This radical, some say heretical[citation needed] approach requires project managers to consider that most of what they call a project and what it is to manage one is an illusion; a human construct about a collection of feelings, expectations, and sensations, cleverly conjured up, fashioned, and conveniently labeled by the human brain. It also requires project managers to consider that the reasons for using project management are not consciously driven to maximize profit. Project managers are required to consider project management as naturally occurring, self-serving, evolving and designing organizations for its own purpose. Swedish political scientist Mikael Sandberg argues against "Lamarckian" interpretations of institutional and technological evolution and studies creative innovation of information technologies in governmental and private organizations in Sweden in the 1990s from a memetic perspective.[23] Comparing the effects of active ("Lamarckian") IT strategy versus user–producer interactivity (Darwinian co-evolution), evidence from Swedish organizations shows that co-evolutionary interactivity is almost four times as strong a factor behind IT creativity as the "Lamarckian" IT strategy. Terminology
References
Footnotes
External links
Memetics Resources
Last Edited: March 19, 2008
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]. In 2003 Klaas Chielens carried out these tests in a Masters thesis project on the testability of the selection criteria.
see the work of KMO.
