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MEMETICS
Memes
Meme life cycle
Meme selection criteria
Memes, brain and thought
Memes and language
Memes, reproduction and sex
Memes and altruism
Memes and knowledge
Constructivist epistemology
Memes and science
Objectivity
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Intelligence and Science
Memetics
Memes
Memetics is the science that studies the replication, spread and evolution of memes. A meme is an information pattern that can be reproduced or copied from an information storage or memory to another (human brain, animal brain or exosomatic memory, analog or digital). A meme is an elementary unit of cultural information (habits, skills, songs, stories) that can be imitated, learned and remembered. Cultural entities are memes: religions, languages, fashions, songs, stories, techniques, scientific theories and concepts, inventions, technologies, conventions, traditions, political beliefs. Cultural evolution, including the evolution of knowledge and science, can be modeled with the same concepts of biological evolution: reproduction, variation, mutation, drift, flow, recombination, selection, differential survival, adaptation. A meme is a cognitive or behavioral pattern that can be transmitted from one individual carrier to another one. The meme replicates because the copying process does not eliminate the original meme. Memes have life cycles, being born, spreading and eventually disappearing.
Successful replicators have several fundamental traits: fidelity (reproduction implies producing itself, not something different; the more faithful the copy, the more remains of the initial pattern after several rounds of copying; digital copying is better than analog), fecundity (fertility, the faster the rate of copying, the more the replicator spreads), and longevity (the longer any instance of the replicating pattern survives, the more copies exist).
Evolution is a fundamental abstract phenomenon. Biological evolution is not the only possible evolution. Genes are instructions for making proteins, stored in chromosomes and transmitted in reproduction; their competition drives biological evolution. Memes are instructions for behavior, stored in brains (or exosomatic memories) and transmitted by imitation; their competition drives mental and cultural evolution. Memes begin to exist when genes produce brains capable of imitation, but then they have a partially independent life.
Memes are similar to genes and to other replicators (computer viruses, crystals), but the genetics is not completely equivalent to cultural transmission. Human genes transmit vertically (they can only be copied from parent to child); memes can be transmitted between any two individuals (horizontal transmission, like an infection). The transmission of genes is much slower than in memes, happening once every generation; memes have a very high potential fecundity. As information patterns memes can be replicated with little cost in unlimited amounts by communication between individuals, independently of any replication at the level of the genes.
The mutation rates of memes are very high: the copying fidelity of memes is in general much lower than in genes; human memories are not perfect and people tend to distort the stories they transmit and the patterns they imitate, intentionally or not. Some successful memes are self correcting and highly resistant to mutation, especially if the receiver can distinguish the unintentional failures committed by the sender when producing the vehicle that transmits the meme (it is safer to copy production instructions than the final possibly imperfect products of those instructions).
Memes can change, mutating or recombining. Different variants compete for the limited processing capability (attention) and memory space available in individuals and for a chance to be expressed and copied again by means of scarce expression mechanisms. The fittest variants win this competition and spread most extensively. Relative fitness is determined by features of the meme in relationship with its environment and other memes.
Memes are difficult to delimit with precision. Cultural patterns are quite variable and fuzzy in comparison with genetic information: people may have slightly different versions of the same basic idea. Human memory mechanisms are not known with precision, and the inner workings of the brain are hard to observe directly. This does not imply that meme evolution cannot be studied scientifically: genetics was a science before the precise structure of genes was known. It is not necessary to know the exact coding, size or boundaries of a meme in order to study its fitness and make predictions about its spreading, survival or extinction within the population of competing memes.
A meme complex is a symbiotic set of ideas that mutually reinforce each other. Memes do not usually exist alone: since they are selected against the background of other memes in the meme pool (every meme is part of the environment for other memes), they tend to form coadapted meme complexes or memeplexes (groups of mutually compatible, integrated, cooperative and supportive memes that are copied together and that may be hostile to rival memeplexes).
Memes are copied by imitation, and imitation is often used in teaching and learning between master and student. Imitation requires cognitive abilities to observe, perceive and reproduce a pattern of information. Humans are instinctive imitators and by far the best imitators (and this ability distinguishes them fundamentally from other living beings), but human beings are not the only possible meme carriers. Imitation is an innate capacity in some animals: they do not learn to imitate, but imitate in order to learn (bird songs, hunting techniques, tool usage).
Organisms learn in different ways. Some simple creatures have fixed genetic behaviors that evolve by means of natural selection of whole organisms; if the conduct is adaptive the organism survives, but mistakes are very costly (unsuccessful creatures die) and progress is slow (new whole organisms have to be built). More complex organisms can act in different ways and can learn by trial and error and operant conditioning (rewards or punishments depending on how adaptive a behavior is): behaviors are selected (retained when rewarded or eliminated when punished) instead of whole organisms, and an individual can try different behaviors in its lifetime. Organisms with complex cognitive systems can integrate previous experiences and solve problems by thinking about them: with some memory and information processing ability trials (with successes or errors) are performed quickly and safely in the mind instead of in reality. Humans have all previous capacities and they can furthermore invent exosomatic tools and memories, copy ideas and imitate behaviors: culture accelerates learning, enhances intelligence and gives rise to memetic replicators.
The characteristics of the memories where memes are stored (human brains, books, images, electronic computers) and the media through which memes are expressed and communicated (gestures, natural language, computer networks) influence memetic features of fidelity, fecundity and longevity and result in complex dynamics of variation, replication and selection.
Not everything in cognition and mind is a meme. Intimate mental phenomena (like perceptual experiences, sensations) that cannot be expressed or copied are not memes. Emotions and their expressions may be contagious but they are not memes because they are innate, genetic, universal, not learned by perception and imitation. Some learned behaviors are not achieved by means of imitation but by classical conditioning (association of two stimuli by repeated pairing) and operant conditioning (rewarding or punishing certain behaviors to increase o decrease them).
Humans are creatures of two replicators, genes and memes. Evolutionary psychology (the modern version of sociobiology) needs to be complemented by memetics in order to explain human nature. Memes and genes coevolve and exert selection pressures on each other. Memes may change the environment in which genes are selected, and genes may change the environment in which memes are selected. Genes and memes may cooperate and compete. Not everything in human behavior is for the biological benefit of the genes: genes do not control memes, memes are independent replicators and there may be conflicts between memes and genes. Replication is not necessarily for the good of anything; replicators that flourish are those which are good at replicating. Culture is not necessarily good for the genes; memes are themselves the beneficiaries of many inventions and technological advances that facilitate the production and dissemination of culture. Some persons can be controlled by a meme to the extent that that their own biological survival becomes unimportant (kamikazes, suicide terrorists, cult members who commit collective suicide).
Meme life cycle
The life cycle of a meme has several stages: assimilation (a meme enters a memory and the individual becomes a host of the meme), retention (the meme survives in memory), expression (language, behavior or any other form that can be perceived by others) and transmission (message sent through a medium to other individuals). To be replicated, a meme must pass successfully through all stages. Selective mechanisms at each stage eliminate some memes. A meme may come from some other individual, from some storage medium, or it may be independently created (invented, discovered) by a person recombining existing cognitive elements (thought, imagination).
Assimilation implies that a meme must be noticed, understood and accepted by the host (consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily). Memes and their vehicles must be sufficiently salient to attract attention, since individuals usually receive huge amounts of information. Attention is easier to achieve for memes that more directly affect the individual with emotional connections (if emotions are negative the meme may be recognized but rejected). The host understands the meme if he recognizes it as something that can be represented in his cognitive system (the mind is not a blank slate on which any idea can be impressed), relating it to other previous ideas: a new concept must be associated with cognitive structures already available to the individual. Some memes are distorted when misunderstood. Clarity increases fidelity, and simple memes are easier to understand. A host that has understood a new meme must also be willing and able to accept it and memorize it (believing it or not); sometimes memorization is not intentional (catchy songs).
Memes must remain some time in memory. Retention increases longevity: the longer the meme stays in memory, the more opportunities it has to be expressed and spread to other hosts. Memories have different abilities to retain information. Some memories need to be refreshed (internal repetition or rehearsal, or recurrent external perception). Ideas and behaviors are better learned by frequent reinforcement. Retention depends on the subjective importance of the idea. Memes do not just reside passively in human memories, they tend to associate with emotional mechanisms and be positively or negatively valued.
A meme is expressed or communicated to other individuals if it emerges from its internal storage as a memory pattern and is translated into a physical shape or behavior that can be perceived by others (sounds, movement, speech, text, images, symbols). Expression of a meme may be intentional or unconscious. Some retained memes may never be externally expressed: they are not considered interesting, expression requires some missing ability (music), or the host wants to keep it secret. Some memes convince the host to express them frequently.
An expressed meme is transmitted by means of a physical signal (modulated by the information contained in the meme) in a carrier or vehicle traveling through a medium (sound waves, light waves, ink on paper, electric impulses) to reach other individuals (who then demodulate the carrier to extract the information). Transmission media may lose or distort part of the information (noise). Some memes may be eliminated or corrupted before being perceived. The transmission stage is especially important since the appearance and diffusion of mass communications media (book prints, radio, television, computer networks).
Meme selection criteria
Selection criteria for memes can be partially classified (they are not always independent or excluding) according to features of different elements of a memetic system and their interactions, as memetic (features of memes), subjective (traits related to individual hosts, like individual utility, simplicity, coherence, novelty, skepticism, appeal), intersubjective (social, result of interactions between different subjects, like publicity, expressivity, formality, collective utility, conformity, authority), and objective (traits of phenomena or objects in the real world apart from hosts and memes, like invariance, distinctiveness, controllability). Successful memes fulfill more criteria more intensely and therefore maintain themselves and proliferate.
Selfish or parasitic memes are those whose only goal is to spread themselves, infecting as many hosts as possible, in general without regard for their wellbeing. Some memes can be both selfish and beneficial for the host (symbiotic relationship). Internally consistent memes tend to justify themselves (diverse components mutually support each other) and are easier to understand and accept. Some memes reinforce themselves stimulating the host to rehearse them (repetition, training, meditation, prayer) and retain them. Some memes are intolerant of other rival memes, excluding them from being assimilated or retained in order to maintain a dominant and stable position in memory. Some memes encourage proselytism, conversion, memetic contagion, urging the host to maximally spread them to other hosts increasing their rates of expression and transmission.
The novelty of a meme to a subject facilitates assimilation by attracting attention; novelty is both a memetic and subjective feature: a meme may already exist but be new for a particular subject. Some people may reject new ideas (reactionaries dominated by entrenched memes that do not accept any new influences), but usually they are more interesting (at least initially, what is already known tends to get boring). A new idea may give a competitive advantage. Animals tend to explore in order to anticipate unusual or unexpected situations, and humans are curious. Fashions are based on novelty.
Simple memes require less processing by the subject to be understood and learned, but if they are too simple they may lack interest. Complex memes burden the cognitive system and occupy more space in memory. Simplicity is a memetic and a subjective criterion because it is relative to the concepts and associations already known by the host: what is simple and easy for an expert can be hard and complex for a novice.
Coherence (connection, consistency and support between the new meme and existing ideas in memory in which the meme has to fit) facilitates understanding, acceptance, and retention (coherent memories are easier to retrieve and use together, reinforcing themselves). Coherence requires connection and mutual support of different ideas; mere consistency is not sufficient, since any collection of unrelated facts is logically consistent (not contradictory). Connection implies a semantic or associative relationship, so that information about one idea gives some information about the other (providing an explanation, evidence, arguments). Learning is making and strengthening associations: ideas that do not connect to existing knowledge cannot be understood and assimilated. Inconsistency may attract attention (to understand the conflict between ideas) but inconsistent ideas are harder to assimilate (an inconsistency means something is not understood) and use (mutually contradictory ideas or rules produce incompatible recommendations or behaviors, resulting in confusion or hesitation). Coherence promotes conservatism: memes already present in memory can influence cognitive and emotional mechanisms that block the access of competing external memes that might destroy them. People tend to reject ideas that contradict what they already believe (avoiding cognitive dissonance). New ideas are not all just directly assimilated: they must make sense with respect to what the subject already knows. Existing beliefs provide a basic structure needed to support new ideas. Ideas must fit in the preexisting cognitive system (or sometimes change it gradually or revolutionarily). Coherence is not equivalent to truth (correspondence between ideas and objective reality). False or inadequate dominant ideas embedded in a cognitive system can block the acquisition of correct knowledge. A cognitive subject may revise his axioms, assumptions and hypothesis when the incoherence between what is falsely believed and new true ideas is intense enough.
Utility increases retention (useful memes are more likely to be effectively used and thus reinforced) and assimilation (it is more worthwhile for the host to do the effort to assimilate the new meme). The capacity of a cognitive system is limited, and every cognitive action implies a cost of alternatives foregone; people do the effort to learn and retain an idea that can help them reach their goals.
Some memes are not useful means to other valued ends but are themselves valued for their beauty, appeal or esthetic: they produce pleasure directly, like in art. These memes are adapted to human preferences and valuation systems. Memes about food, power and sex are very successful because they relate to basic emotional instincts necessary for biological survival. Some ideas are strongly associated with positive or negative emotions, like in religion and politics, and many people believe those ideas to be an essential part of their personal identity.
Most of the memes in a subject (beliefs, ideas, behaviors) were not originally constructed by that individual, but received from others. Memetic reproduction implies transmission, and diffusion is an essential criterion in the selection of memes. Memes that are easier to express in an intersubjective language or medium have more chances to be transmitted; some ideas are easier to formulate in one language than in another.
The formality (clear, precise, unambiguous expression, no possibility of equivocation, independent of context, not fuzzy or vague) of a meme helps its assimilation and increases the fidelity of the copies. The meaning of expressions depends on the context: different people are likely to interpret them differently. Informal expression tends to be simpler, but it may produce assimilation of an idea different from the original one, distorting it with each transmission. Some expressions are less dependent on context. Some memes are more stable and self correcting (small changes make no sense and the interpretation is almost always correct). Expressions must have a minimal formality in order to be understandable. Communication is impossible if the meaning changes with small variations of context between the utterance of the expression and its interpretation: the sender and the receiver of the message never share exactly the same context (different background knowledge, circumstances and awareness). Complete fuzziness implies that any interpretation is as likely as any other one: the expression is totally devoid of meaning or information. Formality is relative: a linguistic expression can be more or less formal relative to another expression, implying an ordering of expressions, but no expression can be absolutely formal or absolutely informal. The emitter of a message must decide how much formality is needed based on his knowledge and expectations about the receiver.
Memes that encourage publicity, increasing the effort of the host for their distribution (propaganda, proselytism) tend to be transmitted more. The motivation depends on other features of the meme (like usefulness, novelty, or beauty), but some memes (in religions, cults, fashions, political ideologies) include rules that indicate that they must be shown to others. Successful memes are good replicators, even if they are useless or even dangerous for their hosts (like cognitive parasites abusing the mind without doing it any good).
A meme that is useful to the group of hosts is more likely to survive because it helps the group itself and its hosts to survive and grow in competition against other groups (with possibly different memes): groups having such beliefs are more fit than groups lacking them. Some forms of knowledge benefit the collective, while being probably useless for an isolated individual (languages, laws, moral codes, technical standards). Some memes are useful for some at the expense of others: they help maintain oppressive social orders.
Conformity is the reinforcement of the same meme by different hosts belonging to the same group; it increases acceptance and retention. Group selection often opposes the more powerful and direct force of individual selection. Conformity is a mechanism that suppresses individual deviations from collective beliefs: all other things being equal, it seems evolutionarily optimal for subjects to adopt the majority belief rather than a minority idea (if everybody believes it or does it there may be a good reason for it); already popular ideas tend to become more popular, leading to an eventual homogeneity of belief within a closely interacting group. The more people already agree upon or share a particular idea, the more easily a new member is converted to that idea: its expressions are encountered more often and it may be unpopular and even dangerous to expresses dissonant memes (heresy, impertinence). New memes face a strong competition from existing established memes.
Common beliefs often provide social cohesion acting as group identifiers. An individual is considered a member of the group if he shares its traditions and customs. Individuals with unusual ideas may be rejected and refused cooperation. Conformity facilitates the evolution of cooperation. Consensus provides invariance among members of a group: all members share the same fundamental beliefs and have similar expectations from others; invariant rules of behavior permit reliable predictions and coordination.
Conformity pressure is often irrational, rejecting knowledge that is adequate only because it contradicts already established beliefs; but consensus is a very rational criterion for selecting knowledge if people reach agreement because they independently came to the same conclusion (invariance over individuals). Skeptical subjects analyze new ideas critically. Credulous subjects accept most memes without much reflection.
Conformity is the result of competition between selfish memes. Since memory is limited and cognitive dissonance tends to be avoided, it is difficult for inconsistent memes to have the same hosts. Memes that induce behavior in their carriers that tends to eliminate rival memes are more fit, since they have more resources for themselves. A group of carriers with different memes tends towards homogeneity, resulting from the imposition of the majority memes and the elimination of most non conforming memes.
Memes from authoritative sources (hosts held in high regard or considered to represent expertise in the domain) are more easily noticed, accepted and assimilated; authority may be replaced by attraction, power or fame. Specialization and the division of labor tend to diversify memes. Individuals within a complex society tend to specialize in a particular domain. This process of cognitive differentiation and cooperation is amplified by a positive feedback mechanism: individuals who are successful in solving a particular type of problem get more of these problems delegated to them, and thus develop a growing expertise or authority in that domain. The support of a recognized expert contributes to the acceptance of an idea in a specific domain.
Complex social systems result from the interactions of the integration pressures of conformity and the differentiation pressures of authority. Subgroups may form in big and complex groups, and they may differentiate themselves by their inconformity (eccentricity, weirdness) in particular domains (dress or speech codes).
Examples of successful memes: the wheel, fire, weapons (spears, bow and arrows, sword, shield), clothes, money. Using or not using them produces different objective results. Making and using them is relatively easy to learn, and they are not incoherent with previously established knowledge. They have many advantages that may contribute to increased chances of survival (transportation, hunting, feeding, protection, heating, exchange): individuals and groups using them reproduce and spread. Their use is quite noticeable or salient and easy to imitate. Their structure and functioning can be expressed formally (geometry, mechanics, physics, chemistry, arithmetic) so that the ideas can be unambiguously transmitted even to people who have never actually seen those objects. Even without formal representation, these concepts are relatively easy to express in natural language or by demonstration. People who are enthusiastic about their advantages will in general also be motivated to convince others about the usefulness of the ideas. Once the ideas have spread, many people will use them and newcomers will tend to conform to consensual patterns of behavior.
Memes, brain and thought
Evolutionary psychology indicates that the genetic features of the modular human mind evolved to solve the problems of human ancestors as social hunters and gatherers: innate stable behaviors are evolutionary adaptations. But evolutionary psychology is not enough: memetic evolution is important for organisms with a plastic memory and the ability to imitate. Memes can explain why humans have such big brains and why they think and talk so much. Beginning with the skill to imitate and following the general procedures of evolution, the interaction of memes and genes has produced humans, a unique species with a big brain, conscious thought and language.
Some thinking is about problem solving and learning useful skills. But much thinking is a pointless and useless wandering of ideas that consumes energy and cognitive resources and does not seem biologically justified. Humans think a lot, and it is not easy to stop thinking, to empty the mind: meditation is hard. Those passing ideas are active memes inside the brain that compete for the limited resource of conscious attention and the chance to be rehearsed, expressed and copied: successful memes are noisy and demand attention (quiet memes do net get copied and disappear), so it is difficult to achieve peace of mind.
The human brain has grown fast during the evolution from hominids to fully modern humans, and it is very big relative to the human body and in comparison with other animals. The brain is expensive to build, maintain and operate. The myelin that insulates neurons is an especially scarce resource. Neurons conduct electrochemical impulses along their axons. Neural impulses are waves of depolarization traveling along the axon as charged ions flow across its membrane. The brain consumes energy to maintain chemical imbalances across the membranes so that the neurons are continuously ready to fire. Many neurons are continuously active, firing at low frequencies, and they transmit signals by altering the firing frequency. The brain is a dangerous organ to produce: giving birth to big brained babies is hazardous for both mothers and babies. Several adaptations make human birth possible: human babies are born very premature (altriciality, they are helpless and unable to survive on their own) as compared with most other species, and their brain keeps growing fast in their first few years. A powerful and consistent selection pressure must have worked systematically during human evolution in order to overcome these problems.
The cerebral cortex is generally bigger in higher vertebrates than in other animals, while older parts of the brain (controlling breathing, feeding, sleep and wake cycles, emotions) are more similar. Humans have a much bigger frontal cortex, and several areas have been reorganized for language production (from the motor cortex) and understanding (from the auditory cortex), which is different from emotional sound processing in humans and animals.
Evolutionary growth of the human brain may have been useful for tool making and technological advances for hunting, defense from predators and controlling the natural environment, but it is not clear whether the growth of the brain allowed obtaining more high quality food (meat) or it demanded more food. Many animals find and store food adequately without big brains.
Big brains can also be related with fecundity and sexual selection: males tend to choose young females with many fertile years ahead of them; and a big head makes humans look younger (the ratio of the sizes of head and body decreases with age).
Big brains allow for complex and constantly changing social relationships: cooperation, competition, alliances, defections, plotting, scheming, deception, pretence, strategic thinking, social manipulation. It is necessary to remember the history of interactions and the personality of other members of the group. Intuitive psychology (self reflection, introspection, self awareness, possession of a theory of mind) is a good tool to predict what other humans may do in order to produce adequate behavior; it is also a necessary skill for imitation, imagining how it is like to be another person, mentally taking his place.
Memes and imitation are also responsible for the size and activity of the human brain. Imitation is a good adaptive tool, because it allows to copy successful behaviors discovered and used by others (learning on your own can be costly and dangerous). Optimizers may make the best decisions but at a high cost of innovative trials and errors, while imitators avoid the costs of discovery and make good enough choices if the environment does not change too fast. Imitation is not a simple cognitive task: it requires several fundamental cognitive and motor skills as deciding what to imitate (classify actions, distinguish what is relevant), transforming points of view (mental manipulation from observing another human as an object to imagining the performance of the action as the acting subject), and coordinately producing matching bodily actions.
Imitation is a common successful strategy for reciprocal altruism, copying what the other person does, cooperating with cooperators and refusing to cooperate with those who do not cooperate. The development of social skills is related to the acquisition of the cognitive skill of imitation. Once imitation is possible, memes appear as possibly independent replicators which exert further selective pressures for increasing brain size and more sophisticated and powerful cognitive abilities like memories and language.
New important abilities (tool making, manipulation of fire) can be learned by imitation (which is a general skill for learning other skills). Being a good imitator becomes increasingly important in order to be competitive. It is also crucial to imitate the right people and the right behaviors: the most successful people tend to be the most imitated (in order to learn their more useful skills) and also the best imitators (they have probably learned those skills from others), and they are the most desired to mate with (sexual selection for the best meme spreaders). Under memetic selection pressures genes tend to produce big complex brains capable of better imitation, producing and reproducing more memes. Memes change so fast that genes cannot follow track of their specific content, they can only produce flexible brains capable of acquiring them in order to adapt competitively to the more complex social environment. Initially memes may be related with genetic preferences (food, sex, fight), but since they are independent reproducers they tend to change to acquire the traits that make them more efficient and successful for their own spread (memetic selection criteria).
Memes and language
Human language requires complex signal processing and muscular activity (voluntary control of breathing, coordination of vocal apparatus muscles probably evolved from the ability to use arms and hands to throw objects and build tools). Human language is not just a byproduct of general intelligence; it is largely an innate universal specific ability that sharply differentiates humans from all other animals. The ability to use a complex systematic syntax to distinguish structural elements in language (agent, action, object, intention, beneficiary, circumstances) is an instinct shared by all humans, while the particular implementation of that grammar in each regional language and its vocabulary are culturally learned. Children use deep syntax with little effort and training, invent systematic languages, and do not limit syntax to verbal language (sign language is also grammatical).
Humans talk very much, expending great amounts of energy and obtaining genetic advantages but without a clear biological net benefit. Talking permits bigger and more competitive social groups because it cements, formalizes and regulates social bonds more efficiently than reciprocally altruistic grooming habits (it can be performed with little cost between one emitter and several receivers simultaneously); speakers that get the attention of others can have a feeling of being important for them. Talking exchanges useful information about technological skills, opportunities and threats in the natural environment and possibilities and realities of social cooperation or defection. Verbal language is better than facial or body gestures because people do not need to see each other and can do other things while talking (sound can travel far and around corners). Language is initially made up of gestures and spoken words, but the externalization of memories (drawings, signs, written language) makes it an even more powerful evolutionary tool.
Symbolic language also gives memetic advantages: humans speak so much because that is the way memes spread. Verbal language improves meme fecundity. Memes that get themselves expressed in speech (for many different criteria) are more successful than those who do not. Language tends to be digital because starting with simpler versions memetic competition favors the ones with more fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Digital language (with discrete, distinctive and easily reproducible sounds with structured meanings) favors all of them: formal messages get less distorted, and meaningful stories are easier to remember and reproduce than meaningless noises. Language evolves continually: new expressions and rules compete to be adopted against established ones, and even whole languages compete against one another for survival; the winners are the memes with higher reproductive success. Written language is a more recent technology that also increases meme fidelity, fertility and longevity.
Language is an essential trait for sexual selection: since memes and genes coevolve, people prefer to mate with the best meme spreaders, the good and fast talkers (politicians, writers, actors). Love poems and songs can be used for seduction.
Keeping silence is hard, since there is a natural memetic tendency to talk. People also tend to want to talk more than they want to listen (and want others to accept their ideas more than they want to accept ideas from others), because usually memes try to spread themselves and avoid receiving new possibly antagonistic memes from other people. Silent people are not memetically attractive since they do listen but they do not transmit the received memes. Social rules regarding speech are themselves memes that can reflect memetic selection influences: it is polite to entertain others with chat, but giving others a chance to express themselves; the meme to be silent is not usually expressed, and the meme to speak continuously is not usually welcome by others. Talkers may talk and convince silent people to speak, while silent people have to break their silence and speak in order to convince others to remain silent.
Memes, reproduction and sex
Sex is essential for human reproduction, humans think much about sex and are very interested in it, and sex is very important in human culture (pictures and stories about romance and love, rituals for sexual maturity and marriage). But modern life includes many phenomena that are in conflict with the reproductive function of sex: sex for pleasure, low birth rates (few or no children), celibacy, contraception, birth control, family planning, adoption, erotism, pornography. Modern ubiquitous sex does not seem to maximize genetic fitness, and it is not only due to a mistake by the genes (not having changed fast enough to a different environment) but to the influence of the memes that employ sex for their own diffusion. Memes and genes interact and battle to take control over their machineries of replication: bodies and minds of men and women.
Sex and mate choice does not depend only on genetic advantage, it is also influenced by memetic advantage. People tend to mate with the best meme spreaders, the best innovators and imitators, and these abilities are indicated by variable cultural signals: making tools, singing songs, telling stories, wearing stylish clothes, ornaments or body paint, having (or appearing to have) special abilities (healing, prediction, communication with the supernatural world), having a good education. Cultural creators and disseminators are popular and sexually attractive: artists, actors, writers, journalists, intellectuals.
Many memes are transmitted vertically (alongside the genes) from parents to children (language, religion, social rules and customs), and in this way genes and memes cooperate without conflict: parents transmit ideas that are in the genetic interest of their children, and having more children implies spreading memes more efficiently. But if memes are transmitted horizontally they become independent from genes. Human ancestors lived in slowly changing small groups of related individuals with few memes that were almost all transmitted vertically. The modern world of extended societies and rich culture is dynamic and based on horizontal transmission of many different memes: families are still highly influential for the spread of religious and political ideas, but there are also schools, mass communication media and extended social contacts.
Memes in the ancestral world are successful if they promote the maintenance and reproduction of their carriers: sexual rules, taboos and family arrangements in small societies enhance genetic fitness. Men promote punishments against adultery by other men while trying themselves to commit adultery (memes against adultery and hypocrisy spread together). Circumcision makes masturbation more difficult but not vaginal sex. Dissuading young men with a strong desire for sex from masturbation increases vaginal sex; female masturbation is much less important because women cannot increase their reproductive success having more sex. Strong taboos against homosexuality persuade homosexuals to marry and have children to whom they pass the taboo. Taboos against birth control and other sexual practices that do not produce insemination (oral sex) are also beneficial for genetic reproduction. Monogamy or polygamy depending on the environment can increase reproductive success. Religions use sex for their own diffusion when they promote large families of their believers.
Memes in the modern world are successful if they can be transmitted efficiently from host to host, their effects on individual hosts being less important. Memetic success does not depend on having sex in order to produce many children. Marriage is not so important. The power of sexual taboos is diminished. Homosexuality is more practiced and socially accepted but the genes for homosexuality tend to disappear.
Celibate people cannot transmit their genes directly and have to overcome the desire for sex and intimate affection. In some environments they can promote the spread of their genes helping their relatives (nepotism). Celibate priests devote all their time and resources to transmit their religious memes at the expense of genetic reproduction; marriage can decrease the influence of a preacher over his congregation; the agony of abstinence can be sublimated and transformed in a desire to serve the religion. Priests with secret children taken care of by their mothers can transmit both their genes and their memes.
Women who have many children have less time for social, professional and cultural life, and their relationships are mainly relatives and other women with children carrying similar memes about children and family values. Women with few or no children have time and resources for their social, professional and cultural life: they can be become powerful and famous, successful role models for other women to imitate; they have many social interactions through which they can spread memes about birth control methods and the value of small families or independent single life. Women are especially important in the reproductive battle of genes and memes: their investment of resources in genetic reproduction in very big, and if they invest those resources for memetic transmission they become very visible and more likely to be copied by other women. The education of women is essential for changing family size.
Adoption is an expensive mistake for the genes: adopters are driven by their genetic desire to have children and care for them, but they do not transmit their own genes. Women have a strong desire to care for children, and taking care of the children of others is often not emotionally satisfying enough, they need an intimate and constant relationship with a child they can consider their own (these feelings are essential because they permit children to be born very immature). But both fertile and infertile people want to adopt children. Humans want to pass important memes and their related possessions to their offspring (political, religious, ethical principles). Adoption has memetic advantages: memes can be transmitted to genetic or adopted children, and the woman spares pregnancy with an adopted child.
Sex is a powerful tool for spreading memes. Sex implies intimacy and communication. Spies use sex to obtain information. An actress may offer sex in exchange for the chance to become popular and imitated. Politicians deal with power (a strong aphrodisiac) and memes about social organization and use sex to cement alliances.
Humans are the creatures of two different replicators, genes and memes, interacting in complex ways, cooperating and competing. Memetic reproduction is more influential in technically and culturally sophisticated societies, but the genetic desire to have children and care for them is too strong to be completely overcome. Small societies cannot afford the capital goods needed to produce and maintain a rich culture. Memes make extended societies possible: technological advances permit population growth (food production, medical advances); but many memes also tend to decrease family size. Memes can restrain biological reproduction but cannot completely eliminate it: if a society becomes too small then memes are less influential and genes take control. Memes can discover ways to interact directly with the genes, like genetic engineering (food production, treatment of hereditary diseases, human reproduction, cloning, paternity tests). Some memes are dangerous for human survival: mass destruction weapons, popular fallacies, antisocial collectivistic ideologies.
Memes and altruism
Evolutionary psychology can explain kin selection and reciprocal altruism: emotions for cooperation and kindness help the survival of the genes that cause them. But human altruism goes beyond reciprocal altruism and is not always genetically beneficial or for material gain: humans are hypersocial and cooperative, and they help strangers, in situations in which a future reward is unlikely, and without increasing their reputation (secret help to people far away). Many people want to feel useful and find joy in serving others. Many humans are even kind to animals. These anomalies may be partially explained as byproducts of moral sentiments working in a modern environment that is different from the ancestral environment in which they evolved, or as mistakes that natural selection has not had enough time to eliminate. Religious believers wrongly propose a supernatural spiritual essence that imposes moral conscience and principles that overcome genetic selfishness. Memetics explains the peculiarities of human altruism: it is not only for the benefit of the genes, but for the good of the memes. Altruistic, cooperative, generous behaviors are successful memes.
Reciprocal altruism (being kind to kind people) is initially advantageous for the genes, but since it implies imitation it is also a memetic phenomenon.
Altruists (generous, kind, caring people who share, give and look after others) are more popular, they have more friends and social contacts, they speak to more people who like them, and therefore they spread more memes, especially the behaviors that distinguish them as altruists. Humans try to avoid selfish people they do not like, so they do not receive ideas from them, and if they do they probably reject them. Memes that encourage their bearers to be altruists have better chances to succeed.
Genes can produce brains with emotions to help other individuals who are possible carriers of those same genes (genetic altruism); memes can also reconfigure human brains so that individuals help other individuals who already have the same memes (memetic or cultural altruism) or may become their bearers (children, students, religious followers). Memetic altruism can even make humans genetically more altruist if individuals tend to mate with altruists (and not only imitate them), but there can be conflicts between genes and memes when what benefits them does not coincide. Memes can encourage altruism so much that some people give up their lives to caring for others without having children of their own.
Some memes look like altruism: human communication if full of nice expressions that make people seem caring (polite smiles and conversations). Some memes make use of altruism to spread themselves: people try to seem altruist and to avoid cognitive dissonance, and some memes fit better in altruists (caring for animals, being vegetarian, recycling). Individuals want to be liked, and parents try to persuade their children of certain behaviors associating them with being good, nice and likable (cleanliness, dress codes, politeness, religiosity, sexual chastity). Individuals are more influenced by people they like (salesmen are experts at this). Religions promote altruism because it helps them spread: individuals who receive gifts or help may feel obligated to reciprocate by accepting the memes from the altruist (agreeing with him instead of giving something back); missionaries give up their lives and possessions in order to spread a religious message.
Memes and material goods can be exchanged in many different ways. Humans do not pay only to receive information (newspapers, expert advice), but also to spread ideas and persuade others (priests, politicians, advertisers), offering something in exchange of attention.
The public expression of altruism can hide selfish intentions. Some collectivistic ideas are socially predominant not because they are true or individually or collectively useful, but because they are what many members of a group want to believe (emotional influences) and also want others to believe. People who want to seem nice often assert that what they do is for the good of all. Some memes are useful to cheat on others and receive more than what is given in social interaction; these memes tend to be believed by self deception because people can detect important emotional signals of sincerity. Some people promote the idea of collective solidarity because they think it is beneficial for themselves (they believe that they receive more help than they have to give). Individuals look nice to others if they publicize their good desires towards everyone, although their real behaviors may be selfish (hypocrisy). Real actions pursue self interest, but verbal declarations refer to the common good and the general interest.
Memes and knowledge
Evolutionary epistemology indicates that knowledge is gradually and accumulatively constructed by the subject or group of subjects in order to adapt to their particular environment. Construction is achieved by means of blind variation of existing units of knowledge, and the selective retention of those new combinations that contribute most to the survival and reproduction of the subjects. Multiple criteria (biological, cognitive and social) determine which knowledge survives the systematic process of natural selection.
Memetics indicates that memes actively attempt to survive and reproduce. Memes can be transmitted from one subject to another, so they do not depend on any single individual. If a meme spreads faster to new carriers than its carriers die, the meme can proliferate, even though the ideas it introduces in carriers may be inadequate and even dangerous to survival. A meme may be successful (common, present in many carriers) even though its information about the world, predictions or recommendations may be totally wrong, as long as it is sufficiently convincing and appealing to new carriers.
Knowledge is made up of objective memes: useful rules of behavior or ideas that correspond to reality. Knowledge allows a cybernetic control system to select the right actions that make its survival and reproduction more likely in a given environment with different opportunities and threats. The environment affects the control system exerting different types of perturbations. Adequate selection of actions requires an (explicit or implicit) anticipation of the likely effects of perturbations from the environment on the system and of actions by the system on the environment. The essential function of knowledge is prediction: controlled actions must make good use of opportunities to benefit the system and counteract the negative effects of perturbations (displacements from homeostatic functioning) before they endanger the survival of the system. Knowledge is a vicarious selector helping an organism to survive by anticipating change.
The structure of an elementary prediction or unit of knowledge is a production rule, a conditional relationship between an antecedent distinguished phenomenon and another consequent expected phenomenon or a recommended action: if some specific thing is perceived, then expect another particular thing or perform some adequate action. Cognitive systems are built up as organized structures of interconnected production rules (the output of a rule matches the input of another rule).
A complex natural environment can be modeled by a cognitive system that is much simpler (contains less distinctions than exist in reality): the model does not need to represent all the complexity of reality, only the relevant entities and relationships. Natural phenomena only need to be modeled if they represent a relevant opportunity for growth and reproduction or a potential threat to the survival of the system: knowledge is focused, directly or indirectly, on the selfish purposes of the knowing system; all phenomena irrelevant to those purposes can in general be ignored, except if it is probable that they may become relevant in the future. Natural phenomena that cannot be controlled (for which there is no possible adequate action, they cannot be affected by the subject) do not need to be represented in detail: the cognitive system must concentrate of interactive features of the environment. Many natural phenomena have relatively invariant, constant or stable states, and the number of their features that change at any given moment is much smaller than the number of features that remain the same: control systems normally only pay attention to phenomena that constitute some variation, transition or deviation from the normal, stable configuration and may influence the survival probabilities of the system; by default all features that are not perceived as varying are assumed to remain stable.
When a phenomenon is relevant and controllable, but there is not any rule available to make relevant predictions or recommendations of action, a cognitive system may trigger a rule generation (blind variation) and testing (selective retention) mechanism. Some heuristics may guide the search for new rules (like unusual events are related with other unexpected events).
A piece of relevant knowledge tends to be retained by the cognitive subject because it increases the fitness of the individual organism: it is important for its survival (rules about food, water, environmental conditions, predators) and reproduction (rules about finding a mate and successfully producing offspring). Knowledge can be passed on to the offspring by inheritance (genetic) or education (memetic, cultural).
In a cultural social system with interactions and communication between individuals, knowledge is not only selected on the basis of its capacity to self maintain (within the memory of an individual), but also on the basis of its capacity to reproduce (pass from one individual to another). The success of a piece of knowledge does not depend only on its adequacy for improving the fitness of the organism. Candidate ideas or rules are memes that must first be assimilated (learned) in order to be tested and prove their adequacy. Successful knowledge memes must be expressed by their carrier so that another individual can assimilate (learn, understand, interpret) that expression by means of imitation or linguistic communication. Complex ideas may be too difficult to assimilate and may not even have a chance to be tested. Ideas that contradict already established rules may not be accepted because of the tendency to avoid cognitive dissonance (coherence, consistency between old and new memes).
In imitation the behavior of an individual expresses a meme, and another individual may watch that behavior and act in a similar way, copying the meme. Successful memes must cause salient behavior, being easily expressed by a motivated and able individual and easily perceived and remembered by another one. Imitation is in principle an informal way of communicating knowledge: the meaning and usefulness of behavior can only be found by performing it in the appropriate context. A language is an effective formal way of communicating knowledge by means of a shared intersubjective code that expresses distinctions and their connections efficiently by means of symbols. An efficient language is expressive (rich enough in elements and structures in order to transmit all relevant distinctions) and formal (diverse individuals in different contexts interpret it correctly).
Constructivist epistemology
Epistemology attempts to provide adequate criteria for distinguishing true knowledge about reality. Cognitive systems are not passive, they construct knowledge actively and develop it according to variable evolutionary criteria that depend on the environment or social context: problem solving competence, coherence and consensus.
Cybernetic epistemology is constructive. The classical theory of meaning and truth is based on reflection and correspondence of cognitive models with objective reality. The meaning of words and phrases of a language refers to the things and relationships which the words denote: language reflects the things in reality. A proposition is true if the relations between the concepts of things correspond to the relations between the things themselves. Falsity is a wrong, distorted reflection.
Extreme positivism, the notion that all unobservable entities are unscienctific, is absurd. There are linguistic expressions which cannot be immediately interpreted in terms of observable facts. Many scientific concepts cannot be observed directly. Language is a systematic tool to create models of reality. Language organizes experience, but it is not necessary that every specific part of language should be put in a direct and simple correspondence with the observable reality.
The classical concept of reflection is static and passive and therefore incomplete. The cybernetic understanding of knowledge as production of predictions (cognitive modeling) is dynamic and active. The mapping from the world to language does not need to be a perfect reflection. Thought works because it implements some models of the world, not because it somehow statically reflects it. In a static world no knowledge, no reflection or correspondence is possible.
Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or by way of communication, but is actively built up by the cognitive subject. The function of cognition is adaptive: it serves to organize subjective experiences. Advanced cognition leads to scientific discovery of an objective ontological reality.
Cognitive construction helps survival: the subject wants to control what it perceives, in order to eliminate or compensate any deviations or perturbations from its own preferred goal state and adapt to changing circumstances. Control requires a model of the thing to be controlled, but that model needs only include those aspects relevant to the subjective goals and actions. Knowledge is a necessary component of the processes of autopoiesis (self production) characterizing living organisms. The nervous system is not perfect: it cannot easily distinguish between a perception and a hallucination, since both are merely patterns of neural excitation.
Constructivism is based on a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism: the subject has no direct access to external reality, and can only develop knowledge by using fundamental innate cognitive principles (categories) to organize experience. A child passes through different cognitive stages (genetic epistemology) while building up a model of the world.
Constructivist mechanisms are not limited to higher level learning or discovery of models, they are found in all evolutionary processes. The fundamental mechanisms of cognitive evolution are construction and selection: the environment does not instruct an organism on how to be adapted; an organism has to find out for itself, and construct knowledge by trial and error, generating possible combinations until finding one that works. Not all models are equally adequate, but direct verification of knowledge by comparing them with the outside world is in general not possible.
The adequacy of knowledge depends on different criteria. Coherence (agreement between the different cognitive patterns within an individual brain) is desirable but not sufficient. Consensus (agreement between the different cognitive patterns of different individuals) can happen on objective facts, but often objective knowledge is replaced by arbitrary memes produced by social processes of communication and negotiation (social constructivism, the social construction of reality).
Memes and science
Science explicitly promotes objectivity and tries to neutralize the criteria that may detract from objectivity (authority not backed by expertise, conformity just for itself). All memetic survival criteria influence the evolution of knowledge, but the objective criteria are the fundamentals of the scientific method. Subjective interpretation is minimized by formalization (logical, mathematical) of theories and observations. Concepts and propositions are checked with reality, empirical entities are operationalized (specifying the observations that distinguish their referents) and subjected to controlled experiments. Scientific knowledge is as independent as possible of place, time, observer or means of observation (often difficult or impossible in the social sciences).
Scientific knowledge privileges the objective criteria (selection for fit to the outside object) of memetic selection; subjective and intersubjective factors are more influential in other memetic systems (tradition, politics, religion, art, fashion): the referent, the external object which the knowledge is supposed to represent, only plays a relatively small part in the selection of an idea or belief.
Scientific theories are formal, they are expressed in such a form (mathematical, logical) that their meaning and implications allow no ambiguity. Complete formal and unambiguous descriptions are in principle impossible. Metalogic indicates that it is in general impossible to explicitly state all the necessary and sufficient conditions for a particular expression to be valid: there always remains an element of indeterminacy. The meaning of an expression can only be fixed by means of a definition which explicitly states the shared background knowledge or information about the context needed to understand the expression; but the definition itself contains new expressions which need to be defined themselves, and so on recursively until ostensive terms are found (their meaning is shown directly). There is no guarantee of a common universal understanding.
The scientific method is a systematic vicarious selector, an interiorization of external selectors, that functions at a higher hierarchical level than the knowledge it produces (metaknowledge). Other non scientific memes are not selected at this higher level, so they evolve less efficiently and are therefore likely to be of lower quality. The scientific method systematizes objectivity and guarantees improvements: other forms of knowledge are slow unsystematic searches where trials and errors are not consciously controlled.
Scientists are human beings and meme carriers and tend to prefer simple and new ideas that are coherent with what they already know or believe and that may bring fame and fortune. The scientific community tends to be dominated by ideas that have motivated advocates, are strikingly expressed, benefit the group, and are supported by the majority or by authoritative experts.
Objectivity
Real perceptions are caused by external referents; false perceptions are produced by internal mechanisms. In order to know whether a perception is real or not, it must be determined whether its cause is some objective external phenomenon or some internal mechanism: imagination, illusion, hallucination, malfunctioning of the perceptual apparatus. In the nervous system there is no fundamental distinction between a perception and a hallucination: both are patterns of neural activation. Normal people are competent cognitive agents that can usually distinguish dreams or fantasies from perceptions. People tend to attribute causes of perceived effects to those phenomena that covary with the effects, that are present when the effect is present, and absent when the effect is absent. External objective causes do not covary with changes that only affect internal or subjective variables. Some aspects of a perception of an external object such as size and perspective do covary with the movement of the perceiver. A same cause can have different effects depending on circumstances, and a same effect can be due to different independent causes. Some regularity or invariance of effect is needed in order to make predictions: changes following or preceding an objective phenomenon must be similar; the change following or preceding a phenomenon does not have to be unique, but share some properties with changes associated with similar phenomena.
No objective criterion (distinctiveness, consistency and invariance) alone is sufficient to fully establish the reality of a perception: there are mass hallucinations or magician tricks (perceived by many people); a malfunctioning of a sensory organ or of the nervous system may be stable and constant; a hologram or a virtual reality system can be perceived from different points of view but do not correspond to real objects. But the hologram cannot be touched (different modality), showing its illusory character; the magical trick may be exposed. Perception is more reliable if the different objective criteria are fulfilled to a larger degree.
Objectivity criteria help to distinguish imaginary memes (unreal, illusory) from knowledge memes whose content refers correctly to reality. Knowledge consists of relevant useful distinctions that can be used to predict changes. Objective phenomena can be distinguished because they are based on regularities, systematic correlations or covariations that can be partially detected and controlled. An objective phenomenon is preceded and followed regularly by other objective changes: a cause precedes a related effect.
Phenomena that do not make any difference for an organism do not need to be considered by its cognitive system. Real things can make a difference, while unreal things cannot (but an existing idea about an imaginary entity can make an important difference). Some perceptions are real, other perceptions are illusions or hallucinations (something is perceived that is not there or the perception is distorted). Randomness is the opposite of regularity: an antecedent can result in many unpredictable consequents. When all possible antecedents lead to the same consequent then the antecedents do not need to be distinguished.
Objective criteria refer to memetic selection according to fit to outside objects. They are distinctiveness (phenomena that are distinct, detailed or contrasted are more likely to be noticed and understood, and therefore assimilated), invariance (recurring phenomena are more likely to be noticed and retained in memory) and controllability (phenomena which react regularly to actions from the subject are more likely to be considered and remembered).
Distinctiveness means that different referents in reality produce different perceptions in the mind. A perception that remains the same when the observer changes attention is likely to be produced by the perceptual system itself (imperfection of the sensors or the cognitive system). Real perceptions tend to be rich in contrast and detail (imagined or dream perceptions tend to be fuzzy). Real perceptions are usually integrated, regular, coherent and well delimited patterns, not just unstructured collections of impressions. Some change must follow or precede the appearance of the distinguished phenomenon; phenomena that do not make any difference are not informative and it is not necessary to consider them as real for practical purposes.
Real phenomena are invariant under several transformations or changes in different domains: perceptual modality (real phenomena do not disappear when the senses, points of view, means of observation are changed; if the same phenomenon is perceived through different senses, points of view, or means of observation, it is more likely to objectively exist, it is less probable that several perceptual systems fail simultaneously; a real object may be perceived from different angles, distances or illuminations, and it appears differently but maintains some constant distinction or identity); time, space and circumstances (real phenomena are more or less constant and repeatable, a perception that appears or disappears suddenly is unlikely to be caused by a stable referent; appearances in different instants, places and circumstances of a phenomenon should lead to similar effects); persons (intersubjectivity, universality, a perception on which different observers agree is more likely to be real than one that is only perceived by a single individual). More invariant causal relationships are more useful elements of knowledge: they are more generally reliable and applicable and can be used for more predictions. If the sensory organ has some defect the perception probably remains in different circumstances or changes randomly (perceptual noise). Different modes of perception and different persons can cross check each other in order to detect and correct errors.
Controllability means that a phenomenon that reacts differently to the different actions performed on it is more likely to be real than one that changes randomly or not at all. This criterion facilitates scientific experimentation: preparation, control and detection. Hallucinations cannot be controlled. Controllability depends partially on the observing subject: people have different capabilities to influence reality (individual ability, proximity).
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Memética |