
Memes are a myth - samclemens
http://ideas.aeon.co/viewpoints/jonathan-goodman-on-are-there-transmissible-entities-called-memes-that-mutate-and-evolve-like-genes-and-can-change-what-we-believe-and-how-we-think
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skymt
This essay is... confused. (Or maybe I'm the one who's confused; I admit I
have no training in philosophy.)

Goodman juggles vastly different concepts of what a "meme" is without
consistently distinguishing between them. He seems to dismiss memetics as an
abstract model based on a lack of evidence for memes as physical entities,
which, depending on how it's constructed, seems like either fringe absurdity (
_an idea particle_ ) or a logical conclusion of materialism. And his question
of whether an idea or its proponent "wins" is a poorly-defined non-sequitur.

The original question is bad, in my opinion. Assuming you acknowledge the
existence of ideas, a better question would be "is meme theory a useful or
accurate model of how ideas behave?"

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smacktoward
_> Assuming you acknowledge the existence of ideas, a better question would be
"is meme theory a useful or accurate model of how ideas behave?"_

Yes, exactly. It's like complaining that gravity isn't "real" because nobody's
touched it. That may be so, but it's real _enough_ in that we can observe its
effects and use those observations to make accurate predictions about the
behavior of objects in space. If meme theory can do the same for the behavior
of ideas in social groups, it's real enough too.

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mcguire
" _If meme theory can do the same for the behavior of ideas in social groups,
it 's real enough too._"

I have not followed meme theory: Can it?

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chriswarbo
The author claims that memes aren't "real", they're just an idea; yet ideas
are exactly what memes are all about! The more attempts are made to justify
the claim, the more clearly the evidence for memes piles up: ie. that memetics
is a clear example of a meme!

Some deliciously irony:

> Since its introduction almost 40 years ago, the term has taken root in
> science, language, and popular culture.

> Should we take the existence of memes on scientific faith, or countenance
> the parsimonious explanation that ideas are just ideas that we use for
> better or for worse?

> There is no reason to invent a language or a science, or insert some
> entirely fictitious evolutionary notion, every time we have a question that
> seems unanswerable.

> It sounds nice, and perhaps the meme is a useful analogy—but it is just an
> analogy.

Dennet's favourite examples of memes are words. They're clearly "physically
real", in that we can capture them with a microphone or a pen. We're nowhere
near able to measure the neurological effect of a word on a brain, but we
certainly know that the effect is there, since hearing words (eg.
instructions) can alter our behaviour.

~~~
_rpd
More irony: the author is attempting to proliferate the meme that "memes are a
myth" \- presumably to defend some sacred belief system that memetic analysis
undermines.

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bikamonki
Memetic analysis would not undermine it, it would explain it ;) But I guess
explanation kills the magic. In any case, I agree with you, 'deniers' of
memetics tend to be more spiritual/religious. Again, memetics would explain
the denial as well: making/breaking neural patterns is no easy task.

~~~
_rpd
> I guess explanation kills the magic.

Once belief systems are understood as evolving memetic complexes that compete
for niches in the ecology of the noosphere - well, it does tend to unweave the
rainbow.

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pjlegato
The author does not understand the notion of falsifiability.

It is not necessary that we have the technology to discover the physical
manifestation of memes _right now_ for them to be a valid scientific
hypothesis, only that in principle we can someday conduct tests that may
potentially refute the hypothesis. This does not mean that memes do definitely
exist. It just means that the proposal for their existence is scientific and
rational, pending further investigation.

On the other hand, the notion of faith in God is, by definition, not a
falsifiable theory; no experiments can ever be done, even in principle, to
disprove faith, since it is by definition an extra-rational concept that
proposes you should accept its veracity without evidence, and indeed _despite_
any evidence that it may not be true. This is an anti-scientific theory.

The two proposals are thus fundamentally different in terms of how they -- on
their own terms -- suggest you should evaluate their veracity. One is
scientific (that is, falsifiable); the other is not.

~~~
bikamonki
However, once we have the turbo-charged MRI that can map memes (assuming memes
are neural patterns), then we could also 'explain' faith; since it seems faith
is also a meme, no?

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tshadwell
But memetics isn't comparable to the Higgs particle. Richard Dawkins didn't
make an assertion which he then tried to prove about the composition of
anything, or indeed how the spread of ideas worked -- he simply made the
observation that ideas can spread and change over time in a naturally
selective way.

In its original and vague context Dawkins isn't so much proposing a mechanism
of idea evolution and transfer but simply a different way of looking at what
we already know about ideas along the lines of 'in some cases, ideas can
change like genetic code' rather than the response author's 'culture evolves
according to analogous laws to genetic natural selection.'. Serious
interpretation and extrapolation of what is essentially a cute analogy across
the whole of culture is inevitably going to be ridiculous without proper
evidence.

In that sense I agree with the author. Nobody knows if this works beyond being
a toy idea, but "memes are a myth"? I'd disagree -- 'memes' offer a worthwhile
analogy and a useful contribution to our lexicon, especially in the internet
age where ideas are freer than ever. Sure, I couldn't say 'X is an idea that
acts exactly by the mechanism of memetics', but I can say 'X seems to act like
a meme' and I think that's useful.

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stretchwithme
People are always trying to find something physical that corresponds to
something that only exists in the noosphere.

Just because its not physical doesn't mean its not real. The realm of ideas is
real. It has real effects on our lives.

A person't effect on the world doesn't go away when he or she leaves the room
or dies. It continues as long what they did continues to to have an effect,
which might only be until the sun supernovas.

I think the idea of everlasting soul is an approximation of the impression
that object permanence creates in our minds. Its incorrect, I think, but
should not be a surprise, given the way our minds, IMHO.

~~~
_rpd
> something that only exists in the noosphere

I hear what you are saying, but the working assumption is that thoughts,
memories, beliefs and memes all have physical neural correlates.

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stretchwithme
obviously. Your ideas are recorded on something.

What I meant was people think there is some energy floating around. Or that a
soul leaves at death and continues on somewhere else. That is not how we
continue to have an effect in the world.

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jewbacca
It's hard to argue about this without some idea about what the original author
considers "real"/"not a myth".

If he considers genes to be "real" in comparison (which I cannot totally infer
from this piece of writing; but he does seem to put a lot of stock in the
identification of a physical mechanism for projecting the idea of genetics
onto, in DNA), there's a pretty straightforward map-vs-territory argument to
reduce that (and pretty much everything else) to equivalence.

All of thought and semantics are imperfect metaphors. The question "are memes
real" is exactly equivalent to "are genes real" is exactly equivalent to "is
math real" is exactly equivalent to "are trees real" is exactly equivalent to
"is anything in our understanding of reality real".

Short of a physical "theory of everything", the only description of physical
reality that is "real" is the total enumeration of all of physical reality.

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ginko
> So how is belief in the existence of memes different from believing in G-d,
> or Shiva, or Odin?

Writing God with a - is certainly a meme.

~~~
bikamonki
Separation of believe(faith) and science is also a meme.

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snowwrestler
I don't think the _The Selfish Gene_ was never intended to be a literal
explanation of how evolution works. It was intended to be a novel way of
looking at evolution; a new way of explaining how it works in a way that might
stick with people. That's why it was a popularly published book, not a
scientific paper.

Genes are not actually selfish; they can't be. It's an obvious
anthropomorphism, which is more useful as a metaphor than a rigorous theory.

As the book progresses, Dawkins takes this idea into further and further
flights of speculation, seeing how well it might apply to any aspect of human
society and experience. I haven't read the book in a while, but my memory is
that this section of the book is home to some hilariously dated notions of
"biology that needs explaining," like why women like to cook and clean the
house, and men prefer to get drunk and cheat on their wives. (I'm exaggerating
but not by much).

It is in this section of the book--already fairly far out on the limb of
speculations--where he introduces the concept of the meme. So it's never been
on very solid ground, scientifically.

In terms of its physical manifestation, that is a problem for information in
general. A copy of the Bible, and a copy of the Bible in which the letters
have been rearranged randomly, is indistinguishable by any physical test short
of a human being reading it.

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hoopd
So the clickbait title is pulled back in the first sentence, then reasserted
through the rest of the article?

This looks to be another philosopher airing out a personal grudge against
science in general and Richard Dawkins in particular.

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toddh
I hope the irony of the title was intentional.

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bikamonki
God is a meme.

~~~
icanhackit
On a slight tangent, I wonder if those who generally support or don't dispute
state monitoring of all communications, transactions, movements etc. are more
likely to be religious? If you already assume that you're being watched 24/7
by the allmighty, perhaps the concept of the state doing it isn't so bad.

Conversely, those who aren't religious or have thrown out the idea of a God
altogether are more likely to be against such a thing because the state
replaces the mythical behavioral control mechanism with a real all-seeing eye.

If true (and I have nothing to prove it is) then the God meme would certainly
be helpful to the state.

~~~
fractallyte
_Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and
by the rulers as useful._ \- Seneca

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futuretext
Haha this is awesome

