More Memes
In response to Kelly again:
I had not considered the social implications of accepting
the concept of memes wholesale; the original proposition by
Dawkins was simply to state that genetics is a special case
of the more general concept of information propogation
through a selection process; as shorthand, he called the
general abstract unit of information a "meme." In his
model, each meme-based system would have its own special
bounds. In the case of genetics, it's the mode of encoding
(genetics) and the mode of filtering (natural selection).
In the case of concepts, its the mode of encoding (words,
logic, and mathematics) and the mode of filtering (the
biases and logic abilities of the different minds).
In this sense, I agree with Dawkins; genetics is merely a
special case of information propogation.
I had not considered what the close ties to genetics would
do in the minds of people not already familiar with the dual
concepts of genetics and information theory. Not long ago
(only about 7 years ago) I read an editorial in Newsweek
that suggested we prod the "upper-middle-class and rich
people" into having more children, and entice the "lower
class (that is, people on welfare)" (these were the words of
the author-- sorry, I don't recall the date of the issue nor
the name of the author) to have fewer children. His
reasoning was that, since the rich were obviously more
successful, they were genetically superior.
Social darwinism.
The idea of "social memetics," or even worse, "memetic
engineering," is repugnant. We don't understand the flow of
ideas in any real way; we can model it statistically, but
that is about it. Mostly, we don't uderstand the millieu of
the mind, which handles encoding, filtering, and propogation
of ideas-- the entire life-cycle. And since minds generally
don't work in isolation, we don't understand propogation of
ideas beyond a statistical level.
Really, we don't even understand how ideas are generated in
the first place.
I guess this is all just a rambling attempt to explain that
I agree with Kelly that memes are not a precise way to
describe the creation, propogation, and selection of ideas
or information, and that to take action based on this meme
hypothesis is dangerous.
Is this a catch-22? The meme concept is a great shorthand
for thinking about the flow of ideas (as long as you realize
that it is not derived from genetics; rather, genetics is
derived from it); but to understand it, do you need to
understand the more-rigorous idea of information theory? In
which case, you don't need the meme shorthand.
Sorry about these incoherent thoughts. But an idea is only
as good as the use to which it is put; and if the expression
of an idea (the phenotype, as it were) is wrong, then the
memotype (sorry, couldn't resist) is innapropriate. Not
"wrong," necessarily, just as a good genotype can lead to an
innapropriate phenotype.
Oh, well. It seems silly to talk about the meme concept in
terms of memes. Plus, the idea of memes is rather like
Freud's writings-- impossible to disprove, and therefore it
really has no place in science or logic.
(NOTE: I'm not saying some truths don't transcend logic.
I'm just saying they have no place in science.)
A Note:
Natural selection is not about survival of the fittest.
It's about survival of the most appropriate.