The theory of memetics is in it’s infancy, it may blossom in to a full and useful theory explaining the evolution of cultural evolution in terms of a second, non-genetic replicator, or it may perish like many unsuccessful theories before it. Until then it will undoubtedly be criticized in many different ways; I’m going to focus on just one of these.
A meme is any behaviour, song, story, idea, any cultural thing that passes from one person to another. The idea of a meme is therefore a meme itself. Now memes compete with each other over a common resource, something I call “mind-time”. Successful memes are those that manage to grab the attention of their hosts (us) and cause them to perform a behaviour that will likely result in someone else picking up that meme. For example a funny story is more likely to be remembered and re-told than a boring story. Now, this raises an interesting point, the truthfulness of the story is irrelevant, there’s no reason to suppose that a boring but truthful story is more likely to be passed on than a funny but untruthful story, in fact quite the opposite, it’s quite likely that the funny but untruthful story will do better in many cases. So, if the theory of memes is itself a meme, then it’s truth value is not important, ergo the theory of memes is not dependent on truth but on how successful it is at replicating.
This is a bizzare argument because this applies to every scientific theory that has ever been proposed. Memetics is a meme which exists in the selective environment which is science. It’s ability to replicate – it’s fitness – is based on it’s ability to explain phenomena, generate predictions and refute criticism. It it fails to do this scientists will drop the theory and it will cease to replicate. The scientific environment in which memetics finds itself ensures that it will only succeed if it contains some truth. The interesting question then becomes, where did this environment come from? Is the scientific method a meme, and if so why did it succeed over other memes?
Lucas said,
July 17, 2009 at 6:35 am
Truth, as you have pointed out, is not definable within the context of memes. It has been argued in the past that truth does not exist (cannot be defined) outside of mathematics. So, perhaps a more appropriate term is consistency. The term is related, as no inconsistent system allows a rigourous definition truth. A definition of truth being (obviously?) a requirement for its existence.
Consistency is also an appropriate term for a memetic system, a consistent system being analogous to a cooperative system between individuals. The meme ‘memetics’ is no more in the ’science’ environment than ‘I’ am in a ’society’ environment. Science, a consistent memeplex where all memes rely on and support each other has without doubt found an effective strategy.
So, in these terms, the meme of ‘memetics’ already has a fighting chance, already being consistent with the memes of ‘evolutionary theory’ and dare I say ’symbolic artificial intellegence’. It is consistent with current scientific understanding.
However, this does not make it a scientific theory. The ability to make testable predictions would be the deciding factor here. At the moment, ‘memetics’ seems to be a parasite on science and will remain so until provides a testable (and tested) contribution to the science memeplex.
More speculatively…
Only recently has science grown to the point where it is in direct competition with other memeplexes (e.g. creationism). I’m inclined to call this speciation – a potentially singular memeplex has divereged into two mutually inconsistent memeplexes. It is a noteable property that the point where science hits a formidable ‘foe’ is where the memplex represents the entire world view of its carrier. In other words, it has had the ability to subsume or distroy all other memes, as long as it has a foothold in the individual. Of course, this is also true of creationism. In this sense, an individual is a battlefield for memes and science, amongst others, has the potential for domination. Science, because of its consistency, and supernatural beliefs, by mimicing consistency have the ability to take over a whole individual, creating a stronghold against new aggressive memes – either domesticating them or distroying them outright.