Umoja
7th July 2004, 20:19
Taken from Anders Transhumanism Page (http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Memetics/index.html#THEORY)
Memetics is the study of ideas and concepts viewed as "living" organisms, capable of reproduction and evolution in an "Ideosphere" (similar to the Biosphere) consisting of the collective of human minds. Memes reproduce by spreading to new hosts, who will spread them further (typical examples are jokes, catchphrases or politicial ideas).
At present memetics is somewhat controversial. Partly this is due to misunderstandings about what it means, leading to claims that it excludes human free will, creativity and progress, and that it is bad science. This will likely change in time, as the field matures.
Taken from Viruses of the Mind by Richard Dawkins:
A human child is shaped by evolution to soak up the culture of her people. Most obviously, she learns the essentials of their language in a matter of months. A large dictionary of words to speak, an encyclopedia of information to speak about, complicated syntactic and semantic rules to order the speaking, are all transferred from older brains into hers well before she reaches half her adult size. When you are pre-programmed to absorb useful information at a high rate, it is hard to shut out pernicious or damaging information at the same time. With so many mindbytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.
I believe this field is extremely important for most politics, but as the issue of religion and communism come up, I wonder why this isn't a more popular idea among leftist, and is instead confined to the theories of transhumanist.
More from Dawkins:
I have already alluded to the programmed-in gullibility of a child, so useful for learning language and traditional wisdom, and so easily subverted by nuns, Moonies and their ilk. More generally, we all exchange information with one another. We don't exactly plug floppy disks into slots in one another's skulls, but we exchange sentences, both through our ears and through our eyes. We notice each other's styles of moving and dressing and are influenced. We take in advertising jingles, and are presumably persuaded by them, otherwise hard-headed businessmen would not spend so much money polluting the air with them.
Think about the two qualities that a virus, or any sort of parasitic replicator, demands of a friendly medium,. the two qualities that make cellular machinery so friendly towards parasitic DNA, and that make computers so friendly towards computer viruses. These qualities are, firstly, a readiness to replicate information accurately, perhaps with some mistakes that are subsequently reproduced accurately; and, secondly, a readiness to obey instructions encoded in the information so replicated.
Interesting to think that capitalism, unconsciously spreads itself like this. Does that mean if leftist were to grab a better control over this field that we'd be able to influence society as well?
Memetics is the study of ideas and concepts viewed as "living" organisms, capable of reproduction and evolution in an "Ideosphere" (similar to the Biosphere) consisting of the collective of human minds. Memes reproduce by spreading to new hosts, who will spread them further (typical examples are jokes, catchphrases or politicial ideas).
At present memetics is somewhat controversial. Partly this is due to misunderstandings about what it means, leading to claims that it excludes human free will, creativity and progress, and that it is bad science. This will likely change in time, as the field matures.
Taken from Viruses of the Mind by Richard Dawkins:
A human child is shaped by evolution to soak up the culture of her people. Most obviously, she learns the essentials of their language in a matter of months. A large dictionary of words to speak, an encyclopedia of information to speak about, complicated syntactic and semantic rules to order the speaking, are all transferred from older brains into hers well before she reaches half her adult size. When you are pre-programmed to absorb useful information at a high rate, it is hard to shut out pernicious or damaging information at the same time. With so many mindbytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.
I believe this field is extremely important for most politics, but as the issue of religion and communism come up, I wonder why this isn't a more popular idea among leftist, and is instead confined to the theories of transhumanist.
More from Dawkins:
I have already alluded to the programmed-in gullibility of a child, so useful for learning language and traditional wisdom, and so easily subverted by nuns, Moonies and their ilk. More generally, we all exchange information with one another. We don't exactly plug floppy disks into slots in one another's skulls, but we exchange sentences, both through our ears and through our eyes. We notice each other's styles of moving and dressing and are influenced. We take in advertising jingles, and are presumably persuaded by them, otherwise hard-headed businessmen would not spend so much money polluting the air with them.
Think about the two qualities that a virus, or any sort of parasitic replicator, demands of a friendly medium,. the two qualities that make cellular machinery so friendly towards parasitic DNA, and that make computers so friendly towards computer viruses. These qualities are, firstly, a readiness to replicate information accurately, perhaps with some mistakes that are subsequently reproduced accurately; and, secondly, a readiness to obey instructions encoded in the information so replicated.
Interesting to think that capitalism, unconsciously spreads itself like this. Does that mean if leftist were to grab a better control over this field that we'd be able to influence society as well?