Re: virus: Experimental memes. was:Random thoughts & more poor

Robin Faichney (robin@faichney.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 17 Aug 1998 09:18:58 +0100


In message <35D86B28.5D2F@earthlink.net>, Robert Moritz
<robertmoritz@earthlink.net> writes
>
>OK, silly question guys...

Not really.

>is there anything that can be thought that
>could not be considered a meme? Technically, anything that can be
>thought can be replicated to another mind. Is there some threshold of
>tendency-to-replicate that must be crossed before it is considered a
>meme?

Not really. I think most would say that if it never
replicates, it's not a meme, but if it ever does, then
it certainly is.

I seem to be coming round again to something I was
thinking a while back, which is that the best way to
think of memes is as replicating patterns of behaviour.
Not concepts, ideas or thoughts, nor cultural artifacts,
nor neural activity, though all these things are very
closely associated with behaviour and therefore with
memes. They're so close, in fact, that to think of
concepts etc as memes will not lead you far astray.
Except, of course, when you try to work out what memes
*really* are, and then have to grapple with this
thoughts-that-replicate versus those-that-don't thing.
In which case, you have to remember, or have it
suggested to you, that it's not *really* thoughts that
are the memes, but the behavioural patterns with which
they're associated.

This gets away from the ill-defined and implicitly
subjective nature of the claim that memes are "in
minds". It is also rather close to Dawkins' original
description and example set in The Selfish Gene.

Any comments?

-- 
Robin