The Meme Machine

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22 THE MEME MACHINE congested communications networks leaving trails that provide information about the best and worst areas of congestion, or to mimic human users in games and virtual environments. Might such simple creatures gang up together to create powerful groups just as genes have done? These ideas seem to stretch the analogy with biological viruses a bit far (and we must be very careful of-such analogies), but they do remind us that replicators vary in their usefulness. We tend to call something a virus when it is clearly acting mainly for its own replication by stealing the replicating resources of some other system – and especially when it does harm to that system. We usually give it a different name when it is useful to us. Just the same can be seen in the world of the mind. Dawkins (1993) coined the term ‘viruses of the mind’ to apply to such memeplexes as religions and cults – which spread themselves through vast populations of people by using all kinds of clever copying tricks, and can have disastrous consequences for those infected. Children’s games and crazes spread like infections (Marsden 1998a), and Dawkins suggested that children are vulnerable to ‘mental infections’ that more sophisticated adults can easily reject. He tried to distinguish useful memeplexes, such as science, from viral ones – an issue to which we will return. This theme has been taken up in popular books on memetics, such as Richard Brodie’s Virus of the Mind (1996) and Aaron Lynch’s Thought Contagion (1996), both of which provide many examples of how memes spread through society and both of which emphasise the more dangerous and pernicious kinds of memes. We can now see that the idea of a virus is applicable in all three worlds – of biology, of computer programs and of human minds. The reason is that all three systems involve replicators and we call particularly useless and self-serving replicating ‘viruses’. But if the theory of memetics is right, viruses are not the only memes, and memetics should not become a science of mind viruses. Indeed, the vast majority of memes (like the vast majority- of genes) cannot be considered as viral at all – they are the very stuff of our minds. Our memes is who we are. According to Dennett, our minds and selves are created by the interplay of the memes. Not only are memes replicating like genes (and fit his evolutionary algorithm perfectly) but human consciousness itself is a product of memes. He has shown how the competition between memes to get into our brains has made us the kinds of creatures we are. As he puts it ‘The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artefact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes’ (Dennett 1991, p. 207).
UNIVERSAL DARWINISM 23 On this view we cannot possibly hope to understand the nature and origins of the human mind without an effective theory of memetics. But before beginning to build that theory I want to consider some previous attempts at describing the evolution of ideas. To understand the special contribution of memetics we need to understand how it differs from other theories of cultural evolution.
Page 2 and 3: The Meme Machine Susan Blackmore 19
Page 4 and 5: Foreword by Richard Dawkins As an u
Page 6 and 7: FOREWORD ix Grinning Idiot Press’
Page 8 and 9: FOREWORD xi following confident pre
Page 10 and 11: FOREWORD xiii visiting the school d
Page 12 and 13: FOREWORD xv about genetic selection
Page 14 and 15: FOREWORD xvii would see them) of in
Page 16 and 17: xx THE MEME MACHINE Adam Hart-Davis
Page 18 and 19: 2 THE MEME MACHINE human supremacy
Page 20 and 21: 4 THE MEME MACHINE accidentally lef
Page 22 and 23: 6 THE MEME MACHINE We need a name f
Page 24 and 25: 8 THE MEME MACHINE own creations, a
Page 26 and 27: CHAPTER 2 Universal Darwinism Darwi
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Page 30 and 31: 14 THE MEME MACHINE questions - wha
Page 32 and 33: 16 THE MEME MACHINE allow some meme
Page 34 and 35: 18 THE MEME MACHINE evolution” wo
Page 36 and 37: 20 THE MEME MACHINE Imagine two mem
Page 40 and 41: CHAPTER 3 The evolution of culture
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Page 46 and 47: 30 THE MEME MACHINE Whose advantage
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Page 58 and 59: 42 THE MEME MACHINE it up. Even whe
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Page 64 and 65: 48 THE MEME MACHINE learning that i
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72 THE MEME MACHINE and ability to
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74 THE MEME MACHINE An influential
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76 THE MEME MACHINE The connection
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78 THE MEME MACHINE will get less o
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CHAPTER 7 The origins of language W
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84 THE MEME MACHINE In other words,
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86 THE MEME MACHINE imbalance is ob
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88 THE MEME MACHINE facial expressi
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90 THE MEME MACHINE Brain lateralis
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92 THE MEME MACHINE increasing the
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94 THE MEME MACHINE Universal Gramm
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96 THE MEME MACHINE Intelligence, p
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98 THE MEME MACHINE So how and why
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100 THE MEME MACHINE They are now d
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102 THE MEME MACHINE copying machin
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CHAPTER 9 The limits of sociobiolog
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110 THE MEME MACHINE thickness of a
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112 THE MEME MACHINE artificial int
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116 THE MEME MACHINE approximation)
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118 THE MEME MACHINE is killed off
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120 THE MEME MACHINE and humans hav
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122 THE MEME MACHINE number of our
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124 THE MEME MACHINE kind of behavi
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126 THE MEME MACHINE effort in prod
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130 THE MEME MACHINE the best users
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CHAPTER 11 Sex in the modern world
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134 THE MEME MACHINE genes, and tho
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136 THE MEME MACHINE arguments depe
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138 THE MEME MACHINE Celibacy We ca
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140 THE MEME MACHINE concerned with
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142 THE MEME MACHINE changing and f
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146 THE MEME MACHINE possible and,
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148 THE MEME MACHINE (1991) calls
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150 THE MEME MACHINE times in the h
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152 THE MEME MACHINE altruism. Acts
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154 THE MEME MACHINE for avoiding i
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156 THE MEME MACHINE true we should
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158 THE MEME MACHINE cultural relat
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160 THE MEME MACHINE he-best-imitat
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CHAPTER 13 The altruism trick In to
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164 THE MEME MACHINE behaviour and
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166 THE MEME MACHINE stamps. Many p
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168 THE MEME MACHINE help the anima
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180 THE MEME MACHINE 1977). Some pe
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CHAPTER 16 Into the Internet In our
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210 THE MEME MACHINE forces. The me
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216 THE MEME MACHINE Caught in the
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218 THE MEME MACHINE the net runs,
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220 THE MEME MACHINE nothing else,
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222 THE MEME MACHINE on the neurons
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238 THE MEME MACHINE First, by cons
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240 THE MEME MACHINE But, as we hav
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244 THE MEME MACHINE practice. One
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246 THE MEME MACHINE of one’s chi
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248 THE MEME MACHINE Psychology, (e
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250 THE MEME MACHINE Conlisk, J. (1
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252 THE MEME MACHINE Freeman, D. (1
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254 THE MEME MACHINE Lynch, A., Plu
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256 THE MEME MACHINE bottlenose dol
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258 THE MEME MACHINE Wills, C. (199
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The Meme Machine

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