Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Sodding 'memes'
A rant
Quick questions:

1) Are there any occasions when the word "meme" must be used, such that "idea", "model", "hope", "aspiration", "belief", "dream" and similar words cannot express the same notion,only  with greater precision?

2) "Meme" rhymes with "gene", which makes it sound almost scientific. If memes were referred to as "magic idea fairies" or "midichlorians", would this make them any less believable? 

and finally,
3) [The 'homeopathy' question] What evidence would lead you to reject the meme hypothesis?

9 comments:

LemmusLemmus said...

Your new comment template certainly looks better than the old one, but if you hit return after you've typed in the word verification, the comment disappears.

Another top performance from blogger.

And now I can't be bothered anymore. Short version: I dislike the word, too.

Political Scientist said...

Hmmm... the template has indeed changed, and looks considerably better.

However, this is thru' bloggers agency rather than mine, and if it eats comments It Will Not Do. Glad I'm not the only person whose teeth are set on edge by the word "meme".

[BTW, if you check out the link you'll find someone has used the gnomes/gnomic pun rather better that I did in my abortive attempts to work it into a post...]

pj said...

I don't mind 'meme', I just take it as a synonym for idea. 'Memetics' is nothing more than an extendd metaphor, but a metaphor that has some truth to it nonetheless. But then I don't have the hatred of Dawkins that others do, so maybe I'm blind to its implications.

I do bloody hate 'midichlorians' though - they quite nicely encapsulate all that is wrong with the new Star Wars - but I guess given that there are more Jedi in the UK than Jews or Sikhs I'm engaging in religious hatred.

pj said...

I wonder if the memetecists have noticed the similarities with the strong programme in sociology of science?

Political Scientist said...

Hello PJ, hope you are well;
'Memetics' is nothing more than an extendd metaphor, but a metaphor that has some truth to it nonetheless.

Dawkins disagrees with you: he writes [1]
“As my colleague N.K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: ‘... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically, but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking - the meme for say, “the belief in life after death”, is actually realised physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over”

For Humphrey and Dawkins, memes are no metaphors: they are “literally” alive!

“technically” is footnoted [2]: he states that “I had always felt uneasy spelling this out”, and discusses the work on neuroscientist Juan Delius. He credits Delius with “exploring... the analogy of memes with parasites ... with the spectrum of malignant paracites at one extreme, benign ‘symbionts’ at the other extreme.”

This renders the whole enterprise even more problematic than it appears at first glance: “benign” and “malignent” are predicates of value, and so are presumably represented by there own memes which encode aesthetic preferences. Not maligant or benificent then - merely memes which are symbiotic or non-symbiotic with the aesthetic memes inhabiting Dawkins' brain.

I think the “memes are metaphors take”, although more plausible than what Dawkins proposes (perhaps memes have evolved since their “discovery”), has problems of it’s own: I’ll explore these in the next post.

“But then I don't have the hatred of Dawkins that others do, so maybe I'm blind to its implications.”

Ideas are either true or false according to their merits and demerits, not their inventors/discoverers/meme-hosts in whose brains they evolve.

[Deleted before posting - a long discursive discusion about my views on Dawkins, which (a) aren’t very interesting (b) on statistical grounds, are quite likely to be replicated somewhere on the *three most commented CommentIsFree threads* devoted to the DawkiBus [3] (c) aren’t relevant to wheather meme is useful or scientific. I don’t hate him, tho’.]

Shorter Political Scientist:
Dawkins used to annoy me, but now when I see him on TV I just pretend he’s Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss - a strategy I commend, for it is remarkably effective.

“I do bloody hate 'midichlorians' though - they quite nicely encapsulate all that is wrong with the new Star Wars - but I guess given that there are more Jedi in the UK than Jews or Sikhs I'm engaging in religious hatred.”

Now, here’s something we can all agree on: a perfectly lovely fairy story with heroes and villians and princesses and twists and turns and fights and seedy bars and destiny - basically a fantasy in sci-fi clothing - was absolutely ruined by GOD-forsaken midichlorians. And astoundingly banal dialogue. Jar-jar binks was merely the turd-flavoured icing on the stale cake. Bah!



[1] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p192 ; [I imagine you have your own copy of the Selfish Gene, but anyone who wants to check I’m not just making this up or quote-mining can do so at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=WkHO9HI7koEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=selfish+gene#PPA327,M1 and use preview]

[2] Ibid, p323

[3] Monkeys on typewriters would be rather more coherent than most CiF commentors.

pj said...

I rarely read CiF comments, it seems to be largely populated by arrogant morons, I could go to an O'Neils pub if I wanted to hear those views, at least I'd get beer to drown the horror.

In terms of the memes metaphor, my point is more that if you take meme=idea then it isn't a metaphor, but it is rather trivially true (think about what 'parasitize my brain' literally means), otherwise it is a metaphor because it is positing memes as being like genes, which they are in some senses, and are not in others.

Re: Dawkins, while ideas are indeed true or false irrespective of their origins, I think he seems to generate a disproportionate amount of bile, which results in quite a lot of misreading or misrepresentation of him ([cough]Mary Midgley[/cough]).

I wonder if I can cause some kind of schism in the Jedi, bah we reject the apocryphal Episodes I-III and remain true to the holy word of the original trinity.

Off topic completely, I don't know why this bus thing has got so much interest (I haven't read any of the CiF comments, but I have read some of the articles), my first thought was, 'heh', followed by 'crap slogan', and 'little polemical for my liking, but each to his own'.

Political Scientist said...

PJ - thank you for your comments: this has clarified my thinking a bit.
I will post on memes as metaphor hopefully tomorrow when I am less disorganized.

Political Scientist said...

Well, I'm officially lame. I'm in pre-viva hell here, but I hope to write something about memes in about 3 weeks. Sorry for being rubbish.

OT: Did you see "How mad are you?"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql

I wondered if you were going to do a review in the manner of the one one you did of "The Doctor who hears voices"

Andrew Hickey said...

Followed a link from Rilstone's comments, and just wanted to say you've rather neatly summed up everything I despise about sodding 'memes'...