JohnMc,
I concur with your observation. One aspect of memes that Dennett
emphasizes is its similarity to viruses. The resemblance is due to
the sugar-coating that many viruses employ to get them past the
barriers of the cell.
However, weak Dennett's metaphor may be, memes go beyond this in
promising long term "sugar" or rewards. I think of the phrase
"There's gold in them thar hills." of the '49 gold rush. This
slogan or catch phrase is trite, easily repeated (elides) and
holds a promise of riches. Humans are resource-centric systems and
as such we pay attention to potential opportunities. How do we
represent that in KR?
This _expression_ of potential gold in the California hills also
meets John Sowa's observation of popularity. However, John's
"popularity" falls short of meeting the German "Ohrwurm" (earworm)
in which the popularity is the single individual, and no polling
has taken place to determine the entailed "popularity". It may be
that "meme" is an not-fully specified noun of which there may be
varieties or modifying properties. My apologies to JohnS, but I am
focused on the ontological practice and would rather not have to
deal with classifiers that poll versus one identified for an
individual. When I hear some teeny-bopper listening to a song and
he/she says, "Oh, that song is so cool, I can't get it out of my
head!", I can recognize that a meme is involved. In this case the
popularity is the single individual. In focusing on just songs, it
is as if the music is there, but not the musician. Perhaps instead
of "popular" we could use "compelling" or "inciting", as with the
'49'ers.
We have that case also in the paradigm of puzzles. The puzzle is
presented without the presence of the creator. In the case of
magic tricks, the tricks are normally considered a body of
knowledge, often referred to by the name of the creating magician.
References are made to the body of knowledge and they are not
base-referenced with a particular performance. Even when presented
the first time, they are added to the encyclopedia of magic. This
is the way the human brain works. We can prove that with the
simple exercise I call the "P/Fruit" exercise. If we ask someone
to "Name a word that begins with P that is a fruit", we can then
time their response. We could also ask someone to "Name a fruit
that begins with P", and time that response. The leading of
information with the "fruit" identifies the semantic center of the
data in question and it is faster to pick one out that starts with
"P". And we also know that knowledge is stored in the cortex in a
fixed location, with little movement, except in the case of
trauma. This doesn't mean that KR has to be stored this way also,
but the brain has a few years of research behind it.
Just to return for a moment to "Ohrwurm", we might also observe
that there are "eyeworms, noseworms and touchworms", ("Oh, how I
love the feel of velvet", was velvet a meme of the Victorian era?)
Again, I am interested in the practice, not memes per se. The
practice is becoming clearer for me, but there are still gaps in
how the knowledge elements (and this is true for any "new"
knowledge) are determined and structured.
-John Bottoms
FirstStar Systems
Concord, MA USA
On 4/12/2013 10:14 AM, jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
A very well-known meme in the political sphere is that "tax
cuts generate growth" - hardly a popular idea but one
you better toe if you're a Republican congressman! The purpose
of a meme is specifically to cause/explain one's (voting)
behaviour promoting certain agendas. In this case, the agenda is
to maximize the retained earnings of rich people.
A meme is neither a "true nor factual" idea. It is purely a
tool for behaviour modification, somewhat akin to a "claim" in a
"belief system". Genetic analogies may come to mind to explain
why some memes survive, becoming mythic in proportion, while
others do not.
"If it feels good, then DO IT."
The other day I was crotchety & crusty and I regret a
public outburst was the result. Sorry for that (Pat).
- john
On 12.04.2013 05:55, John F Sowa wrote:
Ronald, Ali, Doug, Pavithra, and Pat,
In all the discussions and publications about memes, you can do a global
change of 'meme' to 'idea that has become popular' without changing the
meaning of anything in the discussion itself.
What the word 'meme' contributes is a keyword or search term that
links the documents in which it is used. That is very helpful for
finding related discussions. But, by itself, it doesn't explain
the underlying principles.
My complaint about the word 'meme' is that the analogy with genes is
more distracting than enlightening. In the popular and academic talk,
nobody has found any unifying principle that is more precise or cogent
than the term 'idea that has become popular'.
RS
Memes
operate through specialised clusters of social norms... I hope
that discussing memes will draw attention to the essential
role of norms in the functioning of every human information
system, which distinguishes them from IT systems.
Those are good points. The same could be said about "popular ideas".
What is essential to the term 'meme' is idea. The notion of popularity
is accidental. That suggests the central focus of the discussions
about memes should be on the mechanisms that promote popularity.
AH
[John
Gray et al.] would argue that memes are propagated and
selected not by some generic fitness factor, but by sustained,
concerted efforts by individuals and groups, and gains in
memes are more ephemeral than we may suspect...
Yes. An advertising campaign for ideas.
AH
This
further reminds me of the work done by the Koch brothers in
creating a massive meme generating machine (aka echo chamber),
Yes. The Koch bros and their use their so-called "Think Tanks" created
a giant hype machine. The K bros are not stupid. They graduated from
my old alma mater, MIT, and they contribute to some worthy causes such
as the Nova science programs on PBS. But I noticed that Nova has never
had a program on global warming -- that's a "meme" they don't like.
Speaking of the K bros and MIT reminds me of an old cartoon, which
showed a complicated diagram of a hype machine. On the left was
an input funnel for "raw hype". Coming out on the right side were
nicely packaged lumps of "pure hype".
DF
A
word is a thing, yes. A word is not a string.
Instead of arguing about whether a meme is a thing, I suggest that we
just use 'idea' as the hypernym or supertype of 'meme'. The question
I raised is whether there is anything more to meme than "popular idea".
PK
There
are actual things, or acts or events and there are language
specific words that represents them...
Yes. That is the distinction of language vs metalanguage.
But as I replied to Doug, I suggest that we agree that memes are ideas.
That shifts attention to the question whether there is anything more
to meme than just "idea that has become popular".
PH
I
would argue [layered metalanguage] is not desirable. The world
is *not* layered in this way, in fact. Language is as much
part of the real world as architecture is, and words are just
as real as houses.
I agree. But signs didn't become relevant until there were
sentient beings that could respond to signs. And even with the
higher mammals, metalanguage didn't enter the world until humans
developed the sign systems we call language. So the distinction
of signs, referents of signs, and interpreters of signs is relevant.
PH
I
would suggest that you might want to consider abandoning this
layering idea.
Tarski recommended the layered approach for metalanguage as a simple way
to avoid paradox. But that is a separate issue.
IKL (or any notation that supports metalanguage) requires something
like the 'that' operator. The question of whether you stratify the
metalevels is an independent choice.
In fact, even with a semantics like IKL, which allows you to mix levels,
there may be useful reasons for distinguishing them for particular
applications.
John
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