Edmonds, B. (2002). Three Challenges for
the Survival of Memetics.
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of
Information Transmission,
6.
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2002/vol6/edmonds_b_letter.html
A Letter on:
Three Challenges for the Survival of Memetics
In my
opinion, memetics has reached a crunch point. If, in the near future, it does
not demonstrate that it can be more than merely a conceptual framework, it will
be selected out. While it is true that many successful paradigms started out as
such a framework and later moved on to become pivotal theories, it also true
that many more have simply faded away. A framework for thinking about phenomena
can be useful if it delivers new insights but, ultimately, if there are no
usable results academics will look elsewhere.
Such frameworks have considerable power over those that hold them for these
people will see the world through these `theoretical spectacles' (Kuhn
1969) - to the converted the framework appears necessary. The converted are
ambitious to demonstrate the universality of their way of seeing things; more
mundane but demonstrable examples seem to them as simply obvious. However such
frameworks will not continue to persuade new academics if it does not provide
them with any substantial explanatory or predictive `leverage'. Memetics is no
exception to this pattern.
For this reason I am challenging the memetic community of academics to
achieve the following three tasks of different types:
- a conclusive case-study;
- a theory for when memetic models are appropriate;
- and a simulation of the emergence of a memetic process.
These are
not designed to cover all the cases where a memetic analysis might hold or to in
any way indicate the scope of memetics. Thus, for example, although the style of
Challenge
1reflects what Gatherer was arguing for in (Gatherer
1998), I am not claiming that only such sorts of cases are memetic, only
that to convince people it is in these sorts of cases that we must first
establish the field. Great theories are seldom proved in general or for complex
cases but the battle ground for establishing scientific credibility is often
fought over some pretty mundane territory.
If these challenges are met, memetics will almost certainly survive [note
1], if not then it will not die immediately, just be increasingly ignored
until it becomes merely a minor footnote in the history of science. As
memeticists you have to decide! Will you stop the over-ambitious theoretical
discussion and do some of the mundane foot-work that will actually advance
knowledge of memetics processes? As David Hull said at the Cambridge meme
conference [note
2]:
"Stop talking about Memetics and start doing it."
Challenge 1: A conclusive case
study
The purpose of this is to clearly demonstrate that there is at
least one cultural process that is of an evolutionary nature, where
`evolutionary' is taken in a narrow sense. This needs to be robust against
serious criticism. In my opinion this needs to achieve the following as a
minimum.
- Exhibit a replicator mechanism - this needs to be something physical and
not in the mind. The mechanism must provide a testable cause of the claimed
evolutionary process. It must faithfully replicate with a low level of error
or change (although there must be some variation). There must be no doubt that
particular inheritable patterns have been accurately replicated many times
over.
- The lineages of the replicator must be unbroken for long enough to allow a
process of adaptation to exterior factors to occur. If a meme originates from
a few central sources and is only replicated a few times away from these, then
this is insufficient. Thus if lots of people copy an idea from a particular
book and this does not then take on a replicative momentum of its own then
this can not evolve. Even when there is a demonstrable ability to imitate and
the population statistics suggest that there is an evolutionary process
occurring it can still be the case that no sustained evolution is actually
occurring (Edmonds
1989).
- Over a long time period the success of a replicated meme must be
demonstrably correlated to identifiable comparable advantages of a meme in
terms of the mechanism and context of replication. If reasons why one meme is
more successful than another are only based on vague plausibility, then this
is not enough.
- The dynamics need to be numerically consistent with the applicable
theories of population genetics, e.g. Price's covariance and selection theorem
(Price
1970, 1972).
Such a case study is not likely to be of a highly ambitious nature
(e.g. explaining complex human institutions), but of a limited nature about
which good quality data is available. There may well be many other memetic
processes in the world but the point of this one is that it is inarguably
demonstrable. Once one such case study has been established more ambitious cases
can be attempted, but more ambitious cases will not be believed until some more
straightforward cases are established first.
Possible cases might include some of the following.
- Nursery rhymes. Here there is a demonstrable copying process of
infants rote learning rhymes from their parents and school teachers. The
rhyming mechanism and regular meter helps ensure the accurate replication
across generations, and it might be possible to relate the success of rhymes
to its features (e.g. how easy they are to remember). There is some evidence
going back hundreds of years to the `chap books' in the first age of popular
printing (Opie
and Opie, 1997).
- Legal Phrases. Successful legal phrases (i.e. those that succeed in
court cases) are repeatedly reused in legal documents such as contracts and
articles. They are copied exactly so as not to open the opportunity for a new
interpretation by a court. A study of their population dynamics and lineages
could be made to show that a substantive evolutionary process occurred as a
result.
Challenge 2: A theoretical model for when it
is more appropriate to use a memetic model
One of the chief
explanatory claims of memetics is that, in some sense, the memes evolve for
their own sake more than as simply as a result of a self-interested choice by
the `host' individuals. At the extreme some memeticists (e.g. Rose
1998, Blackmore
1999) have claimed that human brains are essentially `nothing but' hosts for
such memes - they have no meaningful mental existence without these
self-interested memes. However the extent of these claims and the `added-value'
over more conventional (i.e. biologically grounded) explanations is unclear. It
seems to me almost certainly the case that if hosting memes in general conferred
no biological advantage to the individuals that `host' them, then they would not
have evolved in this way. The brain is a costly organisation in biological terms
and would not have evolved if it was merely for the sake of other individuals
(i.e. memes).
It seems clear to me (a memetic agnostic) that some human beliefs are more
sensibly considered to be of a non-memetic character. For example, I may gain
the information that the number 192 bus leaving Stockport goes to central
Manchester, and I may even tell someone else this fact. However, the chains
of referral are likely to be very short - that is to say, it is likely that
individuals will not rely on obtaining this type of information from long chains
of communication due to the likelihood of errors being introduced. Rather they
will tend to go back to the original source - the centrally originated
timetable. The `fitness' of this information lies not in any intrinsic
propensity for being communicated but rather due to its utility in utilising the
bus system for personal transport, i.e. its truth.
For other information it may be more appropriate to model a pattern of
information as if it had an evolutionary life of its own, separable from the
advantage it confers on its `hosts'. For example it may be that the success of
nursery rhymes is more strongly correlated with its memorability rather than any
utility - that almost any monotonous rhythmic words might be as good as any
other for the purposes of getting children to sleep or teaching them language,
so that the reason why particular rhymes spread is due to their replicability.
In such a case a memetic model might explain the variety and dynamics of rhyme
spread in a way that is not possible with models based on individual
advantage.
What is needed is some (falsifiable) theory that (under some specified
conditions) tells us when a memetic analysis is more helpful than a more
traditional one. Such a theory would have to meet the following criteria.
- It would have to make some sort of prediction of when a memetic model was
appropriate - i.e. it had explanatory or predictive value - and when not. In
other words when it is helpful to model a pattern that has been copied as a
self-interested meme.
- The theory would be workable on information that was sometimes possible to
obtain, i.e. not based on unobtainable information (e.g. the composition of
mental states).
- The theory would have to be understandable in terms of the credibility,
appropriateness and clarity of its core mechanism. The assumptions under which
the model works would need to be fairly clear and practically determinable.
- The theory would need to be validated against observable phenomena, not
just established by the plausibility of its assumptions.
The possible
shape of such a theory is not clear to me, but I could imagine a theory that
somehow compares the fitness contribution of a meme w.r.t. the meme and its
fitness contribution of it w.r.t. the individuals who `hosted' it.
Challenge 3: A simulation model showing the
true emergence of a memetic process
The purpose of this is to show
that patterns of information could have come about in a believable way. If the
key imitation processes are `programmed in' by the simulation designer then it
would be unconvincing. Instead the simulation needs to be designed so that
others would judge it to be a credible model of a situation that is likely to
occur in the real world, but so that an evolutionary process composed of
information messages emerges as a result of the interactions between and within
individuals.
The criteria that such a simulation model should meet are the following.
- The micro behaviour of the individuals needs to be credible. That is they
need to reflect patterns of behaviour that third parties [note
3] would accept as being really possible. Thus behaviour based on strong a
priori assumptions (e.g. utility optimisation) or unmodified off-the-shelf
algorithms (e.g. Genetic Algorithms) would not be suitable.
- The emergent behaviour must be demonstrably evolutionary in character by
the criteria in Challenge
1. That is to say there must be substantial and repeated accurate
replication of patterns. Patterns replicative success must be demonstrably due
to their characteristics. There must occur long, unbroken lineages for the
evolution to act on etc.
- The emergent memetic process must not be directly `designed into' the
simulation. This can be a difficult criterion to judge but, at a minimum,
there should be: no built-in and inevitable processes of replication or
imitation; the emergent evolutionary process should be contingent upon certain
conditions and settings; and the behaviour of the individuals not obviously
distorted to encourage the evolutionary process to occur (i.e. they retain
some descriptive credibility).
Such a simulation demonstrates the
possibility that a memetic process could emerge in a population of credible
individuals. The more abstract or less realistic the design of such a
simulation, the less convincing it will be. It is unlikely that such a
simulation will be over-baroque or very general, but of a more mundane nature.
Such a simulation could be composed of a population of interacting and
self-interested individuals that are evolving in a reasonably complex
environment. It would need to be shown that a secondary process of, first,
imitation and, later, evolution, arose out of their interactions, so that,
eventually, the secondary evolutionary process would become substantially
self-driven rather than in the direct interest of the individuals (in the sense
of Challenge
2). The emergence of a memetic process goes beyond just comparing whether
pre-determined genetic or cultural operators won out (or were more effective) -
it is the equivalent of exhibiting a simulation of the emergence of life from
the interaction of chemicals.
Notes
- That is unless subsumed within a new theory that is more
general and powerful.
- Reported by Andrew Lord, and confirmed in a personal
communication with David Hull. For a more prosaic version see Hull's
contribution (Hull
2000) to the resulting book.
- By "third parties", I mean academics outside the field who
have no particular interest in promoting (or, indeed, denigrating) memetics,
for example biologists.
References
Blackmore, S. (1999)
The Meme Machine. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press.
Edmonds, B. (1998). On Modelling in Memetics.
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission,
2. http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/edmonds_b.html
Gatherer, D. (1998) Why the Thought Contagion
Metaphor is Retarding the Progress of Memetics. Journal of Memetics -
Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission, 2. http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/gatherer_d.html
Hull, D. (2000) Taking Memetics Seriously: Memetics will be
what we make it. In Aunger, R. (ed.), Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a
Science, Oxford: Oxford university Press, 43-67.
Kuhn, T. (1969) The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Price, G. R. 1970. Selection and covariance.
Nature 227: 520-521.
Price, G. R. 1972. Extension of covariance selection
mathematics. Annals of Human Genetics 35:485-489.
Rose, N., 1998; Controversies in Meme Theory.Journal
of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission,2.http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/rose_n.html
Opie, I. and Opie, P. (eds.) (1997) The Oxford
Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Oxford; New York : Oxford University
Press.
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