[extropy-chat] SEX! (Re: Martine Rothblatt and bemes)

[Anders Sandberg]

Keith Henson wrote:
> At 11:27 PM 11/9/2006 +0100, Anders wrote:
>>  Already memes
>>are problematic as replicators since they are hard to delineate from
>>surrounding cognitive structures,
...
> So memes are replicating information patterns, elements of culture, ideas,
> beliefs, etc, etc.
>
> But it all comes down to the same thing, information measurable in bits.

I have a problerm with measuring memes in bits. Look at the following joke:

"This is a passenger announcement. The train on platform one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve has come in
sideways."

How many bits are that? We can measure it in ASCII, but clearly it is
dependent on an enormous among of mental context. Telling it to a martian
or someone unfamiliar with what trains look like and how stations work
will not elicit a chuckle.

But worse, when I re-tell the joke I have changed it slightly (like
translating it to English in this case). If you re-tell it it will also be
changed, perhaps with a greater or lesser number of platforms, a bit of
setting information at the start or changing it to an airport and
airplane. Now, is that the same meme? We can certainly see the
similarities and the "sameness", but we can distinguish different
retellings and not all are equally funny.

Memes may be like parasites in that their "genetic code" is pretty small
and requires the right context to be executed and produce effects. But it
seems to me that they do not have sharp borders. This does not invalidate
the meme concept but it does make it hard to use in a strict sense since
it is only approximate copying going on, and the sameness metric is highly
dependent on complex subjective judgements.

> I have been seriously annoyed at people who tried to mystify such a simple
> subject.  They distract from the really interesting interface between
> evolutionary psychology and memetics which elucidates subjects as
> important
> to humans as germ theory.

If germs behave like sharp or fuzzy objects you need different approaches
to them. After all, viral quasispecies and transposomes are pretty
different in action from good old bacteria.

I have the impression that real memetic research these days (haven't
followed it closely over the last years) actually has dealt with many of
these methodological and definitional problems. But it took a bit of
philosophical footwork. If bemes are going to be conceptually useful ideas
they also need a bit of clarification, otherwise they will just be
handwaving.

After all, if I invent the term "argemes" to denote the units of
argumentness, for that to be useful we need to figure out whether this
entire post, this paragraph or the idea embodied in it is the argeme. That
also involves thinking of what use we plan to have for them - are they
going to analyse argument techniques, discuss online discourses or
elucidate the evolution of arguments (or all three)?

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University