Introduction
Stating the obvious appears to be another form of immunomeme, and often shows particularly how an immunomeme need have little or nothing to do with the meme(s) it defends against, in fact, it may be quite generic. Study of this form of immunomemetic defense may also shed light on whether immunomemes are parametric (1).
I think this essay may ask more questions than it answers. But I will try to answer them later, or determine that some of them are nonsense.
How do Immunomemes Function?
This seems like a really obvious question, but I've been trying to construct a theoretical model to underpin it, and it's not been easy, and I'm not sure I have enough data to support anything at this point. I'm working on the idea of memetic states (4) and (memetic state) transition matrices (6), all which run off of the theory that the function, or rather, action of memes within a memetic cohort is to cause a state transition.
What about MIAOs?
Is any immunomeme deployment the invocation of a MIAO? A simple counterexample such as "I don't think so" (7) suggests otherwise. Or does an immunomeme prevent the invocation of new MIAOs, or state transitions? Does a MIAO (or collection of MIAOs) define a state? Is it possible to think of a state which somehow exists independently of any MIAO? This is a very serious theoretical question. If in any given state of a cohort, is it always possible to identify the MIAO or MIAOs which are in play, and in any state transition is it possible to specify which MIAOs are deactivated and which new MIAOs are brought into play?
It may well be the case that, for example, extreme political movements, as we see time and again, use familiar MIAOs (or constellations of MIAOs (17)) and then anchor new memes to them, or as often as not, merely change the connections of memes to MIAOs, possibly tying MIAOs to one another in novel ways (17,18).
Equivalence of super-MIAOs (MIAOplexes) and memetic states
At this point a great many questions and possible theories to help describe the nature of memetic transitiions have been laid out. Do we like the idea of one-to-one equivalences of MIAOplexes to memetic states, i.e., does the deployment of any single meme, which, according to one theoretical model, result in a different set of MIAOs coming into play? Or, does a MIAOplex define a set of states and a set of memes linked to each state by a set of transition matrices?
This may provide us the beginnings of a practical definition of a memetic system, which further allows us to tie together MIAOs and memes and how memetic cohort membership is determined by them. A given MIAO may have many memes anchored to it, but it may be that when MIAOs are lashed together into MIAOplexes, only a subset of those memes are able to be activated, rather like the allowed electron states in a given atom are changed and restricted when the electron is bound up into a molecule.
Could this "memetic inventory pruning" process even be deterministic? Again, rather like the electrodynamics of molecular chemistry? In other words, if two MIAOs are brought together (or even more), is it possible to say a priori which memes will be active and which suppressed? Or is this always a tailoring/engineering process, and if so, how may it be accomplished?
Matrix Transitions
I would further like to posit that selection and optimization (2) are a matter of individual skill. The individual who is skilled at selecting high-resonance memes at many junctures may be able to become a memetic nexus, for instance. Said person may also be highly motivated to (and skilled at) deploy memes (and influence others to do likewise (8)) which keep the memetic pathway directed back into the memetic system in which they are the most skilled, i.e., towards their own "power center". In many cases, these deployed memes are probably immunomemes. Do powerful people tend to be infuriating, super-conservative, and could this explain why?
Again, memetic systems, which, we are thinking, are made up of MIAOplexes, with memes that are attached to each of the MIAOs (19) are strong or weak based on whether there are few or many easily-reached pathways that lead out of the system.
But how do memes cause transitions...?
It seems we're still at sea as to what a meme causing a state transition looks like. We can clearly identify memetic deployments, i.e., the invocation of a given meme (whether it's parametric or no), but how to identify memetic state? Perhaps the MIAOs involved (the "subject" of discussion or action) sheds light. This seems very relevant to immunomemes, since in principle these prevent transitions, but what kinds of transitions? Invocation of new MIAOs? Do immunomemes always resonate more than invader memes, and is that how they work? They provide a low-risk "go to option" for the memetic cohort, and therefor "snuff out" the invader since the invader is perceived as having high risk for uncertain reward? Could this be the basis for sycophancy? Agree with powerful person (memetic nexus?) and get guaranteed high reward?
In principle all memes in the entire memetic inventory of a cohort are available, but the perceived resonance (reward) potential may be so low that they are effectively not available to the transition matrices of the given MIAOplex. Hence the memetic inventory pruning associated with MIAO bonding and MIAOplex formation.
In the end, the definition of a memetic state is the memetic sub-inventory of deployable memes in a given situation. This implies that each person has a separate inventory (22), an ideo-inventory, if you will, and a separate set of states, in other words, their [sic] own transition matrix (22). This makes sense, since gender, age, position, status, etc., influence which memes one may deploy and which states they might lead to (23). Also, which meme succeeds in causing the transition (if simultaneously deployed by different individuals)? Theory states that whichever the cohort resonates with, which is predicated on the perceived reward, and this may cascade (24).
Summary, if not Conclusion
Okay, I've rambled quite a bit, and most of the substance of this is in footnotes. Rather than "conclusions", I think I have a lot of theoretical "maybes" to summarize:
1. MIAOs may be the basis for identifying what a memetic state is.
2. There may be such a thing as a MIAOplex (super-MIAO).
3. MIAO may join (bond) into MIAOplexes based on common, or shared memes
4. This theory of MIAO bonding and MIAOplexes may pave the way to a rigorous theory of the practice of memetic engineering
5. The Theory of MIAO bonding may or may not shed much light on disinurement theory
6. Immunomemes may function simply by "drowning out" invader memes (by offering more reward), and the status of the person deploying the immunomeme may be very relevant.
7. A "pruned" subset of the memes in a MIAOplex is all that is available to the sub-cohort
7.1. The pruned memetic inventory may be deterministic, or it may have to be tailored/engineered
7.2. A memetic state is simply a vertex on the directed (?) graph of the memes which become available at each memetic deployment, i.e., a transition matrix = a memetic state
7.3. Is it possible to identify memetic transition matrices and specify them rigorously?
7.4. Is pruning predicated on shared memes in the bonded MIAOs? If so, how?
8. The "granularity" of MIAO membership in a MIAOplex, i.e., which MIAOs are in play -- does this reveal anything, e.g., a "local" memetic inventory, the need for a meta-transition matrix, etc.?
9. The "robustness" ("strength") of a MIAOplex (memeplex) is predicated on the shortness, tightness of it's memetic pathways, and the paucity or prevalence of "exit memes" (25).
9.1. Inclusion of more MIAOs may strengthen a system, or weaken it? Why?
9.2. Do tightly bonded MIAOs in MIAOplexes strengthen a system and make it more conservative? Why or why not?
10. Physiological responses are memetic "dead ends" and this may form the basis of their appeal in human society (and also the shame, fanaticism, and fetishism associated with them).
11. What is the relation, if any, between "conservatism" and memetic nexuses, sycophancy, (short) pathway "circuits", and paucity/prevalence of "exit memes" (25)?
Okay, so lots of stuff to think about, including how to test these hypotheses. As usual, sub-cultures and small, memetically isolated cohorts are valuable testbeds.
Please comment!!
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(1) Can the immunomeme substitute into its "text" part of the "input" of the meme it defends against (the "invading meme")? For example, "We should let women/African-Americans/Latinos into our club" could be defended against by "This isn't a club" or by stating the "obvious" (or unassailably (3) well-known) "We've never had women/latinos/afro-americans in our club before". The deployer of the defending meme tries to choose the "best" (2) immunomeme, i.e., the one most likely to resonate, or resonate the most strongly. The big question appears to be whether immunomemes really are parametric, or merely can be, or indeed always are in one way or another, and whether this is important to their functioning or classification.
(2) How does deployment selection optimize? Or does it do anything like optimization? A model or algorithm for this seems to be an important part of theoretical development (see elsewhere). Also, what role does "risk" play in selection, i.e., gambling on a "bigger" memetic reward as opposed to a more "certain" one. The gamble is bigger/wider resonance vs. alienation (no resonance/reaction). Another decision is where a negative (or possibly self-deprecating) reaction is acceptable (see oppression of minority groups elsewhere). There may be a number of "catalytic" effects, e.g., high-status people deploying the meme, isolation of context, etc., that make meme deployment more attractive, i.e., perceived as more likely to resonate.
(3) Against which no successful memetic counterattack may be mounted. This is an important property of complaining immunomemes (complainomemes), and their appeal due to the fact that they provide reliable (if often modest) memetic rewards to the deployer (and resonators).
(4) The working definition of a memtic state is a collection of memes which are available to be deployed. How memetic states are related to MIAOs (5) is as yet unclear.
(5) Memetic Iconic Anchoring Object. A familiar, iconic (usually simple) object to which memes may attach, and the invocation of which makes all said memes available to the cohort.
(6) A state transition matrix has columns of memetic states (memetic inventories, effectively) and rows which are memes. Elements of the matrix are destination states. Thus, deployment of a meme causes the transition from the current state to the destination state. The transition matrix defines all of the memes available to the cohort from a given state, and the changing of the function of a meme, e.g., it's repurposing to cause it to transition to different states, or the addition of novel (or extant) memes as new rows, or extant (or new) states as available to transition to (as new rows). How new states may be created is unclear, but things like stories and games suggest themselves. MIAOs may be very important here. The relation between MIAOs and memetic states is unclear, but interesting. Creating novel memes and repurposing (changing the connections between rows and columns in the transition matrix) is still mysterious, but neologisms (which seem to spring up all the time), objects of art, and so on, appear to be examples. How this all relates to selection optimization (2) is unclear, as is whether selection criteria (optimized or now) may be fit into this model or whether a further model is required.
(7) This immunomeme takes no parameters, and does not directly reference the meme it is countering, which is excellent for use in political rhetoric, by the way. I noted that Donald Trump, in the recent political debates, was quite skilled and consistent in not mentioning Hillary Clinton by name (while she mentioned "Donald" in almost every sentence), and thus avoided creating or reinforcing memetic attachments between (Hillary's) memes and pre-existing memes. Hillary on the other hand, was continually saying things like "Donald says he can fix the economy, but...something, something..." or "Donald says ObamaCare is a failure, something..." which is effectively, from a memetic viewpoint "Donald = fix economy" and "Donald right (me wrong): ObamaCare = Failure". This is basic linguistics, by the way, in terms of how humans understand speech events. So, in effect, every time Hillary Clinton opened her mouth, she was reinforcing (8) Trump's memes and MIAOs, while Donald Trump studiously refused to return the favor, so to speak. Trump diligently hit his own memes again and again, and these memes were virulent (9) and made simple assertions which usually avoided mentioning Hillary Clinton, e.g., "ObamaCare is a disaster", "Bengazi was a disaster", "The economy is a disaster", etc., except when to directly attack Clinton, e.g., "Hillary (11) bungled Bengazi (which was a disaster (12))", "Hillary is a liar/cheat", "Hillary failed as a Senator", "Hillary's lying about her e-mail scandal", "Hillary should be put in prison (for lying, cheating, e-mail, etc. (12))", etc.
(8) An example of pseudo-mutation, by the way. If a meme is perceived to come from multiple sources, it is seen as more "credible" or more "virulent" (likely to garner memetic rewards by having a broader cohort base). By restating Trump's memes over and over, Clinton cemented his MIAO configuration (state transition matrix) at the expense of her own.
(9) Marketing people would say "sticky" (10) instead of "successful" or "virulent". They propagate well, usually because they contain simple (and familiar ideas, usually MIAO-invoking)
(10) I define "sticky" as an inherent property of an "object" or MIAO which cannot be removed or hidden, e.g., gender or race, the national or company origin of a product, etc. An individual cannot (easily) change their skin color or gender characteristics, and thus are "stuck" with the memes attached to them, e.g., racial prejudice, misogyny, bad (or good) brand reputation, etc.
(11) I was struck by the "personalization" of the campaign, i.e., the use of first names and such. This effectively served to MIAOify the opponent, making it easier to attach memes. Hence, it could be argued that consistent use of a label (or icon) for the opponent advances that, as well as the consistent use of the memes themselves, including forcing the opponent to repeat the attacking memes verbatim (as could be argued, Trump also did well). Also, it seems possible to establish a separate MIAO for one's own attachment of positive qualities (memes) and forcing the opponent to attach their negative memes to another MIAO, or invoke the positive one. Hillary Clinton chose to consistently deploy negative memes by referring to Donald Trump as "Donald", leaving her opponent free to heap positive memes onto the "Trump" MIAO, which indeed, he had done for his entire career, so Clinton's invocation of the Trump MIAO would've hurt her in any case. By contrast, Trump invoked "The Clintons" (MIAO) and thus immediately summoned up the (largely negative) memetic historical inventory of both Hillary and Bill over the past 40-odd years (Bill's sex scandals, both their business dealings, and so on) and hammered on those memes, as well as attaching all sorts of new negative memes to the "Hillary" MIAO (7). Trump even managed to stand up a "The Don" MIAO which, being subtly grammatically different, could also act as a positive meme anchoring site, and thus allow people to make the tiny jump from the Hillary-beleaguered "Donald" MIAO to the semantically neighboring "The Don" MIAO.
(12) Memes can also re-enforce one another within a memetic system, usually by causing each other to be repeated, or re-enacted, in the course of the following of memetic pathways (13)
(13) Memetic pathways are series of transitions between memetic states in the set of transition matrices that make up a memetic system. Pathways that lead out of the system (15) weaken it, while "circuits" or "loops" (the tighter the better) strengthen it and tend to enlarge the cohort (14) by making it easier for new members to join thanks to fast repetion.
(14) at this point, an entirely theoretical assertion.
(15) This may be the function of comedy and other forms of entertainment resulting in laughing or crying, since these are effectively memetic dead ends (16, 14).
(16) A memetic dead end, as the name suggests, is a member of a transition matrix that specifies no destination state (14). A physiological response may be such an element, that is, laughter, tears, sexual orgasm, sleep, pain, possibly meditation, drug experience, etc. Memes may invoke them, but they themselves represent a kind of final state, or system "reset button", from which no specific set of memetic transitions are defined. They resonate, i.e., the invoker of the triggering meme and the triggered cohort all receive a memetic reward, but they enter a "non-memetic state" as a result.
(17) If we determine that MIAOs are intimately linked to states, or that they are somehow synonymous therewith, then we immediately have the question of whether MIAOs may function in concert. I strongly suspect this is true. We could posit "micro-states" in which only one MIAO at a time is in play, which might yield a finer granularity, or this could be a red herring. It could also be the case that collections of MIAOs determine states (in terms of the contents of transition matrices) or even that the memetic anchoring of MIAOs is dependent upon the constellation of MIAOs rather than individual ones. Further research required here.
(18) For instance, the Nazi "Jesus hates Jews", or the post-WWII American "women belong at home (and all the concomitant memetics attached thereto)". The stickiness (10) of Jewishness and femaleness greatly facilitate meme anchoring, although the Soviet "counter-revolutionary" or the American "communist/pinko" or "drug/sex/etc. addict" are more generally applicable, while being less sticky. In other words, Jewishness is a MIAO, Jesus is a MIAO, so the lashing together (20) of these two MIAOs forms a super-MIAO to which things like "the Jewish problem" to which further "The Final Solution" may be anchored. Likewise, "womanliness (sticky)", "the virtuous woman, wife and mother", "hearth and home", and "the protective/providing/hard-working man" are all shopworn positive MIAOs, and their lashing together yields a super-MIAO to which all sorts of memes of the subjugation and oppression of women may be anchored, including but by no means limited to lack of right to education/employment, presumption of stupidity/ineptitude, lack of sexual freedom, absolute need to be married (for men as well, but moreso for women), lack of right to own property, men's absolute need to always be fully employed (no "stay-at-home dads"), and questioning of women's right to vote.
(19) Could it be possible that shared memes between MIAOs are what determine whether said MIAOs may form a super-MIAO or MIAOplex? If so, this simplifies things enormously, since we can engineer novel memetic systems by adding memes to certain MIAOs, which in turn makes them able to be attached to MIAOs (or MIAOplexes) to which they previously could not. Such memes may even exist latently, and if re-enforced, disparate MIAOs may be joined, rather like the function of a catalyst in chemistry, which again, enormously simplifies and clarifies the process of memetic engineering.
(20) For instance, by strengthening the "(Jewish) King Herod handed Jesus over to the Romans to be killed" and to a lesser extent "Jesus was betrayed by (Jewish) Judas (who also kept the money for the group of disciples, i.e., money-grubbing Jew meme)" (19), the lashing together of these two MIAOs into a Nazi MIAOplex may be accomplished. Forget that the Romans actually killed Jesus, that Jesus himself was a Jew, Jesus is the Son of God so getting put to death is no biggie and he rose again three days later anyway, Jesus' crucifixion and death were the fulfillment of the Covenant of Abraham and the gift of Forgiveness of Sin and Resurrection to Eternal Life are the basis for the entirety of the Christian faith, Christians believe Christ to be Elijah (the greatest Jewish prophet for whom an empty chair is left at seders) returned to Earth, Jesus' entire life (except for Joseph and Mary's refuge in Egypt just after his birth) was spent in the Jewish Holy Land, and it was all God's loving plan anyway, according to every tenet of Christianity, and so if anything the Jewish People, by giving birth to Jesus, providing the environment for him to perform his Great Works, and finally the context wherein he could be crucified by the Romans, were fulfilling their millennias-old role as God's Chosen People. But, as I hope I've made clear by now, memes don't have to be logical or consistent, or make any damn sense at all, or be good for human beings.(21)
(21) all the more reason to be wary of demagogues like Hitler and others (hopefully not Donald Trump...!) and the MIAOplexes they create by co-opting old ideas, since once these MIAOplectic monsters are created, they please themselves, and putting the genie back into the bottle (or the toothpaste back into the tube) may be very difficult indeed (and may require the deaths of millions, as we've seen time and again).
(22) Although this may average out to a very similar one in large groups, as in Hari Seldon's Psychohistory from Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy
(23) For instance, children are seldom listened to or taken seriously in American society, and the same goes for women and minorities. They have a different, often restricted (but sometimes larger) transition matrix, or they may have a number of memes that all transition to the same place.
(24) For instance, if a high-status person agrees/resonates with a deployed meme, then others may be able to obtain memetic rewards by resonating (agreeing with, laughing supportively, etc.) with the second person.
(25) Memes that transition out of the system, i.e., to a state where different MIAOs may be in play, or the set of available memes changing dramatically. More importantly, memes that begin a pathway that does not return to the main graph of the current system, or only by circuitous and/or unlikely routes. Can be thought of as a narrow bridge transition between "memetic islands" (graphs with lots of internal connections but few going in or out), and worst of all, only going out and never coming back in.
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模倣子 Essay - Memetics
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2017-01-08
2017-02-12
模倣子 Ideomemetic Systems and Psychoses
Introduction
In my first discussion on tautolomemes (1) I touch on the fairly obvious idea that each individual in fact has their [sic] own set of transition matrices. Another obvious extension of this is that each individual would have a sub-inventory for each memetic cohort of which they [sic] are a member. Of late I have been re-examining some ideas I had about ideo-memetic systems, how they act as an interface between the inner emotional economy and the outside world, and how the "consciousness" (2) is the environment, or rather, the expression of the operation of this ideo-memetic system. Furthermore, the failure of this internal system to "synchronize" or pass information back and forth (4) between the inner economy (3) and the outside world represents a psychic break.
Complexity and Normalcy
We can imagine an extra layer of transition matrices, i.e., an ideo-memetic system, which is unique to the given individual. One implication is that there be ideo-MIAOplexes which may be composed of MIAOs and MIAOplexes which make up the set of ideo-memes available to the conscious mind and the combination (MIAO bonding or MIAOplex formation) which prunes down the set of available memes to an ideo-memetic sub-system. People suffering from psychoses or organic brain disorders may have to construct some extremely complex MIAOs to "explain" their brain economy to the conscious. This could manifest as paranoia, exaggerated anxiety associated with largely unreal associations (aliens, the FBI, et al are out to get me, etc.). Even religions or other such supernatural belief systems involve an inner collection of complex rules and objects to allow the individual to make contact to outer reality, e.g., feeling shame, fear, etc., around things which are not naturally such, attributing events to non-existant factors such as magic or the action of "dieties", and so on, thereby allowing memetic transitions to be made internally.
Okay, so individuals are expected to react in a certain way in order to be a member of a given cohort, i.e., respond in a certain way to given memes. Presumably most people settle into an "easy" set of responses, i.e., the computation of which memes to deploy in response to incoming memes having very little need for translation, i.e., a simple network (5). However, a person with mental challenges or coming from an alien culture and trying to adapt, for example, may have to develop a fairly complex ideo-memetic system in order to interface with the mainstream.
One theory is that the inner economy cannot be arbitrarily changed, perhaps not at all, perhaps only with difficulty.
Does this have implications for memetic engineering? Is it possible to understand the ideomemetic systems of sub-cohorts, and make it easier (or more difficult...!) for them to interface with the mainstream, without having to modify the memetic profile of the mainstream itself, i.e., without having to memetically "reprogram" the majority?
Matrix Analysis
A given memetic system has a defined set of transition matrices, each of which represents a memetic state, which are the columns in these transition matrices, with the rows representing the memes which are available for deployment in that given state (describing the graph of possible transitions to other states). The collection of all of these matrices describes the graph of all memetic pathways of a memeplex (6), i.e., the transition matrix of a given state corresponds to a vertex on a directed graph of the whole memeplex.
Okay, this we know, but how do ideomemeplexes fit in, i.e., how do we represent them graphically (and formulaically)? An individual trying to interface with a memeplex must meet the requirement of enacting some acceptable meme in response to an incoming meme from outside. This is clearly a matrix operation itself.
This may be an exciting realization, since it may answer some tough questions about selection/optimization and also in issues of education and corrections/reform. How do individuals decide which memes to deploy? How do people learn how to interact with a given megamemeplex, i.e., a culture? If everybody has their [sic] own ideomemeplex, then their memetic inventory vis-a-vis the external megamemeplex differs from person to person, which potentially resolves troubling race conditions (7) which crop up in the simple graph theoretical model of memeplexes and state transitions.
Summary
Ideomemeplexes, in my original conception, provide an elegant model of and explanation for psychic breaks, or how individuals lose touch with reality, or indeed, how they manage to maintain it in the teeth of the ponderous contradictions and inconsistencies present in most naturally-evolved megamemeplexes (cultures, societies, religions, business organizations, governments, etc.). This also has implications for the practice of teaching and learning, and also the genesis of some antisocial behaviors and how to correct them.
Furthermore, ideomemeplexes, far from being limited to the modeling of psychoses and mental illness (or fanaticism, such as religions, etc.) and otherwise unnecessary to explain the macromemtic behavior of "normal" individuals, may provide a fundamental solution to the race conditions and optimization problems inherent in the simple matrix model of memetic states in memeplexes. This solution may be thought of as deriving from the "extra network layer" (11) provided by the ideomemetic matrix, i.e., the network is more flexible and "intelligent".
The details of the ideomemetic system of an individual very well may be accessible for study via standard "memetic hacking" techniques, i.e., interviews conducted in a private and "safe" setting. Further, despite the name, ideomemetic systems may be largely shared by large groups, e.g., alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous share a large set of memes in the form of "slogans" and "stories" and of course religious fanatics share the tenets of whatever cult they're a member of, and in both cases these memes and MIAOs are altogether alien to outsiders.
This may actually be a bad example, or perhaps a very interesting one. The more compatible a submemeplectic context (such as an AA meeting or a religious service of a given cult) is compatible with the individual's own ideomemeplex, the more comfortable the individual will tend to be with the environment, i.e., they [sic] will require less energy to make the required memetic transactions. This may have direct bearing on the study of the formation and dynamics of subcultures, e.g., hipster, nerd, religions, etc., and how this may actually relate to brain physiology.
Afterword
It occurs to me that my earlier idea of doing a memetic analysis on the media (8), similar to Noam Chomsky's analysis of messages during the Vietnam War Era in Manufacturing Consent, might work well starting from a high-level analysis of MIAOs, possibly identifying MIAOplexes, and the memes associated with those MIAOs, i.e., appearing in proximity thereto. This suggests a theory of MIAOplex Formation or MIAO bonding. This could potentially evince actual transition matrices (9), and even lead to the "automatic story writing" machines envisaged by George Orwell in 1984. Once a memetic model of a story setting were constructed, and the ideomemetic matrices of characters (some of which may be novel), it might be possible to "run the simulation" forward, possible with selected starting conditions, and "write" a new story in the same style, or a "fanfic". Again, we may be approaching Asimov's "psychohistory" (10) from The Foundation Trilogy.
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(1) "state-the-obvious" memes, or memes where no challenge may be reasonably mounted to the contents. Other such memes include complainomemes, and "pretending not to understand" memes. These kinds of memes are "unassailable", and thus provide a reliable memetic reward ("payoff" or "memetic orgasm").
(2) whatever the hell that means...!
(3) the inner economy is effectively the low-level wiring of the brain from which the "consciousness", or the platform able to support memetic transitions emerges. This "platform" may be subject to instabilities due to mental illness, extreme stress, etc.
(4) rather like gearing ratios in a mechanical systems, or "impedence matching" in electrical ones. Failure to match power input and output can result in total energy loss or destructive explosions. My memetic description of the breakdown of the conscious "mind" and the ideo-memetic system "running" on it to be able to convert back and forth between the outside world stimuli and the internal economy (3) of the brain is what constitutes a "psychotic break".
(5) This could be a major area of study and research. The formation of memetic systems could be partly driven by the predispositions of the minds making up the memetic fabric upon which the memeplex operates, i.e., whatever memetic pathways and transitions are most "efficient", whatever this means.
(6) which is in principle infinite in extent in both dimensions, but in practice limited to a finite number of states and memes since most memes' influence is too weak in any given state, and the probability of reaching most other states is very small.
(7) If everybody in a memetic deployment decision juncture has an identical memetic inventory and an identical probability vector for each (combined with a decision time vector), then it becomes a race as to who deploys first, and also it will always be the same meme (the one with the highest probability), which is clearly not the case, and is therefor vexing for the graph theory of memeplexes. That is, the system is woefully "divergent", so to speak. The reality we hope to model is more along the lines of the same (usually powerful) people tending to deploy, and usually from the same subset of memes, everybody deploying memes from the allowed set but with differing distributions, and it being almost always being clear which person is going to deploy at a given juncture, i.e., no "jinx events" or collisions. Ideomemetic systems may solve the conundrum.
(8) I had originally thought of using a few scripts of Sex and the City.
(9) One theoretical question mark is the "MIAO granularity" of MIAOplexes, i.e., do memetic inventories shift around based on which MIAOs in a MIAOplex are in play at the given deployment juncture? In short, is there any way to build the transition matrices other than textual analysis of which memes are present in conjunction with which MIAO(s), and the sequences in which they appear? This presents a completeness problem which may not converge well even for extensive texts, and may have provability issues. However, one could start with the set of all combinations of MIAOs crossed with the set of all memes (12), prune all rows and columns which are "ridiculous," and then one is left with the set of all memetic transitions which actually appear in the text, plus additional transitions which are "plausible" and which may have significant predictive value. More on this later...
(10) Isaac Asimov's character, Hari Seldon, was a professor who had developed a theory called "psychohistory" which allowed one to predict with great accuracy the future behavior of large numbers of people (the larger, the more accurate). Among other things, he predicted (correctly) the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire of which he was a citizen, and was able to take action, namely creation of "The Foundation" prior to the collapse.
(11) Known as the "hidden layer" in network theory.
(12) I want to explore a theory of MIAO bonding, or MIAOplex Formation, which promises to enormously simplify the construction of transition matrices as well as the enumeration of the memes making up the inventory of a memeplex. The idea is that all memes in a memeplex are attached to some MIAO or other, or rather, that any meme is attached to (at least) one MIAO, and that the combination of MIAOs which may be identified as part of memeplex "contribute" their memes to that memeplex's memetic inventory. Thus, by identifying (all of) the MIAOs in a memeplex (13), one can elaborate the memetic inventory of the memeplex (16).
(13) More precisely, the MIAOs recognized by the cohort determined to be inured of the memeplex under study. This might seem like circular logic, but I don't believe it is. Rather than analyzing memes, one focuses on MIAOs, many of which may be well-studied elsewhere, e.g., co-opted from other memeplexes (14)(15).
(14) For example, the Christian co-opting of the German Weinnachtesbaum (Christmas Tree), the Mormons co-option of the Catholic Jesus, American borrowing of the English language and Common Law from the British, creative leitmotifs in art forms such as film, television, painting, sculpture, the Japanese borrowing of Chinese (and American) culture and writing systems.
(15) Other similar concepts to Co-option are trans-pairing and accretion. I still need to elaborate all of these and define them rigorously (in terms of matrix operations, etc.), but they are all ways in which memes attach to MIAOs.
(16) One question is whether this process, i.e., MIAO bonding, brings in all of the memes of all of the MIAOs, or only those which are shared among them, or something more complex. The second one seems problematic. Perhaps there is some further process where memes are removed (or even added) which we might term meme paring (as opposed to "pairing").
_____________________________
模倣子 Memetic Essays - Memetic Index
In my first discussion on tautolomemes (1) I touch on the fairly obvious idea that each individual in fact has their [sic] own set of transition matrices. Another obvious extension of this is that each individual would have a sub-inventory for each memetic cohort of which they [sic] are a member. Of late I have been re-examining some ideas I had about ideo-memetic systems, how they act as an interface between the inner emotional economy and the outside world, and how the "consciousness" (2) is the environment, or rather, the expression of the operation of this ideo-memetic system. Furthermore, the failure of this internal system to "synchronize" or pass information back and forth (4) between the inner economy (3) and the outside world represents a psychic break.
Complexity and Normalcy
We can imagine an extra layer of transition matrices, i.e., an ideo-memetic system, which is unique to the given individual. One implication is that there be ideo-MIAOplexes which may be composed of MIAOs and MIAOplexes which make up the set of ideo-memes available to the conscious mind and the combination (MIAO bonding or MIAOplex formation) which prunes down the set of available memes to an ideo-memetic sub-system. People suffering from psychoses or organic brain disorders may have to construct some extremely complex MIAOs to "explain" their brain economy to the conscious. This could manifest as paranoia, exaggerated anxiety associated with largely unreal associations (aliens, the FBI, et al are out to get me, etc.). Even religions or other such supernatural belief systems involve an inner collection of complex rules and objects to allow the individual to make contact to outer reality, e.g., feeling shame, fear, etc., around things which are not naturally such, attributing events to non-existant factors such as magic or the action of "dieties", and so on, thereby allowing memetic transitions to be made internally.
Okay, so individuals are expected to react in a certain way in order to be a member of a given cohort, i.e., respond in a certain way to given memes. Presumably most people settle into an "easy" set of responses, i.e., the computation of which memes to deploy in response to incoming memes having very little need for translation, i.e., a simple network (5). However, a person with mental challenges or coming from an alien culture and trying to adapt, for example, may have to develop a fairly complex ideo-memetic system in order to interface with the mainstream.
One theory is that the inner economy cannot be arbitrarily changed, perhaps not at all, perhaps only with difficulty.
Does this have implications for memetic engineering? Is it possible to understand the ideomemetic systems of sub-cohorts, and make it easier (or more difficult...!) for them to interface with the mainstream, without having to modify the memetic profile of the mainstream itself, i.e., without having to memetically "reprogram" the majority?
Matrix Analysis
A given memetic system has a defined set of transition matrices, each of which represents a memetic state, which are the columns in these transition matrices, with the rows representing the memes which are available for deployment in that given state (describing the graph of possible transitions to other states). The collection of all of these matrices describes the graph of all memetic pathways of a memeplex (6), i.e., the transition matrix of a given state corresponds to a vertex on a directed graph of the whole memeplex.
Okay, this we know, but how do ideomemeplexes fit in, i.e., how do we represent them graphically (and formulaically)? An individual trying to interface with a memeplex must meet the requirement of enacting some acceptable meme in response to an incoming meme from outside. This is clearly a matrix operation itself.
This may be an exciting realization, since it may answer some tough questions about selection/optimization and also in issues of education and corrections/reform. How do individuals decide which memes to deploy? How do people learn how to interact with a given megamemeplex, i.e., a culture? If everybody has their [sic] own ideomemeplex, then their memetic inventory vis-a-vis the external megamemeplex differs from person to person, which potentially resolves troubling race conditions (7) which crop up in the simple graph theoretical model of memeplexes and state transitions.
Summary
Ideomemeplexes, in my original conception, provide an elegant model of and explanation for psychic breaks, or how individuals lose touch with reality, or indeed, how they manage to maintain it in the teeth of the ponderous contradictions and inconsistencies present in most naturally-evolved megamemeplexes (cultures, societies, religions, business organizations, governments, etc.). This also has implications for the practice of teaching and learning, and also the genesis of some antisocial behaviors and how to correct them.
Furthermore, ideomemeplexes, far from being limited to the modeling of psychoses and mental illness (or fanaticism, such as religions, etc.) and otherwise unnecessary to explain the macromemtic behavior of "normal" individuals, may provide a fundamental solution to the race conditions and optimization problems inherent in the simple matrix model of memetic states in memeplexes. This solution may be thought of as deriving from the "extra network layer" (11) provided by the ideomemetic matrix, i.e., the network is more flexible and "intelligent".
The details of the ideomemetic system of an individual very well may be accessible for study via standard "memetic hacking" techniques, i.e., interviews conducted in a private and "safe" setting. Further, despite the name, ideomemetic systems may be largely shared by large groups, e.g., alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous share a large set of memes in the form of "slogans" and "stories" and of course religious fanatics share the tenets of whatever cult they're a member of, and in both cases these memes and MIAOs are altogether alien to outsiders.
This may actually be a bad example, or perhaps a very interesting one. The more compatible a submemeplectic context (such as an AA meeting or a religious service of a given cult) is compatible with the individual's own ideomemeplex, the more comfortable the individual will tend to be with the environment, i.e., they [sic] will require less energy to make the required memetic transactions. This may have direct bearing on the study of the formation and dynamics of subcultures, e.g., hipster, nerd, religions, etc., and how this may actually relate to brain physiology.
Afterword
It occurs to me that my earlier idea of doing a memetic analysis on the media (8), similar to Noam Chomsky's analysis of messages during the Vietnam War Era in Manufacturing Consent, might work well starting from a high-level analysis of MIAOs, possibly identifying MIAOplexes, and the memes associated with those MIAOs, i.e., appearing in proximity thereto. This suggests a theory of MIAOplex Formation or MIAO bonding. This could potentially evince actual transition matrices (9), and even lead to the "automatic story writing" machines envisaged by George Orwell in 1984. Once a memetic model of a story setting were constructed, and the ideomemetic matrices of characters (some of which may be novel), it might be possible to "run the simulation" forward, possible with selected starting conditions, and "write" a new story in the same style, or a "fanfic". Again, we may be approaching Asimov's "psychohistory" (10) from The Foundation Trilogy.
___________________________________
(1) "state-the-obvious" memes, or memes where no challenge may be reasonably mounted to the contents. Other such memes include complainomemes, and "pretending not to understand" memes. These kinds of memes are "unassailable", and thus provide a reliable memetic reward ("payoff" or "memetic orgasm").
(2) whatever the hell that means...!
(3) the inner economy is effectively the low-level wiring of the brain from which the "consciousness", or the platform able to support memetic transitions emerges. This "platform" may be subject to instabilities due to mental illness, extreme stress, etc.
(4) rather like gearing ratios in a mechanical systems, or "impedence matching" in electrical ones. Failure to match power input and output can result in total energy loss or destructive explosions. My memetic description of the breakdown of the conscious "mind" and the ideo-memetic system "running" on it to be able to convert back and forth between the outside world stimuli and the internal economy (3) of the brain is what constitutes a "psychotic break".
(5) This could be a major area of study and research. The formation of memetic systems could be partly driven by the predispositions of the minds making up the memetic fabric upon which the memeplex operates, i.e., whatever memetic pathways and transitions are most "efficient", whatever this means.
(6) which is in principle infinite in extent in both dimensions, but in practice limited to a finite number of states and memes since most memes' influence is too weak in any given state, and the probability of reaching most other states is very small.
(7) If everybody in a memetic deployment decision juncture has an identical memetic inventory and an identical probability vector for each (combined with a decision time vector), then it becomes a race as to who deploys first, and also it will always be the same meme (the one with the highest probability), which is clearly not the case, and is therefor vexing for the graph theory of memeplexes. That is, the system is woefully "divergent", so to speak. The reality we hope to model is more along the lines of the same (usually powerful) people tending to deploy, and usually from the same subset of memes, everybody deploying memes from the allowed set but with differing distributions, and it being almost always being clear which person is going to deploy at a given juncture, i.e., no "jinx events" or collisions. Ideomemetic systems may solve the conundrum.
(8) I had originally thought of using a few scripts of Sex and the City.
(9) One theoretical question mark is the "MIAO granularity" of MIAOplexes, i.e., do memetic inventories shift around based on which MIAOs in a MIAOplex are in play at the given deployment juncture? In short, is there any way to build the transition matrices other than textual analysis of which memes are present in conjunction with which MIAO(s), and the sequences in which they appear? This presents a completeness problem which may not converge well even for extensive texts, and may have provability issues. However, one could start with the set of all combinations of MIAOs crossed with the set of all memes (12), prune all rows and columns which are "ridiculous," and then one is left with the set of all memetic transitions which actually appear in the text, plus additional transitions which are "plausible" and which may have significant predictive value. More on this later...
(10) Isaac Asimov's character, Hari Seldon, was a professor who had developed a theory called "psychohistory" which allowed one to predict with great accuracy the future behavior of large numbers of people (the larger, the more accurate). Among other things, he predicted (correctly) the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire of which he was a citizen, and was able to take action, namely creation of "The Foundation" prior to the collapse.
(11) Known as the "hidden layer" in network theory.
(12) I want to explore a theory of MIAO bonding, or MIAOplex Formation, which promises to enormously simplify the construction of transition matrices as well as the enumeration of the memes making up the inventory of a memeplex. The idea is that all memes in a memeplex are attached to some MIAO or other, or rather, that any meme is attached to (at least) one MIAO, and that the combination of MIAOs which may be identified as part of memeplex "contribute" their memes to that memeplex's memetic inventory. Thus, by identifying (all of) the MIAOs in a memeplex (13), one can elaborate the memetic inventory of the memeplex (16).
(13) More precisely, the MIAOs recognized by the cohort determined to be inured of the memeplex under study. This might seem like circular logic, but I don't believe it is. Rather than analyzing memes, one focuses on MIAOs, many of which may be well-studied elsewhere, e.g., co-opted from other memeplexes (14)(15).
(14) For example, the Christian co-opting of the German Weinnachtesbaum (Christmas Tree), the Mormons co-option of the Catholic Jesus, American borrowing of the English language and Common Law from the British, creative leitmotifs in art forms such as film, television, painting, sculpture, the Japanese borrowing of Chinese (and American) culture and writing systems.
(15) Other similar concepts to Co-option are trans-pairing and accretion. I still need to elaborate all of these and define them rigorously (in terms of matrix operations, etc.), but they are all ways in which memes attach to MIAOs.
(16) One question is whether this process, i.e., MIAO bonding, brings in all of the memes of all of the MIAOs, or only those which are shared among them, or something more complex. The second one seems problematic. Perhaps there is some further process where memes are removed (or even added) which we might term meme paring (as opposed to "pairing").
_____________________________
模倣子 Memetic Essays - Memetic Index
2017-01-09
模倣子 Ideomemetic Systems and Psychoses
Introduction
In my first discussion on tautolomemes (1) I touch on the fairly obvious idea that each individual in fact has their [sic] own set of transition matrices. Another obvious extension of this is that each individual would have a sub-inventory for each memetic cohort of which they [sic] are a member. Of late I have been re-examining some ideas I had about ideo-memetic systems, how they act as an interface between the inner emotional economy and the outside world, and how the "consciousness" (2) is the environment, or rather, the expression of the operation of this ideo-memetic system. Furthermore, the failure of this internal system to "synchronize" or pass information back and forth (4) between the inner economy (3) and the outside world represents a psychic break.
Complexity and Normalcy
We can imagine an extra layer of transition matrices, i.e., an ideo-memetic system, which is unique to the given individual. One implication is that there be ideo-MIAOplexes which may be composed of MIAOs and MIAOplexes which make up the set of ideo-memes available to the conscious mind and the combination (MIAO bonding or MIAOplex formation) which prunes down the set of available memes to an ideo-memetic sub-system. People suffering from psychoses or organic brain disorders may have to construct some extremely complex MIAOs to "explain" their brain economy to the conscious. This could manifest as paranoia, exaggerated anxiety associated with largely unreal associations (aliens, the FBI, et al are out to get me, etc.). Even religions or other such supernatural belief systems involve an inner collection of complex rules and objects to allow the individual to make contact to outer reality, e.g., feeling shame, fear, etc., around things which are not naturally such, attributing events to non-existant factors such as magic or the action of "dieties", and so on, thereby allowing memetic transitions to be made internally.
Okay, so individuals are expected to react in a certain way in order to be a member of a given cohort, i.e., respond in a certain way to given memes. Presumably most people settle into an "easy" set of responses, i.e., the computation of which memes to deploy in response to incoming memes having very little need for translation, i.e., a simple network (5). However, a person with mental challenges or coming from an alien culture and trying to adapt, for example, may have to develop a fairly complex ideo-memetic system in order to interface with the mainstream.
One theory is that the inner economy cannot be arbitrarily changed, perhaps not at all, perhaps only with difficulty.
Does this have implications for memetic engineering? Is it possible to understand the ideomemetic systems of sub-cohorts, and make it easier (or more difficult...!) for them to interface with the mainstream, without having to modify the memetic profile of the mainstream itself, i.e., without having to memetically "reprogram" the majority?
Matrix Analysis
A given memetic system has a defined set of transition matrices, each of which represents a memetic state, which are the columns in these transition matrices, with the rows representing the memes which are available for deployment in that given state (describing the graph of possible transitions to other states). The collection of all of these matrices describes the graph of all memetic pathways of a memeplex (6), i.e., the transition matrix of a given state corresponds to a vertex on a directed graph of the whole memeplex.
Okay, this we know, but how do ideomemeplexes fit in, i.e., how do we represent them graphically (and formulaically)? An individual trying to interface with a memeplex must meet the requirement of enacting some acceptable meme in response to an incoming meme from outside. This is clearly a matrix operation itself.
This may be an exciting realization, since it may answer some tough questions about selection/optimization and also in issues of education and corrections/reform. How do individuals decide which memes to deploy? How do people learn how to interact with a given megamemeplex, i.e., a culture? If everybody has their [sic] own ideomemeplex, then their memetic inventory vis-a-vis the external megamemeplex differs from person to person, which potentially resolves troubling race conditions (7) which crop up in the simple graph theoretical model of memeplexes and state transitions.
Summary
Ideomemeplexes, in my original conception, provide an elegant model of and explanation for psychic breaks, or how individuals lose touch with reality, or indeed, how they manage to maintain it in the teeth of the ponderous contradictions and inconsistencies present in most naturally-evolved megamemeplexes (cultures, societies, religions, business organizations, governments, etc.). This also has implications for the practice of teaching and learning, and also the genesis of some antisocial behaviors and how to correct them.
Furthermore, ideomemeplexes, far from being limited to the modeling of psychoses and mental illness (or fanaticism, such as religions, etc.) and otherwise unnecessary to explain the macromemtic behavior of "normal" individuals, may provide a fundamental solution to the race conditions and optimization problems inherent in the simple matrix model of memetic states in memeplexes. This solution may be thought of as deriving from the "extra network layer" (11) provided by the ideomemetic matrix, i.e., the network is more flexible and "intelligent".
The details of the ideomemetic system of an individual very well may be accessible for study via standard "memetic hacking" techniques, i.e., interviews conducted in a private and "safe" setting. Further, despite the name, ideomemetic systems may be largely shared by large groups, e.g., alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous share a large set of memes in the form of "slogans" and "stories" and of course religious fanatics share the tenets of whatever cult they're a member of, and in both cases these memes and MIAOs are altogether alien to outsiders.
This may actually be a bad example, or perhaps a very interesting one. The more compatible a submemeplectic context (such as an AA meeting or a religious service of a given cult) is compatible with the individual's own ideomemeplex, the more comfortable the individual will tend to be with the environment, i.e., they [sic] will require less energy to make the required memetic transactions. This may have direct bearing on the study of the formation and dynamics of subcultures, e.g., hipster, nerd, religions, etc., and how this may actually relate to brain physiology.
Afterword
It occurs to me that my earlier idea of doing a memetic analysis on the media (8), similar to Noam Chomsky's analysis of messages during the Vietnam War Era in Manufacturing Consent, might work well starting from a high-level analysis of MIAOs, possibly identifying MIAOplexes, and the memes associated with those MIAOs, i.e., appearing in proximity thereto. This suggests a theory of MIAOplex Formation or MIAO bonding. This could potentially evince actual transition matrices (9), and even lead to the "automatic story writing" machines envisaged by George Orwell in 1984. Once a memetic model of a story setting were constructed, and the ideomemetic matrices of characters (some of which may be novel), it might be possible to "run the simulation" forward, possible with selected starting conditions, and "write" a new story in the same style, or a "fanfic". Again, we may be approaching Asimov's "psychohistory" (10) from The Foundation Trilogy.
___________________________________
(1) "state-the-obvious" memes, or memes where no challenge may be reasonably mounted to the contents. Other such memes include complainomemes, and "pretending not to understand" memes. These kinds of memes are "unassailable", and thus provide a reliable memetic reward ("payoff" or "memetic orgasm").
(2) whatever the hell that means...!
(3) the inner economy is effectively the low-level wiring of the brain from which the "consciousness", or the platform able to support memetic transitions emerges. This "platform" may be subject to instabilities due to mental illness, extreme stress, etc.
(4) rather like gearing ratios in a mechanical systems, or "impedence matching" in electrical ones. Failure to match power input and output can result in total energy loss or destructive explosions. My memetic description of the breakdown of the conscious "mind" and the ideo-memetic system "running" on it to be able to convert back and forth between the outside world stimuli and the internal economy (3) of the brain is what constitutes a "psychotic break".
(5) This could be a major area of study and research. The formation of memetic systems could be partly driven by the predispositions of the minds making up the memetic fabric upon which the memeplex operates, i.e., whatever memetic pathways and transitions are most "efficient", whatever this means.
(6) which is in principle infinite in extent in both dimensions, but in practice limited to a finite number of states and memes since most memes' influence is too weak in any given state, and the probability of reaching most other states is very small.
(7) If everybody in a memetic deployment decision juncture has an identical memetic inventory and an identical probability vector for each (combined with a decision time vector), then it becomes a race as to who deploys first, and also it will always be the same meme (the one with the highest probability), which is clearly not the case, and is therefor vexing for the graph theory of memeplexes. That is, the system is woefully "divergent", so to speak. The reality we hope to model is more along the lines of the same (usually powerful) people tending to deploy, and usually from the same subset of memes, everybody deploying memes from the allowed set but with differing distributions, and it being almost always being clear which person is going to deploy at a given juncture, i.e., no "jinx events" or collisions. Ideomemetic systems may solve the conundrum.
(8) I had originally thought of using a few scripts of Sex and the City.
(9) One theoretical question mark is the "MIAO granularity" of MIAOplexes, i.e., do memetic inventories shift around based on which MIAOs in a MIAOplex are in play at the given deployment juncture? In short, is there any way to build the transition matrices other than textual analysis of which memes are present in conjunction with which MIAO(s), and the sequences in which they appear? This presents a completeness problem which may not converge well even for extensive texts, and may have provability issues. However, one could start with the set of all combinations of MIAOs crossed with the set of all memes (12), prune all rows and columns which are "ridiculous," and then one is left with the set of all memetic transitions which actually appear in the text, plus additional transitions which are "plausible" and which may have significant predictive value. More on this later...
(10) Isaac Asimov's character, Hari Seldon, was a professor who had developed a theory called "psychohistory" which allowed one to predict with great accuracy the future behavior of large numbers of people (the larger, the more accurate). Among other things, he predicted (correctly) the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire of which he was a citizen, and was able to take action, namely creation of "The Foundation" prior to the collapse.
(11) Known as the "hidden layer" in network theory.
(12) I want to explore a theory of MIAO bonding, or MIAOplex Formation, which promises to enormously simplify the construction of transition matrices as well as the enumeration of the memes making up the inventory of a memeplex. The idea is that all memes in a memeplex are attached to some MIAO or other, or rather, that any meme is attached to (at least) one MIAO, and that the combination of MIAOs which may be identified as part of memeplex "contribute" their memes to that memeplex's memetic inventory. Thus, by identifying (all of) the MIAOs in a memeplex (13), one can elaborate the memetic inventory of the memeplex (16).
(13) More precisely, the MIAOs recognized by the cohort determined to be inured of the memeplex under study. This might seem like circular logic, but I don't believe it is. Rather than analyzing memes, one focuses on MIAOs, many of which may be well-studied elsewhere, e.g., co-opted from other memeplexes (14)(15).
(14) For example, the Christian co-opting of the German Weinnachtesbaum (Christmas Tree), the Mormons co-option of the Catholic Jesus, American borrowing of the English language and Common Law from the British, creative leitmotifs in art forms such as film, television, painting, sculpture, the Japanese borrowing of Chinese (and American) culture and writing systems.
(15) Other similar concepts to Co-option are trans-pairing and accretion. I still need to elaborate all of these and define them rigorously (in terms of matrix operations, etc.), but they are all ways in which memes attach to MIAOs.
(16) One question is whether this process, i.e., MIAO bonding, brings in all of the memes of all of the MIAOs, or only those which are shared among them, or something more complex. The second one seems problematic. Perhaps there is some further process where memes are removed (or even added) which we might term meme paring (as opposed to "pairing").
_____________________________
模倣子 Memetic Essays - Memetic Index
In my first discussion on tautolomemes (1) I touch on the fairly obvious idea that each individual in fact has their [sic] own set of transition matrices. Another obvious extension of this is that each individual would have a sub-inventory for each memetic cohort of which they [sic] are a member. Of late I have been re-examining some ideas I had about ideo-memetic systems, how they act as an interface between the inner emotional economy and the outside world, and how the "consciousness" (2) is the environment, or rather, the expression of the operation of this ideo-memetic system. Furthermore, the failure of this internal system to "synchronize" or pass information back and forth (4) between the inner economy (3) and the outside world represents a psychic break.
Complexity and Normalcy
We can imagine an extra layer of transition matrices, i.e., an ideo-memetic system, which is unique to the given individual. One implication is that there be ideo-MIAOplexes which may be composed of MIAOs and MIAOplexes which make up the set of ideo-memes available to the conscious mind and the combination (MIAO bonding or MIAOplex formation) which prunes down the set of available memes to an ideo-memetic sub-system. People suffering from psychoses or organic brain disorders may have to construct some extremely complex MIAOs to "explain" their brain economy to the conscious. This could manifest as paranoia, exaggerated anxiety associated with largely unreal associations (aliens, the FBI, et al are out to get me, etc.). Even religions or other such supernatural belief systems involve an inner collection of complex rules and objects to allow the individual to make contact to outer reality, e.g., feeling shame, fear, etc., around things which are not naturally such, attributing events to non-existant factors such as magic or the action of "dieties", and so on, thereby allowing memetic transitions to be made internally.
Okay, so individuals are expected to react in a certain way in order to be a member of a given cohort, i.e., respond in a certain way to given memes. Presumably most people settle into an "easy" set of responses, i.e., the computation of which memes to deploy in response to incoming memes having very little need for translation, i.e., a simple network (5). However, a person with mental challenges or coming from an alien culture and trying to adapt, for example, may have to develop a fairly complex ideo-memetic system in order to interface with the mainstream.
One theory is that the inner economy cannot be arbitrarily changed, perhaps not at all, perhaps only with difficulty.
Does this have implications for memetic engineering? Is it possible to understand the ideomemetic systems of sub-cohorts, and make it easier (or more difficult...!) for them to interface with the mainstream, without having to modify the memetic profile of the mainstream itself, i.e., without having to memetically "reprogram" the majority?
Matrix Analysis
A given memetic system has a defined set of transition matrices, each of which represents a memetic state, which are the columns in these transition matrices, with the rows representing the memes which are available for deployment in that given state (describing the graph of possible transitions to other states). The collection of all of these matrices describes the graph of all memetic pathways of a memeplex (6), i.e., the transition matrix of a given state corresponds to a vertex on a directed graph of the whole memeplex.
Okay, this we know, but how do ideomemeplexes fit in, i.e., how do we represent them graphically (and formulaically)? An individual trying to interface with a memeplex must meet the requirement of enacting some acceptable meme in response to an incoming meme from outside. This is clearly a matrix operation itself.
This may be an exciting realization, since it may answer some tough questions about selection/optimization and also in issues of education and corrections/reform. How do individuals decide which memes to deploy? How do people learn how to interact with a given megamemeplex, i.e., a culture? If everybody has their [sic] own ideomemeplex, then their memetic inventory vis-a-vis the external megamemeplex differs from person to person, which potentially resolves troubling race conditions (7) which crop up in the simple graph theoretical model of memeplexes and state transitions.
Summary
Ideomemeplexes, in my original conception, provide an elegant model of and explanation for psychic breaks, or how individuals lose touch with reality, or indeed, how they manage to maintain it in the teeth of the ponderous contradictions and inconsistencies present in most naturally-evolved megamemeplexes (cultures, societies, religions, business organizations, governments, etc.). This also has implications for the practice of teaching and learning, and also the genesis of some antisocial behaviors and how to correct them.
Furthermore, ideomemeplexes, far from being limited to the modeling of psychoses and mental illness (or fanaticism, such as religions, etc.) and otherwise unnecessary to explain the macromemtic behavior of "normal" individuals, may provide a fundamental solution to the race conditions and optimization problems inherent in the simple matrix model of memetic states in memeplexes. This solution may be thought of as deriving from the "extra network layer" (11) provided by the ideomemetic matrix, i.e., the network is more flexible and "intelligent".
The details of the ideomemetic system of an individual very well may be accessible for study via standard "memetic hacking" techniques, i.e., interviews conducted in a private and "safe" setting. Further, despite the name, ideomemetic systems may be largely shared by large groups, e.g., alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous share a large set of memes in the form of "slogans" and "stories" and of course religious fanatics share the tenets of whatever cult they're a member of, and in both cases these memes and MIAOs are altogether alien to outsiders.
This may actually be a bad example, or perhaps a very interesting one. The more compatible a submemeplectic context (such as an AA meeting or a religious service of a given cult) is compatible with the individual's own ideomemeplex, the more comfortable the individual will tend to be with the environment, i.e., they [sic] will require less energy to make the required memetic transactions. This may have direct bearing on the study of the formation and dynamics of subcultures, e.g., hipster, nerd, religions, etc., and how this may actually relate to brain physiology.
Afterword
It occurs to me that my earlier idea of doing a memetic analysis on the media (8), similar to Noam Chomsky's analysis of messages during the Vietnam War Era in Manufacturing Consent, might work well starting from a high-level analysis of MIAOs, possibly identifying MIAOplexes, and the memes associated with those MIAOs, i.e., appearing in proximity thereto. This suggests a theory of MIAOplex Formation or MIAO bonding. This could potentially evince actual transition matrices (9), and even lead to the "automatic story writing" machines envisaged by George Orwell in 1984. Once a memetic model of a story setting were constructed, and the ideomemetic matrices of characters (some of which may be novel), it might be possible to "run the simulation" forward, possible with selected starting conditions, and "write" a new story in the same style, or a "fanfic". Again, we may be approaching Asimov's "psychohistory" (10) from The Foundation Trilogy.
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(1) "state-the-obvious" memes, or memes where no challenge may be reasonably mounted to the contents. Other such memes include complainomemes, and "pretending not to understand" memes. These kinds of memes are "unassailable", and thus provide a reliable memetic reward ("payoff" or "memetic orgasm").
(2) whatever the hell that means...!
(3) the inner economy is effectively the low-level wiring of the brain from which the "consciousness", or the platform able to support memetic transitions emerges. This "platform" may be subject to instabilities due to mental illness, extreme stress, etc.
(4) rather like gearing ratios in a mechanical systems, or "impedence matching" in electrical ones. Failure to match power input and output can result in total energy loss or destructive explosions. My memetic description of the breakdown of the conscious "mind" and the ideo-memetic system "running" on it to be able to convert back and forth between the outside world stimuli and the internal economy (3) of the brain is what constitutes a "psychotic break".
(5) This could be a major area of study and research. The formation of memetic systems could be partly driven by the predispositions of the minds making up the memetic fabric upon which the memeplex operates, i.e., whatever memetic pathways and transitions are most "efficient", whatever this means.
(6) which is in principle infinite in extent in both dimensions, but in practice limited to a finite number of states and memes since most memes' influence is too weak in any given state, and the probability of reaching most other states is very small.
(7) If everybody in a memetic deployment decision juncture has an identical memetic inventory and an identical probability vector for each (combined with a decision time vector), then it becomes a race as to who deploys first, and also it will always be the same meme (the one with the highest probability), which is clearly not the case, and is therefor vexing for the graph theory of memeplexes. That is, the system is woefully "divergent", so to speak. The reality we hope to model is more along the lines of the same (usually powerful) people tending to deploy, and usually from the same subset of memes, everybody deploying memes from the allowed set but with differing distributions, and it being almost always being clear which person is going to deploy at a given juncture, i.e., no "jinx events" or collisions. Ideomemetic systems may solve the conundrum.
(8) I had originally thought of using a few scripts of Sex and the City.
(9) One theoretical question mark is the "MIAO granularity" of MIAOplexes, i.e., do memetic inventories shift around based on which MIAOs in a MIAOplex are in play at the given deployment juncture? In short, is there any way to build the transition matrices other than textual analysis of which memes are present in conjunction with which MIAO(s), and the sequences in which they appear? This presents a completeness problem which may not converge well even for extensive texts, and may have provability issues. However, one could start with the set of all combinations of MIAOs crossed with the set of all memes (12), prune all rows and columns which are "ridiculous," and then one is left with the set of all memetic transitions which actually appear in the text, plus additional transitions which are "plausible" and which may have significant predictive value. More on this later...
(10) Isaac Asimov's character, Hari Seldon, was a professor who had developed a theory called "psychohistory" which allowed one to predict with great accuracy the future behavior of large numbers of people (the larger, the more accurate). Among other things, he predicted (correctly) the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire of which he was a citizen, and was able to take action, namely creation of "The Foundation" prior to the collapse.
(11) Known as the "hidden layer" in network theory.
(12) I want to explore a theory of MIAO bonding, or MIAOplex Formation, which promises to enormously simplify the construction of transition matrices as well as the enumeration of the memes making up the inventory of a memeplex. The idea is that all memes in a memeplex are attached to some MIAO or other, or rather, that any meme is attached to (at least) one MIAO, and that the combination of MIAOs which may be identified as part of memeplex "contribute" their memes to that memeplex's memetic inventory. Thus, by identifying (all of) the MIAOs in a memeplex (13), one can elaborate the memetic inventory of the memeplex (16).
(13) More precisely, the MIAOs recognized by the cohort determined to be inured of the memeplex under study. This might seem like circular logic, but I don't believe it is. Rather than analyzing memes, one focuses on MIAOs, many of which may be well-studied elsewhere, e.g., co-opted from other memeplexes (14)(15).
(14) For example, the Christian co-opting of the German Weinnachtesbaum (Christmas Tree), the Mormons co-option of the Catholic Jesus, American borrowing of the English language and Common Law from the British, creative leitmotifs in art forms such as film, television, painting, sculpture, the Japanese borrowing of Chinese (and American) culture and writing systems.
(15) Other similar concepts to Co-option are trans-pairing and accretion. I still need to elaborate all of these and define them rigorously (in terms of matrix operations, etc.), but they are all ways in which memes attach to MIAOs.
(16) One question is whether this process, i.e., MIAO bonding, brings in all of the memes of all of the MIAOs, or only those which are shared among them, or something more complex. The second one seems problematic. Perhaps there is some further process where memes are removed (or even added) which we might term meme paring (as opposed to "pairing").
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模倣子 Memetic Essays - Memetic Index
2017-03-02
模倣子 Heal Oneself, Heal the World
Introduction
The principles of memetics apply wholly and entirely to the domain of ideomemeplexes, i.e., the internal economy of individuals. Ideomemeplexes are, theoretically, the basis for all individual unhealthy narcissistic behavior.
I need to construct the model of how ideomemeplexes interact with the outside world.
Changing the ideomemes of individuals equals changing the way the world functions. How are ideomemes transmitted between individuals? Via stories...and things like religions, I suspect... Is there a general classification that spans this transition method? Is everything that accomplishes this like a religion? Language? Is that a category? Neologisms?
Exomemes versus Endomemes
How does the promulgation of memes, the virility/success of exomemes relate to the transmission of ideomemes (1). How does this relate to polyvariablity and pseudo-mutation (2)?
Psychotherapy and Memetic Hacking
Psychotherapy is obviously a form of memetic hacking, but is this the only mode by which it is "successful," i.e., that it leads to healthy change in the individual? Identification of "unhealthy" ideomemes, or ideomemetic subsystems and bringing about their change/replacement? BOOM. How is this accomplished? Either psychotherapy has some conceptualization of how this may actually be accomplished, or it does not. In the former case, psychotherapy may inform/be useful to memetics, in the latter, the reverse.
Memetic Hacking, Ideomemes, and Memetic Programming
The whole function of memetic hacking is to evince the "justifications" or "underpinnings" of an individual's espousal (or infection by) certain memes, or to frame it in terms of memetic transition matrices, describe the rows and columns thereof (more on this later).
Ideomemetic programming, i.e., the infection of a cohort with a complex, largely mystical, fantastical, superstitious idea or the route to polarization of said cohort and predisposing it to infection with exomemes suggests the idea of an "ideomemetic fabric" or an "endomemetic fabric" or "endomemetic polarization.
Endomemetic Polarization
Could the valuation of a memetic reward (3), i.e., whether it's "positive" or "negative" be predicated by the ideomemetic system of the individual? E.g., self-sacrifice, punching bag/doormat, class clown, even leader.
Okay, based on my ideomemetic economy, I can perceive certain endomemetic rewards as positive or negative, i.e., worth deploying or not, and this may differ from others, i.e., what I perceive as valuable, e.g., self-sacrifice or getting into trouble or making a fool of myself and inviting the ridicule of the group, may not seem like a good memetic (meme) deployment opportunity to others. However, I may be giving others an opportunity for large rewards by my behavior, so there may be a memetic reward for that at the ideomemetic level...for me.
Endomemetic Polarization and (Communist) Dictatorship
Brainwashing and invasive checks for ideological purity and "liquidation" of "counterrevolutionaries" may represent a supreme sensitivity to the idea of an endomemetic fabric and its predisposition to accept (read "propagate") a given megamemeplex. Religion seems to solve this sort of problem. But how? Also, religion has the same property of hypersensitivity of ideological orthodoxy as communist dictatorships.
Religion seems to solve this. Also, corporate life and in a broader sense, participation in a capitalist economy seems to provide a memetic structure that allows many different individuals with very different "belief systems" to interact and cohabit the same megamemeplex (4)(5).
What does this look like?
Fanaticism is proportional to the memetic density (5) which is exomemetic shared inventory size, while variegation relates to what? The shared, or rather, relateablity of exomemes to the various endomemes of the cohort. Ideomemes are of course memes internal infecting individuals, while "endomemes" describes the (stochastic?) collection of a cross-section of the ideomemes of a cohort. Of course, this may only be characterized by a memetic hacking process of a large or "representative" cross-section of the cohort (6), as opposed to objective empirical observation of the media, or of public action and dialog, for example.
At this point, macromemetics becomes "loosey-goosey." Maybe it's possible to characterize trends, and psychology, I think, tries to do just that, as does Sociology.
Design of Ideomemetic Systems
Or, the pseudo-mutated/polyvaried design of endomemetic inventories.
Here we have a real laboratory for memetic replacement and disinurement, i.e., inside the head of an individual, which is, after all, the goal of psychotherapy.
If disinurement is at all possible, it should be demonstrable in the domain of ideomemetic investigation (7), i.e., memetic hacking. At this point we're in the domain of memetic reprogramming and ideomemetic engineering. What about endomemetic engineering? What does that look like? This is perhaps the domain of religion (7) and ideology, more so than the categorization of exomemetic inventories
Ideomemetic systems determine which MIAO and which memes which may be linked to those MIAOs (8)
Is Jesus the same as Santa to some people? More important? Does that mean the memetic inventories of the two MIAOs overlap, or that they share memes?
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(1) I make a distinction between endomemes and ideomemes. The latter are an "instantiation" of the former. Either may only be evinced by a process such as memetic hacking, in other words, unlike exomemes, they are not transmitted visibly between individuals, and it is not possible a priori to tell if a given individual is infected by a given endomeme, i.e., if a given endomeme is an ideomeme for that individual. In other words, a cohort may have a set of endomemes (and it may be difficult or impossible to determine the "complete" endomemetic inventory), but that does not mean that any given individual has any given endomeme as an ideomeme.
(2) By this I mean, how does ideomemetic/endomemetic engineering work? This may be where the real meat of ME resides. Do the concepts of PV and PM apply here?
(3) See other essays (I will try to add references) about the major problem of a simple "exomemetic transition matrix" and the decision weighting and race condition issues. How does an individual "decide" to deploy a given meme in a given situation (memetic state), and who "breaks the tie" ("jinx effect")? It's a major problem, and ideomemetic transition matrices may offer a solution by adding extra dimensions to the model.
(4) Megamemeplectic variegation: the property of a memeplex to provide attachment sites for a large (or small, if variegation is low) collection of disparate ideomemeplexes (endomemeplexes).
(5) Another name for another quantity is called for here, to do with the endomemetic inventory and its dispersion over a cohort. Endomemetic dispersion may be a good name. What I'm talking about is the total number of endomemes in the inventory of a cohort as compared to the distribution of infection of said endomemes as ideomemes in the individuals of the cohort. For example, say that the US and Japan both have comparably large endomemetic inventories, e.g., "belief" in demons and devils, that carbohydrates are bad for you, global warming exists, evolution is a valid theory, vaccines cause autism, liking rice, hamburgers, Santa Claus is a real person, all citizens should own guns, etc., now, if you look at any given individual in either society, what fraction, high or low, of the total inventory of endomemes, is the typical individual likely to have? For instance, if the typical Japanese is infected with most of the Japanese endomemetic inventory, we'd say that Japan has a "uniform" or "homogenous" endomemetic dispersion, whereas if in the USA you find that a random sampling of Americans shows that any given individual only has a small subset of the whole endomemetic inventory, then we could say that the dispersion is heterogeneous. This could have bearing on racism and social unrest, by the way (more on that later).
(6) Obviously, the more heterogeneous the endomemetic disperson (5), the more difficult to characterize the entire endomemetic inventory.
(7) Disinurement may actually resemble religious conversion. See The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James.
(8) Question: is the memetic menu (11) (ideomemetic menu) determined by the MIAOs, or is it "independent"?
(9) Is there a MIAO-to-meme matrix that yields a memetic menu (10)?
(10) The "Peter Griffin Principle" The idea that any meme may be attached to any MIAO (The "Strong" Peter Griffin Principle), i.e., Santa Claus can turn water into wine, which is actually an example of the "Weak" Peter Griffin Principle, i.e., that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus are related (the MIAOs are somehow "proximal") and therefor they can share properties. Relates to the question of "whether there is such a thing as a memetic menu" (11)
(11) The idea of a memetic menu relates to the theory of MIAOplexes and whether MIAOs have rigidly-attached memes, and that by adopting a MIAO, an individual automatically has available the "menu" of memes for that MIAO to be infected by. MIAO bonding (MIAOplex formation) has the menu problem, too, i.e., is the set of available memes a simple combination, an overlap, join, union, some other more complex rule, or can outside memes even be brought in. How does an individual "choose" memes for their transition matrices from the memetic inventory of the cohort? What are the rules? If the choice is quite free, we could say that the menu system is increasingly "magical." This calls for a number of new terms, and the issue is a huge one for quantitative macromemetics.
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模倣子 Memetics Essay from GCDp144 - Memetic Index
The principles of memetics apply wholly and entirely to the domain of ideomemeplexes, i.e., the internal economy of individuals. Ideomemeplexes are, theoretically, the basis for all individual unhealthy narcissistic behavior.
I need to construct the model of how ideomemeplexes interact with the outside world.
Changing the ideomemes of individuals equals changing the way the world functions. How are ideomemes transmitted between individuals? Via stories...and things like religions, I suspect... Is there a general classification that spans this transition method? Is everything that accomplishes this like a religion? Language? Is that a category? Neologisms?
Exomemes versus Endomemes
How does the promulgation of memes, the virility/success of exomemes relate to the transmission of ideomemes (1). How does this relate to polyvariablity and pseudo-mutation (2)?
Psychotherapy and Memetic Hacking
Psychotherapy is obviously a form of memetic hacking, but is this the only mode by which it is "successful," i.e., that it leads to healthy change in the individual? Identification of "unhealthy" ideomemes, or ideomemetic subsystems and bringing about their change/replacement? BOOM. How is this accomplished? Either psychotherapy has some conceptualization of how this may actually be accomplished, or it does not. In the former case, psychotherapy may inform/be useful to memetics, in the latter, the reverse.
Psychotherapy = (Ideo)Memetic Hacking
Is all memetic hacking, in fact, better termed "ideomemetic hacking?"
Memetic Hacking, Ideomemes, and Memetic Programming
The whole function of memetic hacking is to evince the "justifications" or "underpinnings" of an individual's espousal (or infection by) certain memes, or to frame it in terms of memetic transition matrices, describe the rows and columns thereof (more on this later).
"Bring in the Trolls"
Nixon, Trump [concept of the "Silent Majority"]
Ideomemetic programming, i.e., the infection of a cohort with a complex, largely mystical, fantastical, superstitious idea or the route to polarization of said cohort and predisposing it to infection with exomemes suggests the idea of an "ideomemetic fabric" or an "endomemetic fabric" or "endomemetic polarization.
Endomemetic Polarization
Could the valuation of a memetic reward (3), i.e., whether it's "positive" or "negative" be predicated by the ideomemetic system of the individual? E.g., self-sacrifice, punching bag/doormat, class clown, even leader.
| Reward-Giving Ideomemetic Dispositions |
|---|
| Self-sacrifice/martyr Punching bag/doormat/Professional Victim Leader Wise man Nutty Professor/fool Gadfly Class clown/jokester Criminal/thug/miscreant Loser Noble drudge Workaholic |
Okay, based on my ideomemetic economy, I can perceive certain endomemetic rewards as positive or negative, i.e., worth deploying or not, and this may differ from others, i.e., what I perceive as valuable, e.g., self-sacrifice or getting into trouble or making a fool of myself and inviting the ridicule of the group, may not seem like a good memetic (meme) deployment opportunity to others. However, I may be giving others an opportunity for large rewards by my behavior, so there may be a memetic reward for that at the ideomemetic level...for me.
Endomemetic Polarization and (Communist) Dictatorship
Brainwashing and invasive checks for ideological purity and "liquidation" of "counterrevolutionaries" may represent a supreme sensitivity to the idea of an endomemetic fabric and its predisposition to accept (read "propagate") a given megamemeplex. Religion seems to solve this sort of problem. But how? Also, religion has the same property of hypersensitivity of ideological orthodoxy as communist dictatorships.
"How does ideomemtic programming lead to mental health?"*
*or worldwide change?
Religion seems to solve this. Also, corporate life and in a broader sense, participation in a capitalist economy seems to provide a memetic structure that allows many different individuals with very different "belief systems" to interact and cohabit the same megamemeplex (4)(5).
What does this look like?
Fanaticism is proportional to the memetic density (5) which is exomemetic shared inventory size, while variegation relates to what? The shared, or rather, relateablity of exomemes to the various endomemes of the cohort. Ideomemes are of course memes internal infecting individuals, while "endomemes" describes the (stochastic?) collection of a cross-section of the ideomemes of a cohort. Of course, this may only be characterized by a memetic hacking process of a large or "representative" cross-section of the cohort (6), as opposed to objective empirical observation of the media, or of public action and dialog, for example.
At this point, macromemetics becomes "loosey-goosey." Maybe it's possible to characterize trends, and psychology, I think, tries to do just that, as does Sociology.
Design of Ideomemetic Systems
Or, the pseudo-mutated/polyvaried design of endomemetic inventories.
Here we have a real laboratory for memetic replacement and disinurement, i.e., inside the head of an individual, which is, after all, the goal of psychotherapy.
If disinurement is at all possible, it should be demonstrable in the domain of ideomemetic investigation (7), i.e., memetic hacking. At this point we're in the domain of memetic reprogramming and ideomemetic engineering. What about endomemetic engineering? What does that look like? This is perhaps the domain of religion (7) and ideology, more so than the categorization of exomemetic inventories
Ideomemetic systems determine which MIAO and which memes which may be linked to those MIAOs (8)
What is "heresy"?
Is Jesus the same as Santa to some people? More important? Does that mean the memetic inventories of the two MIAOs overlap, or that they share memes?
______________________________________
(1) I make a distinction between endomemes and ideomemes. The latter are an "instantiation" of the former. Either may only be evinced by a process such as memetic hacking, in other words, unlike exomemes, they are not transmitted visibly between individuals, and it is not possible a priori to tell if a given individual is infected by a given endomeme, i.e., if a given endomeme is an ideomeme for that individual. In other words, a cohort may have a set of endomemes (and it may be difficult or impossible to determine the "complete" endomemetic inventory), but that does not mean that any given individual has any given endomeme as an ideomeme.
(2) By this I mean, how does ideomemetic/endomemetic engineering work? This may be where the real meat of ME resides. Do the concepts of PV and PM apply here?
(3) See other essays (I will try to add references) about the major problem of a simple "exomemetic transition matrix" and the decision weighting and race condition issues. How does an individual "decide" to deploy a given meme in a given situation (memetic state), and who "breaks the tie" ("jinx effect")? It's a major problem, and ideomemetic transition matrices may offer a solution by adding extra dimensions to the model.
(4) Megamemeplectic variegation: the property of a memeplex to provide attachment sites for a large (or small, if variegation is low) collection of disparate ideomemeplexes (endomemeplexes).
(5) Another name for another quantity is called for here, to do with the endomemetic inventory and its dispersion over a cohort. Endomemetic dispersion may be a good name. What I'm talking about is the total number of endomemes in the inventory of a cohort as compared to the distribution of infection of said endomemes as ideomemes in the individuals of the cohort. For example, say that the US and Japan both have comparably large endomemetic inventories, e.g., "belief" in demons and devils, that carbohydrates are bad for you, global warming exists, evolution is a valid theory, vaccines cause autism, liking rice, hamburgers, Santa Claus is a real person, all citizens should own guns, etc., now, if you look at any given individual in either society, what fraction, high or low, of the total inventory of endomemes, is the typical individual likely to have? For instance, if the typical Japanese is infected with most of the Japanese endomemetic inventory, we'd say that Japan has a "uniform" or "homogenous" endomemetic dispersion, whereas if in the USA you find that a random sampling of Americans shows that any given individual only has a small subset of the whole endomemetic inventory, then we could say that the dispersion is heterogeneous. This could have bearing on racism and social unrest, by the way (more on that later).
(6) Obviously, the more heterogeneous the endomemetic disperson (5), the more difficult to characterize the entire endomemetic inventory.
(7) Disinurement may actually resemble religious conversion. See The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James.
(8) Question: is the memetic menu (11) (ideomemetic menu) determined by the MIAOs, or is it "independent"?
(9) Is there a MIAO-to-meme matrix that yields a memetic menu (10)?
(10) The "Peter Griffin Principle" The idea that any meme may be attached to any MIAO (The "Strong" Peter Griffin Principle), i.e., Santa Claus can turn water into wine, which is actually an example of the "Weak" Peter Griffin Principle, i.e., that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus are related (the MIAOs are somehow "proximal") and therefor they can share properties. Relates to the question of "whether there is such a thing as a memetic menu" (11)
(11) The idea of a memetic menu relates to the theory of MIAOplexes and whether MIAOs have rigidly-attached memes, and that by adopting a MIAO, an individual automatically has available the "menu" of memes for that MIAO to be infected by. MIAO bonding (MIAOplex formation) has the menu problem, too, i.e., is the set of available memes a simple combination, an overlap, join, union, some other more complex rule, or can outside memes even be brought in. How does an individual "choose" memes for their transition matrices from the memetic inventory of the cohort? What are the rules? If the choice is quite free, we could say that the menu system is increasingly "magical." This calls for a number of new terms, and the issue is a huge one for quantitative macromemetics.
__________________________________________
模倣子 Memetics Essay from GCDp144 - Memetic Index
2023-09-06
模倣子 Essays in Progress
模倣子 Autoimmunomemetic Self-Bullying, PTSD, CBT, and Memetic Engineering
Memetic Index
Introduction
Hitherto, I have not elaborated much (2) on endoemetic systems or ideomemetic systems (1)
I want to make a system using memetic analysis and memetic engineering to address PTSD issues, in other words, to apply memetic engineering principles to working the Twelve Steps of ACA.
Ideas From Theory
The theory in play is that when we stuffer restimulations of resentments, it's an interaction of memes. There is a residual memetic debt that is created as the Inner Child initiates a memetic interaction with the Critical Parent. The IC wants to avoid alienation (abandonment), but is only able to deploy dysfunctional memes that produce suffering.
Another thing to remember is that we are dealing with an ideomemeplex (2), which is an endomemeplex. In other words, the memes we are dealing with do not come from other people on the outside, but all within ourselves. This means we may have a great deal more power to control (3) and a much greater ability to measure and understand. This is nothing like the situation where we're trying to memetically engineer for a human population.
Okay, so the hopefully correct insight is that resentments are an example of a kind of "self-bullying" or autoimmunomemes, or immunomemes that operate within the individual's own mind (or internal memetic fabric).
Method and Approach
The key is to tease apart what these interactions are, using real data. Ultimately the goal is to "starve" the CP, or the Critical Parent Memeplex. There must be many memes that hook right into the CPM. What do these look like?
Normal life events, or flashbacks, occur. A healthy person responds creatively, comes up with an approach based on safety, resources available, levels of risk, and manages the level of escalation (how angry, how afraid, etc.). Persons suffering from cPTSD (4) or having survived dysfunctional family upbringing have difficulty meeting daily challenges, and are often in constant emotional pain, as if old hurts keep getting replayed over and over in one form or another.
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(1) Or the difference between the two, which may be a grey area.
(2) I touch on ideomemetic system analysis on page 3 of The Second Coming.
(3) Among ACA (and AA) folks, "control" can be something of a dirty word. Here I just mean that we can literally know a lot about something and make it do what we want to a great and reliable extent. What people are usually getting their knickers in a twist about is "the illusion of control."
(4) complex post-traumatic stress disorder
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模倣子 The Principle of Memetic Loops
Memetic Index
Introduction
The memetic loop is a model of how the brain processes memes. It describes how humans decide to enact/deploy memes and how they hope to get reactions from their fellow humans. It has repercussions into areas like currency inflation to intergenerational abuse to genocide to classist, racist, and sexist oppression.
My current expression of the Three Laws of Macromemetics don't include, at last not clearly, the concept of the memetic loop. I believe that the First Law could be phrased so as to encompass the memetic loop, and still retain its current power.
The memetic loop is related to The Principle of Closure, i.e., that we don't get our memetic reward (1) until the loop is closed.
Painful Waiting
Human beings are like Mr. Meeseeks from the hit TV show Rick and Morty, in that the human brain seeks to "close the loop" on a meme as soon as possible.
When a meme is deployed, a memetic debt is incurred, which is to say a memetic loop is opened, which causes discomfort, the urge for the loop to be closed again. This loop closure results in a "memetic reward" (1).
The Pain of Rejection
Being able to close a memetic loop, or get a memetic response to one's own memetic deployment, tends to be more important than whether one is actually harmed or oppressed by the memetic exchange. It's important to have the attention of others, regardless of whether that attention is pleasant or no.
Stress of Exclusion
I have not looked into this very much so far (2), but there's an idea that it's stressful, painful, to be unable to participate in certain memetic exchanges in which others are taking part. These exchanges may be economic, sensual, culinary, experiential, etc.
Fig. 1. A Memetic Loop
An individual can be excluded from a group by the inability to properly enact the "meme out" to the group, which could be immaturity or lack of knowledge, like when a person arrives in a foreign country where they don't speak the language (yet). This is an example of "alienation." The person has no memes they can deploy to get a reaction from the group. If they could deploy such memes, the group would respond, but they lack the skill and experience.
The other possibility is that the group for whatever reason refuses to deploy one of perhaps several return memes in response to otherwise valid memes deployed on the part of the individual. This could be that the group has deliberately not shared the "secret handshake," making it impossible for the individual to interact with the group. This is a form of alienation, but since it's deliberate, we might still want to class it as "oppression" (3). When we talk about "oppression" we typically mean deploying oppressive memes instead of the usual memes lavished on group members.
The Laws and Loops
The Laws of Macromemetics as I have illuminated them so far are:
Table 1. The Three Laws of Macromemetics1. An agent deploys memes in order to achieve optimal resonance2. Deployment of a meme causes transition to a new state3. A mutation is a Modification, Addition, or Deletion of a State, an Agent, or a Meme (MADSAM)
I propose to update the First Law of Macromemetics to include the concept of memetic loops as the basis for meme deployment by agents. In fact, "optimal resonance" may be uselessly vague. What about the other laws? These are macromemetic laws, as opposed to micromemetic laws. They bear upon the behavior of a system. The First Law as stated is a micromemetic law. This may not be a problem since memetic loops are where the individual's urge to participate in memetic exchanges merges with the fact that those individuals with whom the agent wishes to enter said exchanges may in fact be a group. And even if said exchanges are only between single individuals, the result can change the memetic landscape for all.
There are things like intergenerational dysfunction and abuse within families, and even between entire nations. There are performers who perform before an audience, or writers who write novels and other documents that influence millions and return the writer or performer. This theory may be the basis for why seeking fame, renown, political office, infamy are all so intriguing to our psyches.
Let's see how we like this:
The First Law of Macromemetics: Memetic agents open memetic loop by deploying memes
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(1) a.k.a. "Memetic orgasm"
(2) I may have published some essays that deal with this issue already. For instance the possible importance of experiencing penetration during sexual intercourse, among other things.
(3) Technically this would be oppression, since if the individual asks to be shown the secret handshake, or other trappings of group membership, the refusal to do so is in fact an oppressive meme deployment, i.e., rather than deploy the "I'll show you" or "fill in these forms" meme, one deploys some kind of refusal. Oppression is the deployment of other-than-expected or other-than-hoped-for memes, while alienation is no (meaningful) memetic exchange.
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Introduction
The mainstream or majority culture frequently uses sex stereotypes to make laws to oppress minority culture. The Macromemetic viewpoint is that this practice hurts the oppressing majority culture as well in the process.
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(1) Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do, The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society, Peter McWilliams [RIP].
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模倣子 Cost Decay of the Service Sector
Introduction
A basic tenet of macroeconomics is what is termed The Cost Decay of the Service Sector. Put simply, as production of goods becomes increasingly efficient, it becomes possible to pay manufacturing workers (2) more and more since they effectively product more and more wealth (1). Meanwhile, service workers (and manual workers) cannot increase their output at the same rate, or in many cases, at all. It may be slightly faster to vacuum a floor with a newer vacuum cleaner, but the time to make a cup of coffee, care for children, bus a table, and so on, remain the same over decades, even centuries.
Let's ask ourselves what things might start to look like as the efficiency of production becomes perfect (4), and set aside ideas such as rent (5) and frictional elements (3) such as sales, advertising, transportation (4), etc. In other words, what might an economy look like where effectively all economic agents are engaged in service of one kind or another, and their income is gauged solely on their working time, and not, as production workers, on the impact their time has on the economy.
A Model
Let's say we have a population of lawyers, baristas, and massage therapists. The lawyers and therapists make $150 per hour, and the baristas make $15.
In order for a lawyer to bill one $150 hour, they need one barista to pay ten hours of their labor, or 25% of a week's wages. To bill a forty-hour week, forty such legally aggrieved baristas are required. To bill a whole year (6), nine hundred baristas are required.
Let's say that massage therapists do one to three sessions a day, seven days a week, so $1,050 to $3,150 per week.
We need to talk about living costs.
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(1) An interesting side note is that "brain workers" or "media workers," and this could include people like insurance and banking people (3), are able to generate enormous wealth as the products of their labor may be distributed digitally, or through media where the cost of the media itself (2) is a small fraction of the "cost of distribution." For the sake of this argument, I'll probably neglect "frictional" [c.f. Bill Gates] economic costs.
(2) It might be worth noting that in the "celluloid film" period of movie distribution, the cost of the actual "prints" was about 10% of the cost of distribution, the rest being advertizing (3).
(3) Salespeople might be an interesting special case, by the way. Marketing and advertising are another "hidden cost" of the functioning of a market economy. I'll probably neglect these for the sake of argument.
(4) Possibly accomplished by robots, for instance.
(5) Which actually encompasses not only renting land space, but also the output of the means of production, in other words, all income derived from ownership as opposed to labor.
(6) Say a barista only needs legal representation once per year.
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摸倣子 Do We Need the Police?
Essay on police brutality.
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模倣子 Whence Tolerance for Bullying?
Memetic Index
Introduction
It seems no organization deals well with bullies, unless you have policies and special enforcers to deal with it, which few if any do. The role the police play in society may approach this. Criminals are bullies in a way, especially habitual criminals. However, organized criminals, who try to maintain their criminal activities over time, are difficult to deal with. Ironically enough, from my experiences working at disorganized, chaotic companies, they actually deal with it better, since there are localized power holders who can act outside of the hierarchy to stop bullies, including with threats, to protect another employee who's doing something important for them. Of course, this is hardly equitable.
In the rigid hierarchy of a well organized society, a bully can get away with bending the rules, and if they can snow the person they report to directly, they can get away with a lot of stuff, possibly indefinitely. Actually, the more they're allowed to get away with something, the more they can get away with it, for longer, and even increase and expand the scope of their misdeeds. It's a macromemetic when you think about it. The longer something goes on, the more stakeholders get used to responding to the stimuli (or not responding, same thing) and they actually become resistant to giving up that pattern of (memetic) reaction. It's a kind of Bystander Effect which gets more and more engrained with time. I should write an essay about this!
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摸倣子 Human FuturesSlack Futures
Angel investors buying slack so people can get ahead and then perhaps getting benefit from their payback when they achieve success or create something valuable that they have no time for.
Guilt/karmic debt or gratitude equity.
Minimum Wage the Problem thereof
making small employers pay is nonsense. full employment as a positive externality. all should pay, perhaps as tax-deductible donation, or couple at supermarket, buying car, etc. similar to "unattached coffee" or "dental donation" or such.
employers have to qualify to receive and proceeds are paid directly to employees.
Local Food Futures
These are also needed, e.g., organic produce, local produce, "Buy Local" is a pretty hollow slogan without some sort of futures trading capitalization infrastructure. Hemp futures market.
The rich should have to pay extra taxes which could be ablated offset by tax-deductible investments in the "human futures" market, where it might be possible to make money, even a lot of it, from judicious investment in the "slack" of the right people who just need a break.
The human futures market would be set up privately, with government approval, and there would be motivation to do so, in each State or region, in order to provide a relief from "minimum wage support taxes"
Angel investors buying slack so people can get ahead and then perhaps getting benefit from their payback when they achieve success or create something valuable that they have no time for.
Guilt/karmic debt or gratitude equity.
Minimum Wage the Problem thereof
making small employers pay is nonsense. full employment as a positive externality. all should pay, perhaps as tax-deductible donation, or couple at supermarket, buying car, etc. similar to "unattached coffee" or "dental donation" or such.
employers have to qualify to receive and proceeds are paid directly to employees.
Local Food Futures
These are also needed, e.g., organic produce, local produce, "Buy Local" is a pretty hollow slogan without some sort of futures trading capitalization infrastructure. Hemp futures market.
The rich should have to pay extra taxes which could be ablated offset by tax-deductible investments in the "human futures" market, where it might be possible to make money, even a lot of it, from judicious investment in the "slack" of the right people who just need a break.
The human futures market would be set up privately, with government approval, and there would be motivation to do so, in each State or region, in order to provide a relief from "minimum wage support taxes"
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模倣子 MIAOplexes, Ideomemeplexes, and State Transition
Index of Memetic Materials
Introduction
MIAO bonding (MIAOplex Formation) seems a promising way to perform memetic analysis on a cohort and evince their memetic inventory. Ideomemetic systems, or ideomemeplexes, promise to provide a hidden layer in the network model of memetic state transitions (1). This may resolve race conditions and probability distributions associated with memetic deployment (2). This may actually make it possible to identify nearly arbitrarily long memetic pathways deterministically (3). Further, I'd like to begin to rigorously lay out the notation system of my memetic diagrams and include some examples here.
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(1) Assuming any and all difficulties of complexity and actually evincing the structure of ideomemeplexes through memetic analysis and memetic hacking, for instance.
(2) Need a consistent term here, i.e., the process of determining which meme of the available memes is select for deployment a each juncture.
(3) Here we approach the idea of Hari Seldon in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, i.e., "psychohistory," where the behavior of large groups of people may actually be predicted reliably.
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模倣子 Memetic Essay
Introduction
MIAO bonding (MIAOplex Formation) seems a promising way to perform memetic analysis on a cohort and evince their memetic inventory. Ideomemetic systems, or ideomemeplexes, promise to provide a hidden layer in the network model of memetic state transitions (1). This may resolve race conditions and probability distributions associated with memetic deployment (2). This may actually make it possible to identify nearly arbitrarily long memetic pathways deterministically (3). Further, I'd like to begin to rigorously lay out the notation system of my memetic diagrams and include some examples here.
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(1) Assuming any and all difficulties of complexity and actually evincing the structure of ideomemeplexes through memetic analysis and memetic hacking, for instance.
(2) Need a consistent term here, i.e., the process of determining which meme of the available memes is select for deployment a each juncture.
(3) Here we approach the idea of Hari Seldon in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, i.e., "psychohistory," where the behavior of large groups of people may actually be predicted reliably.
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模倣子 Memetic Essay
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模倣子 Mutation and Cigar Club
Still needs to be written
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模倣子 The Drive to Conquest
Memetic Index
It's another Macromemetic Monday! I've been sheltering from COVID-19 for six months now!
Introduction
Obviously, since everything comes back to a Macromemetic explanation, the same must be true for the urge to conquer, like Alexander the Great, Napoléon, Hitler, Genghis Khan, the Romans, and on and on. One wonders why getting a bunch of guys together, along with expensive horses and weapons, and traipsing across often unpleasant and hostile country to get into bloody conflict with some other bunch of people who are probably even more determined since it's their home (and the women are right there so they can join the fight) and haven't got supply lines to worry about, which by the way, you do, might remotely be a good idea.
Except we don't.
The fundamental questioning of this whole concept simply doesn't seem to leap to mind. That's weird. That's the kind of thing that Macromemetics was invented to provide elegant and scientific (falsifiable and extensible) answers to. Let's see if there might be one, or at least the beginnings of it.
What's the Motivation?
Okay, my first thought is to dismiss the idea of the urge to conquest being a purely Malthusian one. We've got too many people, so let's take all of our youngest, most fit-to-breed young men and load 'em up with as many kill-tools as they can carry, and send 'em over the horizon to kill off the young and healthy men "over there" and if they succeed rape all the women. So it's either a win, we get read of all these extra mouths to feed, for the rest of their young lives, and we get rid of all the children they'd've sired, for the rest of their young lives. Or, it's win-win, where we get rid of them, and they kill off fit-to-breed young men on the other side, and take their place in fathering children we couldn't afford to have them father around here.
Who's Doing the Fighting?
Often things that don't make sense when modeled generically or heterogeneously start making lots of sense when it's some "them" who is doing more of the participation in the crazy activity, for example Jews under the Russians and black guys under the Americans in Vietnam. The Russians drafted all young Jewish men, so a Jewish man was separated from his shtetl from mid-teens into his forties, more or less, effectively removing him from his community, even if he didn't get killed off in some war or war-related mishap. The Turks did the same to the Albanians. Black guys were overwhelmingly drafted, sent to Vietnam, and killed. The Romans and the British did similar things, but don't let's muddy the pond too much.
Did this make these empires more effective in winning wars? Probably didn't make that much difference, but maybe that's not true. Something to consider. It tends to undermine those minority communities, obviously. Also, every black guy that goes to Vietnam, or Jew or Albanian that goes into the army, it taking a spot that would otherwise be filled by a white guy, a Russian, or a Turk.
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模倣子 Residual Memetic Debt
Background
I'm going to be writing a novel this November as a textbook for Macromemetics. I want to illustrate the basic principles and some of their functions in allegorical stories with a constant group of characters.
Even though it's already National Novel Writing Month at this point and I'm already writing the novel, I want to get these "articles" about the principles I want to cover written and ready-to-go before November starts (and into December).
Introduction
Memetic loops, engagement, marking. inflation and bank closures
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模倣子 Memetic States, Diagrams and Matrices
Background
I'm going to be writing a novel this November as a textbook for Macromemetics. I want to illustrate the basic principles and some of their functions in allegorical stories with a constant group of characters.
Even though it's already National Novel Writing Month at this point and I'm already writing the novel, I want to get these "articles" about the principles I want to cover written and ready-to-go before November starts (and into December).
Introduction
Discuss the diagrammatic representation of states, maybe compare to Feynmann Diagrams. Discuss the matrix representation (people x memes with next states at vertices). Problems with infinities with this representation, management of complexity.
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模倣子 Immunomemeticizing Others' 40-Hour Work Week
The europeans are lazy slugs with their 6 months off per year, and the japanese are ant-like unfeeling robots who never take holidays even though neither is true but "they're lazy and undisciplined unlike us" and "you should feel lucky that you don't have to work like the Japanese and Koreans" both serve to immunize the american status quo of practically no public holidays combined with a measly 2 weeks off per year.
link the the cheese-dick essay on the imaginary other
link the the cheese-dick essay on the imaginary other
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模倣子 The thrill of getting nekkid in front of strangers
"I sometimes think that the male equivalent of women's fashion would be wearing clothing covered in provocative slogans and then contorting one's body and limbs to prevent anyone from actually reading them (and getting self-righteously offended if anybody tried)"
[on a doode modeling for an art class and for medical students]
"...somehow I think the initial attraction would wear off even for men if it were chronic. I mean, there is a line many women feel crossed when admiration turns into objectification..."
This is a telling phrase, and typical. What do you think?She assumes there is some "attraction" which is never stated, and says things like "even for men" which makes this tacit assumption that men are different is some fundamental way -- classic question-begging. She assumes that there is "admiration" (or whatever) and not objectification (whatever that is -- vaguely-defined terms are another hallmark of rhetorical sloppiness and crypto-question-begging) a priori which is effectively a strawman, or again, more question-begging, i.e., she's used these unsupported tacit assumptions to dismiss an example which could be interesting and which potentially undermines the crypto-pseudo-feminist party line.
Her assumption is that the "line" is not "crossed" in the example you cited. Another hidden assertion is that women don't like to be the center of observation, and sidesteps the idea that they in fact deliberately and systematically invite it, which is effectively what I'm doing in this case, whereas I could just as easily choose not to, thereby not making it "chronic". So I'm inviting this intimate sexually-charged attention, and it's a kind of compulsion that comes with a giddy rush and emotional conflict which many people would choose to avoid for probably equally fraught reasons.
However, she applies a number of shopworn (and deeply flawed and unsupported) assumptions, spackling them onto yet another situation as if they somehow address and categorize the issue.
She does throw a bone to the idea that women should like getting lots of undeserved attention (anybody would, right?), and then somehow makes it bad, which effectively is the thin rationale for shaming men for the fact that they are deeply attracted to women. And yet, women somehow don't like it, which is never addressed, along with the politics behind short skirts and such whereby they deliberately attract it.
ME: Oh, I have to go and get naked in front of a bunch of strangers again. Some of them can be real pigs. Some of the female medical students really like to get in there and take their time and they seem to forget that I'm even a person at all. [sometimes I like it] Sometimes I really hate that I have to take off all my clothes [put on make-up, put on plunging necklines & short skirts] and be gawked at all day long, and the medical students touch me and the artists draw pictures of me naked and look at me and it's just chronic day to day and it wears me down. And they all thank me afterwards, I mean, I don't know them, I don't want to have a relationship with them. Who do they think they are?
...when of course the reality is that I don't have to do any of that. Whatever my reasons for attracting that attention, and they are probably at least somewhat fraught, oh sure, I have a few pad answers that cover the problem, but probably not the whole picture. Point being that it would be ridiculous for me to say any such thing, i.e., complain when a) I invite the attention, indeed, engineer its happening, and b) positive attention from others is by default a good thing and its being otherwise is what requires explanation, not the reverse.=======================================================
模倣子 Apathy, Insanity, and Immunomemes
Introduction
What is insanity? What is apathy? It occurs to me that they may both be a shortage of memes that overlap or are able to interact with a given other memetic system, e.g., "society at large" or "the new program" or what-have-you.
Is this also a practical working definition of "genius"?
Overview
Happy people are people who always know what to say and how to react to what is happening in the society around them. Or rather, they may be unhappy, but they feel that they "fit in". There is a difference between these two states, and perhaps a clarification of terms or wordsmithy is required here. There is oppression and there is exclusion. What are the parameters here? Personal freedom? Memetic latitude? Range of memes with which one may interact? Or as Slavoj ZheZhek might term it, non-participation in the prevailing ideology.
So what are we talking about here? We have the concept of an ideomemeplex, which is the internal economy of memes, or rather, the set of memes which the individual is able to respond to, and how they are able to respond. This gives us the idea of test/response or test/resonance meme pairs, and a given test meme may have more than one response meme.
What is insanity? What is apathy? It occurs to me that they may both be a shortage of memes that overlap or are able to interact with a given other memetic system, e.g., "society at large" or "the new program" or what-have-you.
Is this also a practical working definition of "genius"?
Overview
Happy people are people who always know what to say and how to react to what is happening in the society around them. Or rather, they may be unhappy, but they feel that they "fit in". There is a difference between these two states, and perhaps a clarification of terms or wordsmithy is required here. There is oppression and there is exclusion. What are the parameters here? Personal freedom? Memetic latitude? Range of memes with which one may interact? Or as Slavoj ZheZhek might term it, non-participation in the prevailing ideology.
So what are we talking about here? We have the concept of an ideomemeplex, which is the internal economy of memes, or rather, the set of memes which the individual is able to respond to, and how they are able to respond. This gives us the idea of test/response or test/resonance meme pairs, and a given test meme may have more than one response meme.
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模倣子 Annoying Americanisms
Introduction
These could almost be thought of as "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" (3) that have somehow become normalized. And the paint a picture of the culture, a form of static, already done memetic hacking.
Cases in Point
"Do you know what it is?" (1)
gender of child
"Do you want room?"(2)
coffee
"I forgot to check."
TP in the bog
"awesome"
"sucks"
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(1) Star Wars enabling of dysfunctional, misogynistic cultural patterns. When Padme/ex-Queen Amadala gave birth to Luke and Leia (in that order), the midwife robot said "Oido" and then "Oida". So there are two messages: somehow a midwife robot would be programmed with a language (and probably only that one, otherwise she'd be speaking in English/Botchi or whatever, right?), and which is Indo-European-like in that it has gender, and maybe like Modern English AND that that is the most important feature she announces when the baby is born, as opposed to "healthy" or such. As opposed to Japanese, for instance where something like yubi juppon genki-na aka-chan manzoku (or something)"
(2) another variation is "Double-shot Americano with room". Don't let's forget the term "counter-sip" (sucking off the top bit of a coffee that's too full while it's still sitting on the counter). Why do we have words for this stuff?!!
gender of child
"Do you want room?"(2)
coffee
"I forgot to check."
TP in the bog
"awesome"
"sucks"
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(1) Star Wars enabling of dysfunctional, misogynistic cultural patterns. When Padme/ex-Queen Amadala gave birth to Luke and Leia (in that order), the midwife robot said "Oido" and then "Oida". So there are two messages: somehow a midwife robot would be programmed with a language (and probably only that one, otherwise she'd be speaking in English/Botchi or whatever, right?), and which is Indo-European-like in that it has gender, and maybe like Modern English AND that that is the most important feature she announces when the baby is born, as opposed to "healthy" or such. As opposed to Japanese, for instance where something like yubi juppon genki-na aka-chan manzoku (or something)"
(2) another variation is "Double-shot Americano with room". Don't let's forget the term "counter-sip" (sucking off the top bit of a coffee that's too full while it's still sitting on the counter). Why do we have words for this stuff?!!
(3) From MAD Magazine's Al Jaffee.
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模倣子 Male vs. Female Privilege
Apparently men don't suffer from the state of "gender inequality" that currently exists.
She might look up Tim Wise, by the way.
She might look up Tim Wise, by the way.
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模倣子 The News and the Rise of the Middle Class
Introduction
Warning: This is all highly speculative. It's something where I see a possible macromemetic connection, and it could form the impetus for a program of research, in this case, into history and communications.
I don't know if I've written about these topics before, at least hinted at them, hopefully. Why do people follow sports, for God's sake? In particular, watch them...after they already happened, or read about them even further after the fact -- why? I have never understood that...until I started studying Macromemetics, that is. Spoiler Alert: sports is a memetic nexus...and so is the news, the weather, and even, yes, shocker, science!
Memetic Nexus Changes Everything!
Macromemetically speaking, what are people doing when they follow the news, the weather, sports? Do they never, ever talk to anybody else about it, or view it with other people, or talk about it on the phone while watching it. According to Jane McGonigal, following sports goes back to ancient Mesopotamia and before, chariot racing teams and so forth. Riots by fans to rival today's drunken British soccer lager louts.
Why do people care about this stuff? Why do they club together and act like crazies?
The theory is that these activities, such as the complex rule-based, clear-outcomed (1), performed at specific timed sports events are perfect for supplying a large cohort with fresh systems of memes that they can exchange, enact, get guaranteed resonance off of, in other words, pretty darn close to a memetic orgy. And this is a guaranteed memetic orgy, and that is very appealing in a way that few things are.
In his original comic strip, Life in Hell, Matt Groeing, creator of The Simpsons, in his strip entitled 'So you want to be a graduate student?' asks whether you 'like using jargon.' It's a joke, but it's real.
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(1) Marking is a term that refers to how a memetic enactment is clear in what it is in response to, what provoked it, and what responses. It's the tit-for-tat level of a memetic exchange. High marking has a positive effect on
Warning: This is all highly speculative. It's something where I see a possible macromemetic connection, and it could form the impetus for a program of research, in this case, into history and communications.
I don't know if I've written about these topics before, at least hinted at them, hopefully. Why do people follow sports, for God's sake? In particular, watch them...after they already happened, or read about them even further after the fact -- why? I have never understood that...until I started studying Macromemetics, that is. Spoiler Alert: sports is a memetic nexus...and so is the news, the weather, and even, yes, shocker, science!
Memetic Nexus Changes Everything!
Macromemetically speaking, what are people doing when they follow the news, the weather, sports? Do they never, ever talk to anybody else about it, or view it with other people, or talk about it on the phone while watching it. According to Jane McGonigal, following sports goes back to ancient Mesopotamia and before, chariot racing teams and so forth. Riots by fans to rival today's drunken British soccer lager louts.
Why do people care about this stuff? Why do they club together and act like crazies?
The theory is that these activities, such as the complex rule-based, clear-outcomed (1), performed at specific timed sports events are perfect for supplying a large cohort with fresh systems of memes that they can exchange, enact, get guaranteed resonance off of, in other words, pretty darn close to a memetic orgy. And this is a guaranteed memetic orgy, and that is very appealing in a way that few things are.
In his original comic strip, Life in Hell, Matt Groeing, creator of The Simpsons, in his strip entitled 'So you want to be a graduate student?' asks whether you 'like using jargon.' It's a joke, but it's real.
_________________________________________________________
(1) Marking is a term that refers to how a memetic enactment is clear in what it is in response to, what provoked it, and what responses. It's the tit-for-tat level of a memetic exchange. High marking has a positive effect on
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模倣子 The Lens of our own Biases
Not too much confusion. My main takeaway from seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls and where they were discovered was that they were found to be much much older than the texts that they were exact copies of, so they push the origin dates of parts of the Torah back considerably.
Your point, as I understood it, was that societies "without laws" invariably go under and that that is proven by written record going back 5,000 years. I have problems with that statement, which may or may not even do justice to what you were saying, one of which is how clearly we can look into the past using ancient documents and so forth, and whether we can even see their lives without looking through the lens of our own biases. It strikes me as fairly hard, if impossible, to falsify (demonstrate, prove, disprove, whatever), hence at best not very useful, certainly not as concerns social policy dialectics.
The major, perhaps the decisive factor, in the decline of civilizations may well be (and according to Jared Diamond, is) deforestation. America is doing very badly in this regard, if the Fifth Lord Northborne is to be believed (cf "Look to the Land"), as well as many, many other sources.
What I've heard about the Roman Empire, apart from the collapse of democracy, is that the steady debasement of their currency (cf. my sending all the gold to China reference) and the fact that at the time of the Fall, the Empire was literally 75%-80% slave population, i.e., personal freedom and economic and social agency was at a low ebb, which jibes with the collapse of the empires and great nations that I have researched in some detail (unlike Rome, which I have not especially). And these are also the two biggies that we are concerned about in this country these days (well, three, if you add in deforestation, which is absolutely relevant).
Your point, as I understood it, was that societies "without laws" invariably go under and that that is proven by written record going back 5,000 years. I have problems with that statement, which may or may not even do justice to what you were saying, one of which is how clearly we can look into the past using ancient documents and so forth, and whether we can even see their lives without looking through the lens of our own biases. It strikes me as fairly hard, if impossible, to falsify (demonstrate, prove, disprove, whatever), hence at best not very useful, certainly not as concerns social policy dialectics.
The major, perhaps the decisive factor, in the decline of civilizations may well be (and according to Jared Diamond, is) deforestation. America is doing very badly in this regard, if the Fifth Lord Northborne is to be believed (cf "Look to the Land"), as well as many, many other sources.
What I've heard about the Roman Empire, apart from the collapse of democracy, is that the steady debasement of their currency (cf. my sending all the gold to China reference) and the fact that at the time of the Fall, the Empire was literally 75%-80% slave population, i.e., personal freedom and economic and social agency was at a low ebb, which jibes with the collapse of the empires and great nations that I have researched in some detail (unlike Rome, which I have not especially). And these are also the two biggies that we are concerned about in this country these days (well, three, if you add in deforestation, which is absolutely relevant).
==================================================
模倣子 The casual, unconscious marginalization of women
These are the things I notice which CPFs don't seem to and which seem to be important to me.
"... Colorado is, above and beyond and especially beneath it all, a redneck state with a sullen horde of pissed-off cowboys, miners, roughnecks, truck drivers, loggers and their womenfolk muttering and seething on the edge of things..."
======================================================
模倣子 Capitalist Memes Devour Your Life
https://youtu.be/ejoAG5n19iE
Add links to capitalist meme essays HERE and post on Facebook and Twitter.
======================================================
模倣子 Dodgy start for ch1
Memetic Index
I'm currently at home quarantining myself from the CoViD-19 pandemic.
This is going to take a bit of work to be worth publishing. I think I'll start over...
Foreword
I hope to put together a collection of chapters that explain the principles and ideas of Macromemetics as I've worked it out so far. I have a large collection of essays that explore certain specific ideas, which I may link to as appendices. The new material I hope to put together is more of an exposition of Macrometics for someone who wants to acquire an overall understanding of the main ideas of Macromemetics as they stand at the moment, without having to sift through a large collection of unindexed material which while it may be thorough, is perhaps not complete.
Onward!
What is Macromemetics?
Memetics, or as I call it, Micromemetics, is the study of the brain, human behavior as it pertains to memes
The most basic principle of Macromemetics, and I would argue, all of memetics, is that of memetic resonance. The reward one feels when perceiving something iconic (or nostalgic), being recognized as successfully imitating something, or enacting something and having others imitate it. This is the fundamental basis for culture, the conventionality of language, music, and so on. The Maslow's Motivational Model describes layers of needs.
A Telling Example
The linked video points up a number of basic concepts of Macromemetics. First is the Micromemetic concept that humans are programmed to imitate one another. We see one person enacting a behavior. An important factor is that the behavior be readily identified and imitated. Behaviors which are overly complex or unclear, where it's difficult to tell where they start and end, or which aspects of the behavior are central and which are incidental make for poor memes. The video mentions how the "leader" should encourage and recognize "early adopters/followers." The Macromemetic principle at play here is that subsequent adopters will get the strong subliminal message that they will get positive (non-bullying) reaction if they enact the same behavior (meme) themselves. Note that this effect is further enhanced if the leader or early adopter is "high-status" (1). A key phenomenon as the "movement" picks up steam is that the perceived reward becomes more and more certain as the population of cohort members grows. The certainty starts out low, grows as the population enacting it grows, which decreases the number of possible bullies and increases the population of memetic agents who could favorably respond to one's own joining the "movement."
The video also makes the point that it's "not about" the leader or the early adopter. This can translate into the fact that inventors tend not to get much or any credit for their invention, while those who promote it the most are recognized as having "invented" it. This may be the person who was seen as being the most visible enactor when an inflection point was hit, and may be the peak of the movement, and possibly the beginning of formation of memetic polarizations, i.e., people start to see it as equally valuable to join a cohort of "non-joiners" of the movement which has begun to grow rapidly. This is an area of future study.
_________________________________
(1) See "memetic nexus" later on.
(2) A codicil to this is that one's ability to discriminate memes, including enacting them, is an index of an individual's, including computer/robotic, animal, or plant life, "humanity."
I'm currently at home quarantining myself from the CoViD-19 pandemic.
This is going to take a bit of work to be worth publishing. I think I'll start over...
Foreword
I hope to put together a collection of chapters that explain the principles and ideas of Macromemetics as I've worked it out so far. I have a large collection of essays that explore certain specific ideas, which I may link to as appendices. The new material I hope to put together is more of an exposition of Macrometics for someone who wants to acquire an overall understanding of the main ideas of Macromemetics as they stand at the moment, without having to sift through a large collection of unindexed material which while it may be thorough, is perhaps not complete.
Onward!
What is Macromemetics?
Memetics, or as I call it, Micromemetics, is the study of the brain, human behavior as it pertains to memes
The most basic principle of Macromemetics, and I would argue, all of memetics, is that of memetic resonance. The reward one feels when perceiving something iconic (or nostalgic), being recognized as successfully imitating something, or enacting something and having others imitate it. This is the fundamental basis for culture, the conventionality of language, music, and so on. The Maslow's Motivational Model describes layers of needs.
By contrast, the memetic argument is along the lines that the memetic resonance response is critical to the human animal, a motivation which often supercedes basic survival drives such as those for food or shelter. Sex is probably a special case, operating in both the biological (genetic) and memetic replicator domains, and this is significant for the human animal.
The Franklin Reality Model offers a different set of "needs," all of which operate in parallel, so to speak.
Like the Maslow model of human needs, the Franklin Reality Model proposes its own set of human needs:
- to Live
- to Love and Be Loved
- to Feel Important
- Variety
It might be interesting to mention Dr. Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
These are all formulated in terms of a robot's relationship to individual humans. Presupposed is the assumption that a robot is able to distinguish a human. This is not formulated as a law, it is assumed to be inherent to a robot's make-up.
Similarly, the First Principle of Memetics is that humans are able to discriminate memes (2). This includes the ability to enact them as well as recognize their enactment by others. The Second Principle of Memetics is that memetic agents (humans, et al) derive pleasure, or brain pleasure center reward by exchanging memes.
“Cheese crumbs spread in front of a copulating pair of rats may distract the female, but not the male”
Back to The Three Laws of Robotics and the Franklin Reality Model. The FRM's needs, apart from "to Live," strike me as having a memetic tinge. How does one "feel important" or "love and be loved" or perceive "variety"? One could posit something to do with being open to learning and enacting novel memes, to form attachments to other memetic agents that enact the same memes, and to safeguard one's own survival when there are no memetic activities to engage in.
That pretty well describes the behavior of perhaps all human beings.
To recap:
The First Principle of Micromemetics: memetic agents are able to discriminate and enact memes.
The Second Principle of Micromemetics: memetic agents derive pleasure through the exchange of memes.
This is the extent of physiological Micromemetic theory required to support Macromemetics. Given this concept of a memetic agent, an individual (2) who is able to recognize memes, deploy memes, and derive pleasure from this memetic activity, we are led to:
The First Law of Macromemetics: An agent deploys memes in order to achieve optimal resonance.
This recalls the idea of an "economic agent" in Microeconomics. This First Law will, as we shall see, supports many different conclusions and phenomena, including the macroscopic behavior of a large number of memetic agents. The objective of Macromemetics is to understand, to predict, even to control the behavior of large numbers of people. This is the objective of Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Marketing, Advertising, Epidemiology, etc., etc. One of the larger goals of Macromemetics are to change large-scale human behavior without bloodshed, or to engender mass human behavior otherwise impossible by hitherto understood methods.
The linked video points up a number of basic concepts of Macromemetics. First is the Micromemetic concept that humans are programmed to imitate one another. We see one person enacting a behavior. An important factor is that the behavior be readily identified and imitated. Behaviors which are overly complex or unclear, where it's difficult to tell where they start and end, or which aspects of the behavior are central and which are incidental make for poor memes. The video mentions how the "leader" should encourage and recognize "early adopters/followers." The Macromemetic principle at play here is that subsequent adopters will get the strong subliminal message that they will get positive (non-bullying) reaction if they enact the same behavior (meme) themselves. Note that this effect is further enhanced if the leader or early adopter is "high-status" (1). A key phenomenon as the "movement" picks up steam is that the perceived reward becomes more and more certain as the population of cohort members grows. The certainty starts out low, grows as the population enacting it grows, which decreases the number of possible bullies and increases the population of memetic agents who could favorably respond to one's own joining the "movement."
The video also makes the point that it's "not about" the leader or the early adopter. This can translate into the fact that inventors tend not to get much or any credit for their invention, while those who promote it the most are recognized as having "invented" it. This may be the person who was seen as being the most visible enactor when an inflection point was hit, and may be the peak of the movement, and possibly the beginning of formation of memetic polarizations, i.e., people start to see it as equally valuable to join a cohort of "non-joiners" of the movement which has begun to grow rapidly. This is an area of future study.
_________________________________
(1) See "memetic nexus" later on.
(2) A codicil to this is that one's ability to discriminate memes, including enacting them, is an index of an individual's, including computer/robotic, animal, or plant life, "humanity."
=======================================================
模倣子 Positivity v. Negativity in Logic and Memetics
Memetic Index
Introduction
Is there a tendency towards negativity in memetic affairs, and if so, why? I'm trying to analyze why critique groups, among other things, go bad over time. Is the production of 'negative memes' an example of an immunomemetic reaction of a memetic system to novel memes (here, new manuscripts and authors), in accordance with the First Law of Immunomemetics, or is it something else? Is it 'easier' to product negative comments about critique materials than positive ones? If so, is this because positive messages are easier to 'attack' immunomemetically than negative ones, and might there be a rigorous way of describing this mechanism and its negative bias?
Introduction
Is there a tendency towards negativity in memetic affairs, and if so, why? I'm trying to analyze why critique groups, among other things, go bad over time. Is the production of 'negative memes' an example of an immunomemetic reaction of a memetic system to novel memes (here, new manuscripts and authors), in accordance with the First Law of Immunomemetics, or is it something else? Is it 'easier' to product negative comments about critique materials than positive ones? If so, is this because positive messages are easier to 'attack' immunomemetically than negative ones, and might there be a rigorous way of describing this mechanism and its negative bias?
=====================================================
模倣子 Immunomemetic Mate-Guarding
Index of Memetic Materials
Oh, what I put my foot in was that I told a Japanese coworker my "wa-fu burrito" story (Japanese-style burritos) in Japanese because we had a taco potluck today. Her husband was right there. I may have ruffled some feathers.
I had a recent experience of telling a story to a female coworker in her native language while her husband who doesn't speak it was there. This sort of thing has happened to me before, it's probably not a great idea to do it, but the story was funnier in the original language and I wanted to practice.
I don't know how possessive American men are of "their women". Apparently, or at least probably, way more than I think is normal, or would be normal for me. This is probably upsetting to you, moreover. Even the Arabians are probably more lax than the Americans about the idea that if a woman has anything other than female friends, she's a slut if she's unmarried and unfaithful if married. Men are the same, with the added caveat that they only be able to do "manly things" and preferably always by themselves or with at least two other male friends, otherwise they're "gay" (of questionably manliness, which effectively "womanliness", i.e., "no better than women"). I should write about this!
These memes all support one another. Obviously it's another example of how the homophobia memeplex supports misogyny, chauvinism, and oppression of women.
[link to the "SGBF meme" comic]
Oh, what I put my foot in was that I told a Japanese coworker my "wa-fu burrito" story (Japanese-style burritos) in Japanese because we had a taco potluck today. Her husband was right there. I may have ruffled some feathers.
I had a recent experience of telling a story to a female coworker in her native language while her husband who doesn't speak it was there. This sort of thing has happened to me before, it's probably not a great idea to do it, but the story was funnier in the original language and I wanted to practice.
I don't know how possessive American men are of "their women". Apparently, or at least probably, way more than I think is normal, or would be normal for me. This is probably upsetting to you, moreover. Even the Arabians are probably more lax than the Americans about the idea that if a woman has anything other than female friends, she's a slut if she's unmarried and unfaithful if married. Men are the same, with the added caveat that they only be able to do "manly things" and preferably always by themselves or with at least two other male friends, otherwise they're "gay" (of questionably manliness, which effectively "womanliness", i.e., "no better than women"). I should write about this!
These memes all support one another. Obviously it's another example of how the homophobia memeplex supports misogyny, chauvinism, and oppression of women.
[link to the "SGBF meme" comic]
================================================================
模倣子 Memetic Orgy of Live Performance
Introduction
Live performances are better than taped or broadcast performances. Why? One theory is that there is a memetic linkage between the audience and performers, and that they are both able to (not just the performers) enjoy a memetic reward, or "memetic orgasm."
Live performances are better than taped or broadcast performances. Why? One theory is that there is a memetic linkage between the audience and performers, and that they are both able to (not just the performers) enjoy a memetic reward, or "memetic orgasm."
==============================================================
模倣子 Macromemetics for Beginners
Introduction
The idea that memes, reproducible human behaviors, reproduce in the same way as genes do is taken as a given and as a point of departure for macromemetics. The object of macromemetics is to describe the behavior of systems of memes.
One question
A micromemetic idea that drives macromemetic theory is the memetic reward, also known as the "memetic orgasm." The theory is that, like an orgasm, there is some kind of psysiological reaction
The idea that memes, reproducible human behaviors, reproduce in the same way as genes do is taken as a given and as a point of departure for macromemetics. The object of macromemetics is to describe the behavior of systems of memes.
One question
A micromemetic idea that drives macromemetic theory is the memetic reward, also known as the "memetic orgasm." The theory is that, like an orgasm, there is some kind of psysiological reaction
====================================================
模倣子 Classism and The Tragedy of the Commons
Index of Memetic Materials
Introduction
The idea is that if an environment where everybody is at the same level if economic opporunity so that here is no feeling that one's neighbor has more than oneself, like in Japan, then is the motivation to "cheat" lessened? The idea that "the others can afford it more than me"
The idea that the lower classes are undesireable is that they may be cheaters, that they are unaccustomed to participating at the same level of reciprocal altruism as them established members of the group/level.
Discussion
I think of Japan and I also think of our coffee klatch here at work, where all of use are us are middle-class eingineers. is there cheating? is it likely? if everybody gives enough to support contined purchase of the quality of coffee that everybody claims to want, then the theory is supported. if not, i.e., if there can be cheating even among people who have no reason to suppose anything other than that they have the same level of income, then this theory of memetics of classism and the tragedy of the commons is not supported.
Another implication is the reslut of "neighbourhoods" like rich neighborhoods and ghettoes and such. these will tend to form for the same reasons that people perceive that each other understand each other from an reciprocal altruism point of view of economics. So a franchimse trying to enter a richer or poorer neighborhood should adjust to cater to this. what does that look like, however?
Introduction
The idea is that if an environment where everybody is at the same level if economic opporunity so that here is no feeling that one's neighbor has more than oneself, like in Japan, then is the motivation to "cheat" lessened? The idea that "the others can afford it more than me"
The idea that the lower classes are undesireable is that they may be cheaters, that they are unaccustomed to participating at the same level of reciprocal altruism as them established members of the group/level.
Discussion
I think of Japan and I also think of our coffee klatch here at work, where all of use are us are middle-class eingineers. is there cheating? is it likely? if everybody gives enough to support contined purchase of the quality of coffee that everybody claims to want, then the theory is supported. if not, i.e., if there can be cheating even among people who have no reason to suppose anything other than that they have the same level of income, then this theory of memetics of classism and the tragedy of the commons is not supported.
Another implication is the reslut of "neighbourhoods" like rich neighborhoods and ghettoes and such. these will tend to form for the same reasons that people perceive that each other understand each other from an reciprocal altruism point of view of economics. So a franchimse trying to enter a richer or poorer neighborhood should adjust to cater to this. what does that look like, however?
=============================================
模倣子 Memetic Nexus and Memetic Orgasm
Background
I'm going to be writing a novel this November as a textbook for Macromemetics. I want to illustrate the basic principles and some of their functions in allegorical stories with a constant group of characters.
Introduction
Why do people like (to read about) sports and talk about the weather?
Is science above macromemetics? no, nature is the memetic nexus
lots of people with all the same (and immediate) memetic inventory
======================================================
模倣子 Pollution Futures
Introduction
Use the free market to allow industry to "purchase" the pollution they need from the actual people who have to put up with it. Designate "zones" where these people live and create futures markets, like on the Chicago Board of Trade, for the various types of pollution, e.g., parts per million of such-and-so contaminant, biologically available oxygen, spilled oil or coal, etc. The people living in the zones would be able to trade their "clean water and air and soil" in the form of shares, which would be determined by something like the fact that they live there, and possibly how much land they own in the zone (if they live there).
Futures Markets
Use the free market to allow industry to "purchase" the pollution they need from the actual people who have to put up with it. Designate "zones" where these people live and create futures markets, like on the Chicago Board of Trade, for the various types of pollution, e.g., parts per million of such-and-so contaminant, biologically available oxygen, spilled oil or coal, etc. The people living in the zones would be able to trade their "clean water and air and soil" in the form of shares, which would be determined by something like the fact that they live there, and possibly how much land they own in the zone (if they live there).
Futures Markets
=============================================
模倣子 The Female Face of Normalcy
Dig up that stuff I texted to Tiffany about this and write about how the fact that women don't fit neatly into the oppressive mold makes them an anchor point for liberation for everyone.
Women are compelling -- we feel more when they are in distress.
==================================================
模倣子 Pretending not to Understand
Pretending not to understand is another potential sub-class of immunomeme, and it may or may not be parametric as well. Given all of these immunomemes that mimic the process of intellectual discussion, i.e., questioning and answering, throwing out new ideas, having those ideas shot down (when untenable?), this brings us to the question of how does one distinguish a productive intellectual or problem-solving discussion from a pointless and self-serving immunomemtic throw-down? Being able to make this distinction is important for chairmen (1) of meetings of all sorts, even when formal controls such as Robert's Rules of Order are employed, heads of college departments, heads of engineering teams, politicians, and so forth. Such people could use an arsenal of memetic, or perhaps better described as meta-memetic tools to assess the situation and hopefully bring things back on track. This could lead to one of the highest goals of macro-memetics, i.e., to avoid conflict, even bloodshed arising from unresolveable differences.
____________________________________________
(1) also "chairpersons"
_________________________________________
模倣子 Memetic Essay
=======================================================
模倣子 The Tenacity of Borrowing Cultures
Index of Memetic Materials
Introduction
A fact that has long intrigued me is how "borrowing cultures", or those who have brought their culture, religion, or language from another country, tend to assiduously maintain even trivial details of this legacy, even centuries after the "home country" has abandoned them, or even if they are totally impractical in the new environment.
Another example is how minority cultures tend to become more pronounced about their culture when they find themselves among foreign cultures
Mormons anywhere outside of Utah
It occurs to me that this might have a straightforward memetic explanation.
Japanese Mormons and Coca-Cola
Greenlandish Vikings
American circumcisers
American 3-piece suits and Eurasian cattle in the desert
Canadian French
Introduction
A fact that has long intrigued me is how "borrowing cultures", or those who have brought their culture, religion, or language from another country, tend to assiduously maintain even trivial details of this legacy, even centuries after the "home country" has abandoned them, or even if they are totally impractical in the new environment.
Another example is how minority cultures tend to become more pronounced about their culture when they find themselves among foreign cultures
Mormons anywhere outside of Utah
It occurs to me that this might have a straightforward memetic explanation.
Japanese Mormons and Coca-Cola
Greenlandish Vikings
American circumcisers
American 3-piece suits and Eurasian cattle in the desert
Canadian French
====================================================
模倣子 Lying and Memetic Hacking
Linguistic Text Analysis
https://youtu.be/H0-WkpmTPrM
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