漫画 The Turnover Triangle

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模倣子 Being Ridiculously Tall Blues

Original Medium Article  

It's not sexual, but being ridiculously tall also seems to make one the property of others. They feel they have a right to comment on it. Of course one is obliged to change lightbulbs, get things off of the top shelf, reach things that fell under or behind the couch, and stand in the back in photos and so on--I call it altesse oblige. Everybody seems to automatically own my time and attention. Of course I must have played basketball (I'm terrible at the game--my body doesn't mean I automatically have interest or skills). And I'm excluded from a lot of conversations because normal-sized persons don't seem to realize that their voices are considerably quieter for me than for others walking with them, and they tend not to pay attention to what I say, since my voice is coming "from above" and there's less face-to-face. And I've had varicose veins since Junior High School, too, so even though being super-tall "must be great" from the perspective of those who are not, it has many drawbacks, including banging my head...a lot (luckily the super-tall and hard head genes seem to go together). And during the almost twenty years I lived in Japan all this was turned up to a fever pitch, and I couldn't find clothes or shoes that fit me anywhere (but mostly can't do that in America, either). It's rare that I get to sleep in a bed where my feet aren't right at the edge or hang over. But again, all this is something nobody thinks about or must be "a small price to pay" for the kind of body I have.

Male versus Female Runners

 

Original Medium Article 

First off, most, if not all, of what you are describing are CRIMES. Tell a cop, any cop, about what's happened to you, and ask them to tell you which laws are being broken, and they will tell you. "Assault" is deliberately making another person feel unsafe. In that Swiss stalking experience I related I ran to the police (I was alone, my roommates had all gone home for the holidays, is was two in the morning) and we all got in their cop car, and the guy was still there, still trying to find where I had got to, and they arrested the guy and then took me home. Get license plate numbers, take pictures of them if you have your smartphone. "Battery" is unwanted contact, ANY unwanted contact. If we don't know details, if don't know whether the cops acted or not, then we cannot engage in activism on your behalf, we can't petition the cops to upgrade their priorities. Sometimes it's something icky that just quickly happens, you pray for it to end, and then it's over (I got groped on a train in Tokyo and it was like that--if my assailant had gotten arrested it would've been hard jail time, but there it is), and it's probably never that easy, but it's not about trying to curry sympathy, it's about CRIME. I think that things like #METOO (and yeah, me, too) and "believe women" are good, important, but I'm frustrated. I was at GeekGirlCon, and there was a room where they were basically selling a $15 comic book about how to get the crowd to "help you" when somebody hassles you for doing CosPlay or whatever, and women would talk about how "somebody leered at me" or "this one guy picked me up in my costume and spun me around" and I just stood up to the mic and said what I just said, that if somebody comes at you in a threatening way, or touches you in ANY way, no matter how "sexy" your costume is or whatever, it's a CRIME and the perp is subject to arrest by a cop and in for serious legal consequences (of course the women trying to flog their comic book off on the women victims HATED that). People don't seem to know how the law works. I hate to say this, but non-American women seem to have a better grasp of this in my experience. The legal definition of a "right" is the existence of the means to seek remedy when it's violated. It should be less about "please be nice to me" or "all men are bad and scare me" or "please don't be like these bad men" and more about "I'm going to call the cops if you do that crap." If you talk to the cops, they can not only tell you your rights, but may have suggestions for how you can help them to their jobs. If they don't provide satisfaction, then we as a citizenry can apply specific pressure to sheriffs and chiefs of police. Until we know those things, we can't do anything to make things better, make them the way they SHOULD be.

模倣子 Chess as a State Transition Model

Memetic Index - Memetic Glossary

Introduction 

We need to start thinking about systems of agents who make deployment decisions and move a system forward. We need to start thinking about whether those systems converge into certain pathways and whether that resembles a stable society. We need to think about things such as mutation. 

We need to start digging into the idea of endomemetic systems, and their mutation into idiomemetic systems, and these governing the deployment decisions of individual agents.

What I propose is a chess board, a chess game, where every piece is making its own decisions as to which moves it will make, and like in a real society, somebody gets picked to move (1). This brings us to the idea of how agents make decisions, and how agents vie with one another to decide which of them will deploy which memes. In other words, we must grapple with questions of deployment decisions (8).

A Simple Model 

An easy way to generate moves in a game is to poll the pieces, select one of them, and have that piece return a move. The easiest way to select a move is to select evenly across all the pieces which are capable of moving, or, in algebraic chess notation, all of the movies which are able to be made by the given color whose turn it is (3). So we need a function to generate an array of moves. For example, the set of opening moves for white is:

[ [ a-h ][ 3, 4 ], N[ a, c, f, h ]3 ]

fig. 1a. All possible white opening moves (pawns, knights) (5)

Here's what these moves look like on an actual board.

fig. 1b. possible chess openings (not all pawn moves shows)

Each move. is a meme that takes us to a new state, which is the configuration of the next board. Furthermore, that new state is now the point of departure for the next state, which we reach by the next move. Obviously, there are millions of states, but notationally we can represent it as "StateNow" or "StateX" or "State2" or whatever. For example, using algebraic chess notation, we can represent a knight moving for white with:

SetUp.Nc3! => QueenKnightOpen

fig. 1c. Notation for a chess move making a state transition

This highlights what we hope to accomplish in this essay. We can represent the possible opening as a state transition diagram, "SetUp", with all of the agents, that is, all eight pawns and the two knights.

States / agents

QKO1

Queen Knight Open

King Knight Open

KKO1

PaOut

PbOut

PcOut

PdOut

PeOut

PfOut

PgOut

PhOut

queen-knight

Na3

Nc3

king-knight

Nf3

Nh3

pawns

a3, a4

b3, b4

c3, c4

d3, d4

e3, e4

f3, f4

g3, g4

f3, f4

fig. 1d. Transition Matrix for opening chess moves (6) for state "SetUp"

The matrix gets pretty big if you include all the pawn moves separately (7). When describing a memetic system, using deployment descriptors is a good way to help verify the completeness and correctness of a memetic system outline. Here, until in fig. 1a., the pieces are explicitly mentioned and treated as agents. I've given distinct names to the pawn opening states as well.

SetUp.queen-knight.Na3! => QK01

SetUp.queen-knight.Nc3! => QueenKnightOpen

SetUp.king-knight.Nf3! => KingKnightOpen

SetUp.king-knight.Nc3! => KKO1

SetUp.pawn-a.a3! => PawnA3

SetUp.pawn-a.a4! => PawnA4

SetUp.pawn-b.b3! => PawnB3

SetUp.pawn-b.b4! => PawnB4

SetUp.pawn-c.c3! => PawnC3

SetUp.pawn-c.c4! => PawnC4

SetUp.pawn-d.d3! => PawnD3

SetUp.pawn-d.d4! => PawnD4 

SetUp.pawn-e.e3! => PawnE3

SetUp.pawn-e.e4! => PawnE4

SetUp.pawn-f.f3! => PawnF3

SetUp.pawn-f.f4! => PawnF4

SetUp.pawn-g.g3! => PawnG3

SetUp.pawn-g.g4! => PawnG4

SetUp.pawn-h.h3! => PawnH3

SetUp.pawn-h.h4! => PawnH4

fig. 1e. Deployment descriptors of all possible chess openings 

In sum, moves are state transitions, and each board state is a matrix of possible moves by whichever pieces are able to move, and the node of the matrix is the new state which arrives with each given move (meme). We can denote each move as a deployment descriptor, that is, BoardState.piece.move! => NewBoardState. Since a move designation in chess algebraic notation implies which piece is moving, we can write "SetUp.Nc3! => QueenKnightOpen" as a shorthand for "SetUp.queen-knight.Nc3! => QueenKnightOpen", but this is a relatively minor point. It becomes more relevant when we start to think about modeling deployment decisions (8) on the board, by the pieces, who act as memetic agents. This is a big focus of this examination, i.e., looking at the chess board as a model for a community collectively making memetic decisions.

Future Research 

This is not necessarily a good way to play a good game of chess, but it's more of a representation of how a community processes memes. If a learning system could be built in, it might be, however. In a subsequent version of the "selfish chess board," I may want to add features that are in addition to the moves themselves. Perhaps the pieces could "yell at" or "holler at" one another, and the pieces could react to these actions. All pieces still want to play, to win, and presumably to avoid being taken. Actually, all these priorities are up in the air. What kinds of attitudes of pieces will result in their color winning?

Once more with this "hollering" thing. If a piece can take memetic action that can potentially influence the states of other pieces, either on his own side or the other side, then that starts to make for a more interesting game. Is it useful to assume that all "hollers" are broadcast, or can they be monocast to a single piece or group of pieces (telephone gossip). So we "holler!(message)" and "gossip!(message, [ agent-list ] )" that can change the state of the board, even though no move has been made. Should these kinds of messages be "bosonic", that is, able to happen simultaneiously, as opposed to moves which only happen one at a time, in sequence?

Another fun thing might be to "train" a learning system on famous openings and endgames in chess, to work out what kinds of configurations the learning system would need in order to make the opening or complete the checkmate (endgame).

_____________________

Bibliography 

Learn Chess Notation 

模倣子 Memetic State Diagrams and Transition Matrices

Memetic Glossary

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Footnotes 

(1) I just had a thought about how pieces decide which moves they themselves can make, like a pawn can decide, in the simplest, most unsophisticated way of choosing might be 50% to move forward one square and 50% to move ahead two. So playing like a child who only knows the moves and not strategy, say, one of the eight pawns or one of the two knights each gets 10% change of moving. So if one of them gets picked, the knights go either forward and left 50% or right 50% and the pawns ahead one or two, 50% each. Okay, first thing is that there is no accommodation for "don't move at all." Also, there's no accommodation for communication between agents.

The thought is that each agent could know their own possible moves, but also accommodate the possible moves of other agents. Like a pawn could decide to move only if the bishop and the queen decline to move, something like that. This involves some kind of communication or keeping track of the other players. This would suggest that the state, i.e., disposition of the players, maps directly onto a propensity to deploy a meme (make a move). Anyway, this is all a system to be worked out. I think what I'm looking for is making black boxes for all the pieces, and the inner decision process starts out as just stupidly dividing up the possible moves with equal probability, and advancing up to something more advanced, like an endomemetic model which may involve other pieces. There there's mutation (2).

(2) How to implement mutation in the endomemetic (idiomemetic) models? One possibility is whenever a piece "plans" to make a move but doesn't get "picked" there could be residual memetic debt which disfavors the given move, for example. Or there could be "collisions" that would be sorted out to reach a final decision. Or it could be random.

(3) Ultimately, we want a model that allows for mutation and learning (2). Whatever AI mechanism we give each piece, we'd like it either to mutate or replicate itself (4) or other such so that the system learns.

(4) One wild idea is that every time the piece moves, it makes a copy of its brain in a pool of cloned and mutated copies, every time it takes another piece it could make more copies, and when the piece is taken itself, whichever copy is "driving" is culled from the pool. Something like that.

(5) The knights and the pawns are moving to the same spaces, but no additional symbols are required to resolve ambiguity, like using the rank of to differentiate which is the one to move to either a3, c3, f3, or h3, since they are different pieces.

(6) Note that the axes are of the transition matrix are the available states and the agents who are able to deploy memes in that state. In this case all eight pawns and both knights are able to deploy memes, each of them having two choices (knights go right or left, and pawns forward one or two spaces). I have not given every pawn his own row, and I have not put two separate states for each pawn move, just for space and simplicity. The "name" of the matrix is the name of the state, hence this matrix is the "SetUp" matrix, and there is a "QueenKnightOpen" matrix, and a matrix for every other possible other move, and each of those is what the black player has to work with.

(7)  The chess algebraic notation shortens the moves for pawns. While a knight moving out to space a3 is denoted Na3, while the pawn moving to the same space is just a3. It seems that the pawn is the "not otherwise specified" piece.

(8) Deployment decision is the still very much open area of Macromemetics dealing with how which agents decide to deploy which memes and not others. In the Triangular Baseball model, the ball, sometimes randomly, lands with a given player (agent) and then this agent has choices as to which meme to deploy, but it's relatively free of "jinx events" (9) and maybe also free of race conditions, depending upon the details of how the modeling is done. In chess, among the pieces, we have much possibility for jinx events. No race conditions, thanks to turn-taking (which is an issue in triangular baseball). One problem with deployment decision analysis is that there is currently no natural model for it. For a thought experiment like chess or triangle baseball you can pick a system based on random variables, genetic algorithms, probability tables, or whatever, and it might even produce something that looks like some observable reality, but that doesn't mean that it actually matches some kind of real memetic phenomenon. Getting to that will ultimately require some kind of medical and sociological research, I imagine.

(9) A jinx event is where two agents try to deploy memes at the same time. How does one decide which one takes precedence, whether they both retreat, or what?

模倣子 Dynamics of Dysfunctional TV Time

Original Article  -  Original Article - Memetic Index - Memetic Glossary 

Introduction 

People often find interactions with children to be problematic. Making rules for them, getting them to behave the way you want them often seems to go wrong. One problem may be the illusion that as a parent (or teacher or other adult) one has "absolute authority" or "absolute control" over what the children are going to do and how they are going to act. I've written elsewhere that this is a delusion to which corporate managers and others regularly succumb. It is very likely just as much a problem in organizations like the military. Just because you're paying them, or because they've sworn an oath, doesn't mean they have to do what you "expect them to do" or even what you tell them to do.

There's a second problem with children, and that is that they may not share the same priorities and objectives as their grown-up counterparts.

Children often don't have to worry about jobs, schedules, balancing checkbooks, and so on. My thesis is that children's main priority is "keeping the attention of the parents." This is a concept that is easy to define precisely, and to evaluate, in macromemetic terms, but may be more fuzzy otherwise. The child needs to feel a sense of memetic enlistment at all times. This means that they must feel that at all times they are able to deploy some meme (preferably from an arsenal of them) that will reliably get a reaction from the parent (12). If their memetic enlistment dips to a low ebb, panic sets in immediately.

The reason for this is simple, and it doesn't really apply to adults. Adults are "independent." Children are not. Children instinctively know that if their parents abandon them, they will have no food (either from the breast or otherwise), the wolves will come with no one to drive them off, and they will die. Examples in nature are everywhere. Little birds in the nest will "peep, peep, peep" so their parents will hurry back with food. Obviously, this also attracts predators, but the youngster knows that being abandoned by the parents equals death just as surely as a predator (1). 

Don't let's quibble about this one too much. Yes, of course, children have other priorities and interests. However, nobody would be so stupid to argue that if your air supply got cut off, your interest in your favorite TV program would not at least be "suspended" until you could breathe again. There's no "oh, wait, let me just get to the next commercial break." That's nonsense. It's useful to see children as working with the same kind of priorities vis-à-vis their parents (2).

In sum, the laws of memetics apply just as well to children as to adults. One important difference is that children are typically not expected to behave a certain way under threat of jail time or deprivation of income and livelihood, as adults all are. Finally, children's lack of independence imposes on them an urgent need for strong memetic connection to caregivers, typically the parents.

The TV Time Rules 

A scenario easily recognized is that of getting the kids to not watch too much television. Treating them like factory workers who only have a half hour for break and then back to work, work, work is an obvious first approach. Again, there's no threat of being fired or sent to HR as a precursor to being fired (4), which kind of works to extract obedience in a factory. Children want to watch TV, and it may be kind of an addictive activity (5), but here's the kicker: a lot of their interest may be in getting the goat of their parents! If the parents impose a rule system that guarantees parental reaction (13) if the children merely do certain things (which are usually termed "misbehaving") then the children may do unintended things and this may be on the face of it hard to understand.

Here we have a chart (6) that describes a system where the kids can watch TV, and they're supposed to shut it off after a certain time. However, if the kiddies don't switch off the screen, the only way the parents can find out is to yell up the stairs, or to check on them. It's only when the parent checks that they know if the kids are still watching, or if they've stopped when they're supposed to (which mommy cannot know, since mommy did not see until she checked in), which may involve more yelling. If the kids are responsible for turning off the television, even if mommy or daddy yells, the kids may keep watching (7).

fig. 1. dysfunctional TV time memeplex

Note well that the meme that takes the system from Watching to TVOff is deployed by the children, i.e., "c.stop!" In other words, the parents do not have a meme that can transition into that state (more on this anon). Note also that the parents yelling does not directly have any influence on the state of the system, and we'll see a more detailed examination of how to model this in the next diagram (8,10). One final thing is the "Engaging" state. It's a "compelled state" (9), which means the parents are thrown into one of two situations without knowing beforehand which it will be, or what they will be able to do (which memes they will be able to deploy) until they get there.

Immunomemetic Depiction 

Here's a diagram that explicitly shows the immunomemetic transactions (8) in this system, namely, "p.yell!c.ignore!" and "p.yell!c.whine!" (10) This notation represents how the "yell!" is what gives the kids the chance to "whine!" or "ignore!".

fig 1a. TV memeplex with explicit immunomemetic linking

What I've added from fig. 1. is that the children's "whine!" and "ignore!" memes are linked to the parents' "yell!" memes. This is an immunomemetic notation. The "yell!" meme is deployed, which immediately gives the child the opportunity (7) to deploy "whine!" or "ignore!" and the system remains in the "Watching" state, that is, it has not moved forward, the parents' arsenal of memes for moving the system in the direction they want has not changed and has not improved. The parent can continue yelling, which is effectively a stand-off, or they may "relent!" which still leaves the system with the children in control of the TV.

Let's do an macromemetic analysis of the memetic system (memeplex) as described above.

The problems with this situation include:

1. There is a compelled state.

2. there are multiple immunomemes which the child may deploy

3. There is no meme the parent may employ to get the TV off, i.e., to compel the stop! meme from the child.

#1 is bad because when the parent decides to engage the situation, she is immediately flung into one of two situations: #1 the TV is already off (unlikely) and things may or may not be cool (requiring more yelling) or #2 the TV is not off, and she is immediately engaged in a memetic melee with the child in which she has effectively no productive memes or memes which give her advantage (except just to "relent!" and get out of the situation).

#2 The child has multiple immunomemes which he may deploy in response to the parent's yelling. One is to simply "ignore!" the yelling, a passive-aggressive response. The other is to "whine!" and put off the parent's yelling with any number of verbal or emotional responses.

I use the term "opponent" somewhat lightly (^>^). Again, compelled states are bad. The "opponent" having immunomemes which prevent a change in state (or which allow transition to another state also favorable to the opponent) is bad. Having no memes to move the system towards the state you want is bad.

In sum, the parent faces a compelled state where they are thrown into a bad situation. The situation is bad because they have no memes available to move the situation to where they want it to go, and the child has immunomemes to block the ones they do. The only route to resolution (TVOff) is via a meme which must be deployed by the child. Even if the parent is allowed to shut the TV off, the situation isn't that much better, as we'll see.  

What if the Parent Switches Off the TV? 

In macromemetic design, the point of adding another meme is to enable a new state transition. Sometimes this will be to an existing state, often it results in the creating of a new state that the new meme permits transition to. It all depends upon what makes the most sense in terms of modeling.

Let's get to it. What might happen if we "allow" the parent to shut the TV off themselves?

The kneejerk supposition is that it would simply transition the system to "TVOff," that is, that in addition to the deployment descriptor (see diagram below) of "Watching.child.stop! => TVOff" we'd also have "Watching.parent.stop! => TVOff". Alas, probably not.

It would probably be modeled by another state, ParentTVOff, which would allow the child more memes in terms of throw-fit! or meltdown! or scream!  They would be in a state where that is "allowed," so to speak, which is a valid macromemetic comment on how that functions.

fig. 1b. New State for Parent turning off the TV

The Second Law of Macromemetics tells us that any memetic deployment results in a state transition. If the parent shuts the TV off, we're in a new state. The TV is now off, the child is no longer watching it. But the parent has now given the child the opportunity to throw a fit, have a meltdown, scream and cry about it. Obviously, if the child shuts the TV off himself, such fit-pitching would make no sense. In other words, "TVOff" and "ParentTVOff" may have very different dynamics. "Feelings" are not really macromemetic concepts, as such, but now we have how the child "feels" about the parent turning the TV off as opposed to doing it himself.

What macromemetics does tell us is that it's more about how the parent "feels" or which memes the parent will resonate with if they are the actor. The child now has something he can attack the parent about, i.e., having shut the TV off. Memes are all about other agents resonating with them, even if they do nothing. The child is effectively guaranteed that if the parent has just shut the TV off that the parent will in turn engage with the child when he throws a hissy-fit about it. If the child tries to turn the TV back on, for instance, the parent will either have to let that happen, or try to stop the child from doing it. A child crying and looking for attention is one thing, but a child crying in response to something the parent has done is another. The parent has effectively created a whole new state with a whole new inventory of memes the child can use against the parent. It's yet another "Kick Me!" sign the parent has put on her own back, or as the British say, "she's made a rod for her own back."

This fresh hell of temper tantrums in the "ParentTVOff" state is only relieved when the child deploys the "child.accept!" meme and we finally make it to the "TVOff" state. In other words, the child is still in control of all the memes that lead to state transitions.

Again, it may be more about the child getting the attention of the parent and less about watching television. We see this in the memetic diagram. In macromemetics, we speak in terms of "cans" and "coulds" rather than "feelings" or "beliefs" or "motivations."

I've represented the parent switching off the television as a transition to a new state, but this event is still immunomemetic in nature. The child is "bullying" the parent once again. The response of the parent to the temper tantrum is reliable, and we could add to the diagram that if the parent disengages, i.e., deploys the "parent.relent!" meme to get out of the situation, the child may simply turn the TV back on again, going back into the "Watching" state. This process of adding states and transitions could probably go on for some time.

Reliability is key, by the way. If the child can reliably get a reaction from the parent, even a deeply dysfunctional one, it's gold, so to speak. The TV memeplex seems to supply this in spades.

Redesigning Our Way Out of Memetic Hell 

Check out my essay for some contrast with a more functional system, which I'll touch upon here.

fig. 2. A redesigned TV memeplex

Please check my other essay for a detailed discussion of this memeplex, but some key elements are that they parent does not have to check up on the children. The children are expected to switch off the set themselves at the appointed time, and report to the parent that it is done. Failure to do so results in possible punishment in terms of NoTV for some period (the set may be physically removed, or other such). An additional, optional, angle, taking things a step further, is the "child.chores!" or "child.be-good!" memes which must be satisfactorily performed to get the TV back (TVOff, the only state from which you can get to the "Watching" state). In other words, the parent doesn't have to do anything, and is not in the position of "giving the TV back" to the children. If the children don't want it, they don't get it, the parent can hang back. Another suggestion I make is that the punishment be drawn out of a hat, or the number of days of no TV is the roll of dice.

Another advantage of the system of the children checking in themselves is that the parent can reward them with coupons for more TV time later if they finish early, and such coupons could effectively become a reward currency, given out at other times, and could even become a medium of exchange between siblings, allowing them to form alliances more easily. A child could even save up these coupons and use them for an all-Saturday-long "movie marathon" with friends or siblings.

Obviously, none of this is even remotely possible in the "old system."

What we see in the new system is no immunomemetic interactions between child and parent. There are no compelled states where the parent is forced to do something in order to reach her goals, or dependent upon a child doing something (like "child.stop!" turning off the TV). The parent is not even compelled to mete out punishment at the moment of misbehavior, but it is perfectly well understood that the parent has the option, and she may decide to be merciful this time -- it's all up to her. In other words, the children's good or bad behavior enables immunomemetic response (enables "bullying behavior") on the part of the parent, which they may exercise at leisure, and not the other way around.

This is the way it should be. Children should be made to understand what they are expected to do (watch TV for an hour or less a day, and shut off the TV when done, then tell the parent), parents should be able to expect good behavior on the part of their children, and if there is a problem, the parents should be able to take clearly defined action, which the children should be expecting.

One takeaway is that TV watching is not important. It is a dumb "hill to die on." As I said earlier, children are not employees, and it's impractical to treat them as such. They are motivated by parental attention over material rewards. Just saying "I'm giving you this, so you do this," barely works with money and jobs for adults, and it probably has very little relevance to children.

Again, if a parent is having to "make" their children do almost everything, then something is desperately wrong. Parents are lucky, because unlike employers, they have total control over the most powerful resource there is: their own love and attention for their children. If that can be focused and directed such that the children get good, positive attention instead of the parent trying to apply negativity to get what they want (and which is probably ineffective anyway).

Contrast these two:

Child: "Hey mom, I'm done watching TV"

Mom: "Oh, you're such a good boy to tell me. You finished early. Let me give you a 15-minute coupon."

[ physical affection is possible here, too ]

Mom: "Turn off this TV NOW! You've already watched too long!"

Child: "But mom, we're almost done with this show!"

Mom: "I don't care! Rules are rules! Shut it off and get ready for bed!"

Child: "Whaaaaah! I don't wanna!"

...and so on...

One thing that can be designed in is things like "reward and praise opportunities." If as part of the TV memeplex, the child can ask permission to watch TV, the parent then has the opportunity to agree, and when the rules are followed, if the parent doesn't have to enforce them, then the parent can offer praise for following the rules. If the parent is the enforcer, then everything always starts out on a negative initiating action, creating an opportunity for a negative reaction in return.

Summary & Conclusions 

Macromemetic design principles can be applied to setting "rules" for children. Which memes are the children able to envoke? Which do the parents want them to? If action on the part of parents opens the door to immunomeme use by the children, this is bad. Things like "no back talk allowed" are draconian and heavy-handed, but effectively examples of this. Better memetic pathways may be designed.

Children will use what they have at their disposal, regardless of intension. This is in keeping with the Second Law of Immunomemetics.

A sober analysis of memetic states and memes that cause transitions is called for. The parent should think in terms of what they want to have happen, work it out so that the children are taking most or all of the action themselves, and that if the parent needs to, or can, take action, that it be exceptional, and at the parent's leisure, and not forced (no "compelled states"). The children misbehaving should create a state where the parent has an inventory of memes to draw upon, which are well-known to the children in advance (such as taking away the TV for a week). The children's (bad) behavior should not force the parents into action, and the children should not have counterattacks to this. Consider the difference between the confrontation of switching the TV off in front of the children and non-confrontation of the kids finding out later that the TV has been unplugged (as a result of their bad behaviour earlier).

Finally, unlike an employer who pays for work, a parent can offer her attention and love. By providing opportunities for the child to interact at a high level with the parent, and receive a reliable reward in terms of a memetic response, and tying this to the desired pathways in the memetic system, or memeplex, being designed, good behaviour is assured, and children are less predisposed to bad behaviour. 

Finally, reliability of parental response is key, whether it's in response to good behaviour or bad. If children cannot get the parents to reliably pay attention to them for any good behavior (or just in general), either because the parents ignore them or take good behavior for granted or no "specified" forms of good behavior exist (as in our designed memeplexes here), but bad behavior brings guaranteed parental response, then children will have an incentive to behave badly.

____________________________

Bibliography 

模倣子 Memetic Glossary

模倣子 Immunomemetic Evolution of Critique Groups

模倣子 The Candy Conspiracy

模倣子 Road Bingo to Keep the Kids Entertained (Memetic Nexus)

模倣子 Notation and Dynamics of Alliance Theory

模倣子 Defeating Defendianism

模倣子 Garnering Allies

The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore

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Footnotes

(1) This fear of abandonment can lead children to do some otherwise hard to explain self-destructive things: self-harm, self-endangerment, general misbehaving as we'll see, and so on.

(2) I've found, and I've had others recognize the same thing, that children have a kind of "egg timer" in their heads, and they can go for a couple of minutes in a state of "disconnectedness." Try it for yourself--I'm not sure if I can define the "egg timer effect" without diving into macromemetic terminology and theory. This is the kind of thing that leads us as parents to go to the toilet with our children, take baths with them, watch all of their kiddie TV programs with them (3) and so on.

(3) This is a tangent, but I've found that children are perfectly happy watching adult-oriented programs. They don't find them boring or "over their heads." As mentioned, kids like to feel connected to their parents. They feel panic and fear of death if they lose memetic contact with their parents, more so than if deprived of singing purple dinosaurs.

(4) Obviously this is an oversimplification of the incentives present in a workplace environment. Still, "I'm paying you, that's why!" and "I'm the mommy, that's why!" are perhaps not so far removed.

(5) I tend to favor the Kiwi term "more-ish," as in "Oh, these crisps are more-ish -- I can't stop eating them." Addiction is a medical term, and its overuse in the vernacular borders on the offensive, oftentimes.

(6) A memetic state transition diagram. The clouds represent "states," the arrows "memes," and the labels on the memes are "deployment descriptors" (10). The "lightning bolt" on a state cloud indicates a "compelled state" (9).

(7) As we'll see, the children not responding to the parents demands to turn off the TV, ironically represents a "bullying opportunity." Or rather, the parents' yelling for them to turn it off represents one, since it gives the children a chance to ignore them, making them yell more, or whining, which is engaging the parents on the children's terms, and the result is that the set stays on. (8)

(8) "Immunomemetic deployment opportunity" is another name for a bullying opportunity. An immunomeme is a meme that serves to keep the memeplex in its current state, i.e., to defeat the attempt by other agents to shift the state away, like the parents' attempts to shift the system from the kids watching TV to the TV off and the kids getting ready for bed. The way this system is set up, the parents' memes to tell the kids to quit watching TV give the kids an opportunity to deploy immunomemes which they didn't have until that moment. Effectively the kids are bullying the parents and the parents are walking right into it.

(9) See glossary. A compelled state is one where one must immediately transition out to another state or specified list of possible states and one is forced to deploy certain memes to do so. Think of a school test or an encounter with a police or court interrogation.

(10) Notational note. A meme is expressed by a "deployment descriptor" which takes the form of "State.agent.meme! => NewState". In our examples we see things like "Watching.child.stop! => TVOff" where the child (represented by "c" for compactness) deploys meme "stop!" which effects the transition from the memetic state of "Watching" to that of "TVOff". "Immunomemetic notation" is where memes stack up (11), as in "Watching.parent.yell!child.whine! => Watching" (again, in the diagrams we abbreviate "parent" the agent as "p"). The parent deploys "yell!" which then gives the child the opportunity to "whine!" which keeps the system in "Watching." Note that there is no "Watching.parent.yell!child.stop! => TVOff" transition. The child always has the opportunity to turn the TV set off, and so is not "enabled" to do so by the parent yelling. Furthermore, the child can choose not to "stop!" the TV for as long as he wants.

(11) This same notation works for "alliances," too, by the way. See Glossary. A "benefactor" or "mentor" deploys a meme which then allows a "beneficiary" or "protegee" to succeed where they would otherwise not be able to. For instance, cooperating and helping while playing a team sport: "Play.mentor.pass!protegee!score! => Goal" One could even think of "Play.protegee.run-downfield!mentor/pass!protegee!score! => Goal" This string of linked deployment opportunities implies a "hidden state" or "virtual state" or as in our examples, a "compelled state" (subtle difference). For instance, "Play.progetee.run-downfield! => ProtegeeOpen" at which point the mentor has the opportunity to "ProtegeeOpen.mentor.pass!protegee.score! => Goal" The state of "ProtegeeOpen" is thus "hidden" by the longer meme deployment string. The subtle difference between the "hidden" state and the "compelled" states in our examples is that the mentor is technically not obliged to throw the ball to the protegee, and indeed may have other choices (including doing nothing). The "Engaging" state in our examples is a compelled state, since the parent is forced to transition to one of two states immediately, but it is also a "virtual state" in that it's a target of a transition from some state, the "Waiting" state in our example, and it results in another state, either "Watching" or "TVOff," but no actual meme is deployed to make this transition. In sum, "compelled," "hidden," and "virtual" are all similar classes of state, with subtle differences that determine their use.

(12) A "reliable reaction" in memetic terms is "reliable memetic resonance" from the parents. See glossary for discussion of resonance. An agent deploys a meme, and another agent "resonates" with that meme (such as a native speaker recognizing a word in his language, or laughing at a joke). A joke that nobody laughs at is an example of failed resonance. Resonance is revealed by agents deploying memes in response to the resonated meme.

(13) Systems of rules are addressed by the Second Law of Immunomemetics which holds that a system of rules translates directly to a system of immunomemes ("bullying opportunities"). Authority figures often make the mistake of setting up a system of rules and then lamenting that there are lots of immunomemes ("bad behaviours" or "subversive behaviours") that crop up as an unforeseen result of their "rules." You have to design what you expect people to do, and which people, and just writing out a rule, like "don't be a dick," or "don't watch too much TV" doesn't cut it. It may cut something else, but it may not be what you expect. This is a very important idea.

模倣子 The Psycho-Memetics of Difficult People

 Original Article - Memetic Index 

Introduction 

Being difficult implies problems with interactions with others. My idea is that difficult people get away with deploying memes for which others have no immunomemes ("bullying opportunities"). This article mentions seven factors that characterize a difficult person.

The Seven Traits 

1. Callousness

2. Grandiosity

3. Aggressiveness

4. Suspicion

5. Manipulativeness 

6. Dominance

7. Risk-taking

Diving In

Are there any commonalities? Could there be certain aspects that could be susceptible to memetic analysis, which unite these traits? At least half, and perhaps all of the seven traits relate to ego-centric narcissism. An interesting one is how "risk-taking" is described as a tendency to become bored and forcing others to constantly off balance to try to keep things interesting. The aggressiveness and dominance derive from fear, fear of giving others access or control. Callousness, or lack of empathy, is also an unwillingness to give others control, even to the extent of "you are feeling badly or happy, but I won't let it move or effect me."

So we can almost think of the opposite of each of the traits, and of the possible immunomemeplexes which might defend against a state change on the part of the difficult person.

What Normal Folks Might Do 

Here's a list of how a normal, non-difficult person might react, contrary to how a difficult person would act according to the seven difficult person traits (and their difficult person opposites).

1. Empathy (Callousness)
2. Humility (Grandiosity)
3. Patience / Coöperativeness (Aggressiveness)
4. Trust (Suspicion)
5. Coöperativeness (Manipulativeness)
6. Coöperativeness (Dominance)
7. Caution (Risk-taking)

One is made to think of the basic principles of improv comedy, that is, to "accept the offer" and not "block." We see here that memetic engagement (8), which also relates to memetic enlistment (1), is high for normal, affable people, and otherwise for difficult people.

Aggression is perhaps well defined by a willingness to resort (quickly) to violence. In a certain sense it's the vice that defends the other vices. When memes fail, violence becomes the option. This allows the difficult person to drag the system back to their own optimal state when other means fail.

On could point to the idea that violence is a kind of "last resort" (2) when one finds oneself without any (other) memes to deploy. So we see the difficult person as trying to block the efforts of others to transition the memeplex state away from states where the difficult person has the most power, or states which are "stable," i.e., less likely to transition away from states where the difficult person has "power."

Power and Memetic Enlistment

What is "power" in this context?

Again, we talked about the idea of memetic enlistment. This means a given agent has both a lot of choices, and also those places in turn transition to other states where the agent still has a lot of choices.

As I've said, my new theory, which I have yet to elaborate or experiment upon, is that immunomemetic deployment is driven by the anticipation of a decrease in enlistment. Agents "look down the pike," so to speak, and decide to deploy immunomemes in an attempt to divert memetic state transitions away from those which lead to decreased enlistment for themselves.

This is visible anywhere, even in scientific circles or legal debate or other such. Dictators and oligarchs can do things like supply the proletariat with memetic environments where proletarian agents have the impression that they have a lot of meaningful memetic activity at their disposal, but in fact they can do nothing to shift matters that the dictator actually cares about. And this is a way to achieve what Slavoj Zizek termed "dictatorship in democracy" (3).

I have been writing a bit on the idea, in terms of alliance theory, that a powerful agent (4) pushing a memeplex through more and more transitions which are favorable to that powerful agent, that is, which enhance the memetic enlistment of the powerful agent, is ultimately a degenerative process. This depends upon the yet-to-be-elaborated immunomemetic theory (6). An oligarchical agent deploying memes that serve to increase their own power (enlistment), and the expense of everyone else's enlistment, will, according to the theory I hope to put together, encounter growing resistance (7).

That the power of a central power degenerates as the central power (4) exercises more and more memes which push the system more strongly into the control of the central power, at the expense of the memetic enlistment of everybody else, which leads to resistance and rebellion. The benefits of an alliance are obvious for the protegee, or beneficiary, but it's unclear how the benefactor (5) benefits, memetically, from the relationship. Memetic enlistment may provide an answer. The mentor is constrained in her ability to exercise her power in terms of direct deployment of memes, leading to states that make her more and more powerful, to the exclusion of others and to the detriment of the memetic enlistment of others. This can only go so far. By enabling protegees to act as surrogates, the mentor controls the movement of the memetic system, but a larger number of agents have high levels of enlistment, despite this.

So we've introduced the concept of memetic enlistment and how oligarchical behavior leads to a degenerative process which may lead to deadlock and rebellion (1,2,6,7). I suggest that this process may be related to the behavior of difficult people.

Enlistment Consolidation and Difficult People 

The traits of a difficult person would seem to fall into two categories: asserting one's own position, and deflecting attempts by others to assert their position. This is a comment about memetic states (9) and how the difficult person works to keep the memeplex in a state that gives them the most options, and deflects attempts by others to change to states where this enlistment decreases. Again, aggressiveness (trait three) is a special case of the deflection type, the resort to violence being the option when there are no memes available 

It should be said that all agents attempt to do this in one form or another, i.e., protect and consolidate their own power.

The traits that serve as deflection include: 1. lack of empathy (callousness), 3. aggression, 4. suspicion (lack of trust), 

Assertion traits include: 2. Grandiosity, 5. Manipulation, 6. Dominance, and 7. Risk-taking.

Why this categorization? I see the assertion traits as forcing others into a compelled state (9). For grandiosity, one is compelled to agree with the difficult person, to cosign their grandiose assertions, or make the much more difficult choice of opposing them, which may lead to counter-attacks in the form of aggression, suspicion, or even callousness (18). We could characterize these with deployment descriptors, with "Ego1" and "Ego2" being states where the difficult person feels most in control, and "assert!", "manipulate!", "dominate!", and "take-risk!" are memes that the difficult person could deploy, and everybody else is forced to react with "cosign!", "submit!" and "react!" (or become off-balance), for example. Agents are "dp" for difficult person and "np" for normal person.

Ego1.dp.assert!np.cosign! => Ego2

Ego1.dp.[ manipulate!, dominate! ] np.submit! => Ego2

Ego1.dp.take-risk!np.react! => Ego2

fig. 1. Difficult Person Controls State Transitions with Compelled States 

On the other hand, if anybody else (a normal person) tries to deploy a meme that is anything other than, say, submitting or going along with the difficult person, or which threatens to move the system in a direction where the difficult person has less enlistment, not more, the difficult person will deploy immunomemes to resist this. So the difficult person has memes like "ignore!" or "denigrate!" (callousness), "attack!" or "yell!" or "strike!" (aggressiveness) or "suspect!", while the normal people might deploy "cry!' with the goal of getting to a state of "Empathy" or "Kindness", or try to "suggest!" something or "question!" something or even "criticize!" to get to "Discussion". So here's what the normal person might be trying to do:

Ego1.np.cry! => [ Empathy, Kindness ]

Ego1.np.[ suggest!, question!, criticize! ] => Discussion

fig. 2. Normal attempts to effect a change in state

However, the difficult person deploys her arsenal of immunomemes to defeat the normal persons efforts to change states, or his expectation of a state change given his (11) memetic deployment. The effect is that the system is brought back to a state in which the difficult person is more comfortable, has better enlistment.

Ego1.np.cry!dp.[ ignore!, denigrate! ] => Ego2

Ego1.np.[ suggest!, question! ].dp.[ ignore!, denigrate!, suspect!, attack! ] => Ego2

Ego1.np criticize!dp.[ attack!, yell!, strike! ] => Ego2

fig. 3. Difficult Person immunomemes defeat attempts to change state

To summarize, the difficult person deploys memes that bring about a compelled state that forces others to keep the memeplex in a state that favors the difficult person, i.e., has high enlistment for the difficult person. When confronted with memetic deployments by others that would not result in maintaining or increasing enlistment (10), difficult people deploy (unreasonable) immunomemes to prevent the intended state change and keep the system in a state that favors the difficult person.

How to Deal With a Difficult Person 

The prospects are not good. The goals of the difficult person in interacting with others appear to be to keep the focus on themselves, to not allow others to direct the narrative, and to react harshly when others try to do so.

This behavior is like that of a dictator. In history, we see dictators who not only seek to control everything, but also to aggrandize their own public image. Examples include Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu (12), Korea's Kim Jung Un (13), and even Napoléon.

The goal of the dictator, and the difficult person, is to maintain their power, which really means a high degree of potential to act, and further, a higher degree of ability to act than all other persons. The memetic system they construct around themselves furthers that end. This means that there is no easy exit from their narcissistic submemeplex, and they have a reliable memeplex and immunomemeplex that drives the state of the system back into that submemeplex.

The standard answer when it comes to dismantling dysfunctonal memetic systems is to first inject reliable immunomemes that enable departure into more functional memetic states, and then to replace (14) the dysfunctional memes with functional ones, all the while curtailing the bad memes or those that lead to bad space. Injecting new memes and immunomemes may work, for example just up and leaving when dysfunctional behavior appears (15). There may not be much room to maneuver.

In sum, the prospects are not good. If one has the power to leave, to disengage, at will, that works as a solution to getting out of being tied up dysfunctional memetic states with the difficult person. This could have the effect of putting atrophying pressure on the dysfuctional memes of the difficult person. If you bail out, they get the message that their behavior is not working, in other words. If the difficult person has a high degree of control over the environment and engagement, then there may be little if any hope for improvement. Also, the injection of new, more functional memes may be difficult or impossible, since the difficult person's memetic strategy is based on preserving their own memeplex at the expense of healthy relationships with others.

Otherwise, as with all things where there is memetic destitution, violence bobs to the surface as one of the only effective options, which relates to my next section on dealing with misbehaving children, since throwing fits, yelling, fighting, and so forth are all a form of violence, symptomatic of an inability to engage with the hegemonic memeplex.

Implications for Childrearing 

I want to write a series of essays, from theory to how-to about being the parent of small children. Many parents complain that their children are "difficult" or that their interactions with their children are "difficult." I think the foregoing discussion can inform this perception. First off, what's going on?

I'll leave aside the issue of children who have serious chronic health problems that require extra care, provoke emergency, unscheduled responses or disruptions, and make the long-term independence of the child limited or impossible. Memetic may have something to say about these sorts of situations, but they are not my object here.

I think it's safe to say that we're usually talking about behaviors and interactions being dysfunctional, or shall we say, "painful." This can be boiled down to behaviors on the part of the children, and also on the part of the parents, which could be recorded in some kind of "meme log." Who did what? What was the environment or circumstance or previous action (memetic deployment) that preceded the behavior in question? Such information could greatly inform a memetic engineering process to improve the family dynamic and get it moving in a positive direction that nurtures all concerned.

We set out to record the undesirable behaviors, which tells us what we want to atrophy, by replacing with something else (this may be the tricky bit) and not reenforcing them. For instance, instead of engaging the child when they are misbehaving (in the way they "want") but in some other way, or by disengaging, even leaving the room (if possible). A couple of examples may help.

Parenting Example 1.

A child asks for an ice cream in a whining, manipulative way. Parent supplies the ice cream, possibly with reprimand to speak properly or such, reenforces the bad behavior. Disengaging (or ignoring) can weaken the reward of the bad other behaviors, but engaging in an "unexpected" way (other than getting the ice cream) can inject new, functional memes.

child: (whining) "I want an ice cream"
parent: "Oh, hey, yeah, well, I want a million dollars."

Thus the parent responds, engaging with the child, but the child does not get to the state of "getting an ice cream" through the deployment of the whine! meme. Contrast the following deployment descriptors.

1.1. WantsIceCream.child.whine!(ice-cream)parent.provide!(ice-cream) => HasIceCream

1.1a. WantsIceCream.child.whine!(ice-cream)parent.reprimand!parent.provide!(ice-cream) => HasIceCream

1.2. WantsIceCream.child.whine!(ice-cream)parent.quip!("million bucks") => WantsIceCream

fig. 4. Child Whining for Ice Cream

So in 1.2., the child learns that the whine! meme does not get to the desired state. This atrophies the undesirable meme. In 1.1., the child gets what it wants, and even in 1.1a., it also gets what it wants. One important thing to remember is that the child's priorities may be very different to the parents. The child may actually want to get the "reprimand!" meme, especially if it feels it can't get the attention of the parents any other way. So 1.1a. may be "better" than 1.1. since there is more interaction with the parent, and not just the ice cream. It's possible that the ice cream may be incidental to contact with the parent, which is an important idea, and important warning to stay objective in the course of this analysis.

Parenting Example 2.

The parent has a rule that the child is only to watch television for an hour a day. The child, however, disobeys and exceeds the time limit, or watches for additional sessions after already having watched for an hour. The parent rebukes ("rebuke!") or yells ("yell!") at the child to turn off the TV. The child may then resist!, requiring multiple yellings. So we have the 

2.1. Watching.child.stop! => TVOff
2.2. Watching.child.overtime!stop! => TVOff
2.3. Watching.child.overtime!parent.rebuke! => Watching
2.3a. Watching.child.overtime!parent.rebuke!child.stop! => TVOff
2.4. Watching.child.overtime!parent.rebuke!child.resist!parent.yell! => Watching
2.5. Watching.child.overtime!parent.rebuke!child.resist!parent.yell!child.stop! => TVOff

fig. 5. Dysfunctional TV Rules

Again, we see that the TV rules provide the child with a number of opportunities to force the parent to engage, very reliably and for the most part on the child's terms, which would not exist otherwise. All of them are dysfunctional and "difficult" for the parent (and perhaps also for the child). If the child has few other reliable ways to engage with the parent, this provides a trove of them. Protestations of "But the child is disobeying the rules! They should follow them and everything would be fine!" collapse under memetic analysis. As with the eponymous "difficult people," the child is obeying the rules, or the memetic system, it's just that the "rules" the parent has in mind don't include the whole picture. Hence, the value of memetic analysis.

What can one do with such a situation? It's probably a deeply flawed as a memetic system (16). A better way might be for the parent to reserve the right to tell the kids to shut off the TV at will, or to have the kids request when they want to watch TV (for certain shows, etc.).

For the kids, watching TV may become secondary to annoying the parents, literally.

Another critical look reveals that all of the memetic exchanges are negative in nature. One side breaking the rules, the other side reacting to this, both sides fighting. One thing the parent can do is simply not engage, not deploy the "parent.rebuke!" or "parent.yell!" memes. When one thinks about reengineering a memetic system, one thinks of adding memes and states. For instance, one might add a state called "Overtime" which then allows the parent to do something like disconnect the TV for a day or a week or such. In such a case, there would be ideally no interaction with the child. The child may, obviously complain or wheedle about the TV being shut off, and the parent can refuse this, or just ignore it, i.e., "refuse!" or "ignore!".  In an even more extreme example, which makes it even easier on the parent, the TV might not be reconnected until or unless the child does some chores or is "good" for some period of time, in other words, the TV getting reconnected involves memetic deployment on the part of the child, and no interaction with the parent. Again, if the child tries to press the issue, the parent can "refuse!" or "ignore!" or even "penalize!" (add more chores or extend the TV disconnection). Another good meme might be "check-in!" when the child is expected to check in with the parent to say that the TV is off. This creates another positive interaction between the parent and child, one which is initiated by the child and not the parent.

2.1. Watching.child.stop! => TVOff
2.1a. Watching.child.stop! => Overtime
2.1b. Watching.child.stop!check-in! => TVOff
2.6. Watching.child.overtime!stop! => Overtime
2.6a. Watching.child.overtime!stop!check-in! => LateCheckin
2.6b. LateCheckin.parent.forgive! => TVOff
2.6c. LateCheckin.parent.punish! => Overtime
2.7. Overtime.parent.disconnect!([ "1 week", child.be-good!, child.chores! ]) => NoTV
2.8. NoTV.child.[ be-good!("1 week"), chores! ] => TVOff

fig. 6. Reengineered TV Responsibility System.

In situation 2.6a, we can thing of the parent having the option of forgiving the rule-breaking and letting it go, or punishing the rule-breaking, i.e., going into the Overtime state where punishment memes become available.

fig. 7. State Diagram for TV watching system

Pure and simple, there are just some good principles of memeteic engineering, and if these are applied, then things work out. In the above diagram the movement between states is driven by the children, not by the parents. The parents are no longer obliged to "crack the whip" or "ride herd" over the kids and their TV viewing. The parents don't have to tell the kids to get off the TV--the kids are obliged to come and check in with the parents. This failure to check in translates into no TV for a day or a week or whatever (17). Yelling at the kids or telling them what to do is no longer part of the process.

In sum, we've focused on the difficult interactions between parent and child, and we're reversed them or replaced them with memes which are no longer driven by the parent, i.e., the child has to take the initiative. All the parent has to do is disconnect telly if the rules are violated, and is not him or herself required to actually check up on the child, and is free to forgive egregiences at will (or if too lazy to bother to unplug the TV). The memes in the system have much better closure and marking (19).

In the end, it's important that the parent and child have plenty of other ways to interact outside of the whole TV thing. This is another principle, of course, of macromemetics, that is, that agents feel alienated if their enlistment, or the inventory of memes they have to deploy, is "too small."

Multiple Children and Alliance Theory 

For parents of multiple children an important thing to work on is alliances between the children. See the Candy Conspiracy for an example of this. I'm still working on how to forge alliances among children (or other agents). This holds great promise for keeping children from fighting and competing for parental attention, both key nuisances in the parenting of multiple children.

Summary & Conclusions 

The memetic engineering solution to difficult situations is to add new memes, atrophy the old, bad ones. The thing to remember is that according to the laws of macromemetics, adding a state involves adding new memes, and as often as not, adding memes involves adding new states (ore new ways from getting from one old state to another).

The good news is that parents with young children have enormous latitude in creating new memes and states and in restructuring how they and their children interact. Ultimately the kids want to interact with you, and are very receptive to new ways to do so. The role of the parent is to "make promises" to the children that the parent will interact with them, will respond in a specified way in response to the children giving the right input.

A cautionary word about residual memetic debt. If the nature of interactions is not clear, there can be some "wiggle room" where it's unclear whether the memetic exchange has been completed or not. This may be part of what the difficult person does, how he tricks his victims (those being anybody who is around him). He makes a "promise" which he is then able to renege on in a quasi-socially acceptable manner. Children like to try to pull this trick as well.

The "TV time" example is a case in point. If the child is told that he can only watch TV for an hour, and got started at five past seven, then in principle he can watch until five past eight. If he stops watching early, then does he get "credit" which can be saved for later? This is something that comes up in residual memetic debt analysis (19). Furthermore, if in practice he can watch until mommy comes up and tells him to stop, then there's more wiggle room, and if mommy has to keep hassling him until he gets off, then that's another source of residual memetic debt. Mom has to come and hassle me, and since she might turn up later than eight-o-five, then that really means that I can keep watching a bit more even if she's come and told me to get off.

By making the kids responsible for reporting that they've turned off the TV, the responsibility for ending the transaction is all to one side: the kids. The meme has good closure (and marking).

Unfortunately, things are not so rosy with the "difficult person," whom I would probably class as a pathological narcissist. While it could be argued that children have some things in common with narcissists, hence the overlap in the analysis.

Further Research 

I want to write a collection of essays on how macromemetic engineering may be applied to childrearing. One particular hope I have is making a cookbook on how to generate and inject functional memes that bring the children (and the parents) away from memetic destitution (alienation, or "memetic starvation").

I need to work out how to forge alliances, including among children. This would be a vital help to parents with multiple children. Just illuminating the benefits of a highly-allied group of siblings would be an excellent start, and maybe inform a memetic engineering cookbook.

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Bibliography

模倣子 Notation and Dynamics of Alliance Theory

模倣子 The Candy Conspiracy

模倣子 intro to three-narrative model

模倣子 Defeating Defendianism - 3-narrative model, etc.

模倣子 drama around bralessness - 3-narrative model, etc.

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Footnotes 

(1) Memetic Enlistment refers to the degree of which a memetic agent feels they have a broad inventory of memetic deployment opportunities at their disposal. Enlistment can increase or decrease in the course of a series of memetic deployments, moving the system from one state to the next. I'm working on a body of theory linking changes (or anticipated changes) in enlistment as a motivation for resistance by agents to some memes, e.g., by deploying immunomemes. Somebody tries to change the subject to something others are not interested in, about which they have little to say, so they might resist such a change through any number of immunomemetic means (many of which can be fairly trite). The difficult person may resist even changes that support others' enlistment overall, or also push the system into states that support their own enlistment at the expense of the enlistment of others.

(2) Slavoj Zizek talks about violence being an inevitable consequence of a deadlock where one is unable to put into words what is needed to interact with the hegemonic ideology. I translate this into memetic lingo by saying that one is in a state of "memetic destitution" (or alienation) and has no memes to deploy at one's disposal. When one's memetic enlistment dwindles to the point of memetic destitution, violence is the only outlet, or perhaps emotional outbursts such as weeping, anger (which is akin to violence), or even the use of humor, or suicide (violence against oneself), but in the end, physical violence is the only thing guaranteed to resolve the deadlock, either by forcing the other side to take some action (typically violent), kill them, or get oneself killed one way or another.

(3) The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, Sophie Fiennes, starring Slavoj Zizek.

(4) Centralized power may take the form of a memetic nexus.

(5) The benefactor in an alliance relationship is also known as the mentor, or ally (though this one has a bidirectional quality, i.e., it could apply to either the protegee or the mentor equally).

(6) The new immunomemetic theory I hope to elaborate is that memetic enlistment is directly tied to immunomemetic deployment opportunities. Agents are motivated to deploy immunomemes to resist state transitions that result in a negative enlistment gradient for themselves.

(7) I believe this process of enlistment consolidation may ultimately produce a conservative situation, i.e., that it converges to a situation of high stability from an initial chaotic state. This probably presents an entire area of investigation and may relate to the Triple Narrative Model. 

(8) "Memetic engagement" as of this moment is an informal term which I've not specifically defined. Here I'm trying to convey the idea of someone who readily deploys memes to others, perhaps widely across a number of agents, and who readily reacts to others' memes. In short, somebody who's "game for it."

(9) A state where the other agent has to immediately deploy a certain meme, which is determined by the compelled state.

(10) One can think of situations like being under police questioning or having to take a test as compelled states. There is only one right answer, and consequences for not making it within a timeframe set by somebody else.

(11) My pronoun choice is fairly arbitrary. Male/female pronouns are useful for economically writing an exchange between two people (as any romance writer could tell you).

(12) Among many anecdotes I've read, Ceaușescu's wife was said to be the inventor of the giant natural gas tanks that were on top of all the buses in Bucharest, even though they were purely for show, serving no function.

(13) Among may other accolades, North Korean propagandist assert that Kim shot a bullseye at age four or some such, among many other anecdotes that build up the personal mystique of the supreme leader, somehow justifying that role.

(14) Memetic replacement is the only way to get rid of bad memes, or memes that the memetic engineer doesn't want. Any meme functioning in a system has enlistment by agents who are reluctant to let it be deleted. If somebody resonates with a meme, then it is still there.

(15) Just up and leaving the environment, temporarily or more permanently, may have a lot of relevance for childrearing and other intimate relationships, since it's a meme that can be deployed "unilaterally" in effect.

(16) See the three laws of immunomemetics. A system of rules corresponds to an immunomemetic system.

(17) The time TV's off or even the type of penalty, like chores, or being good or whatever, could be by a random roll of the dice, flip of a coin, or drawn from a hat, to futher distance the parent from the actually rule enforcement and punishment process. Remove all hint that wheedling or whining can change things.

(18)  An agent near the difficult person may try to put a stop to things on the basis that they are frightened or hurt or otherwise distressed, which one would normally consider reasonable, and be met with callousness and dismissal.

(19) The "marking" in the new system of the child required to come and report they're done with TV, as opposed to the parent having to go check and tell the child to switch off is much better, because the child reporting being done involves only one person and is a "point in time" event which can be agreed upon by both parties. The other way is more murky, unclear when it's actually done, incurs residual memetic debt. Also, with the well-marked reporting system, the parent could actually do something like say, "Oh, you finished early today. Here's a coupon for 15 minutes extra you can use later." This is impossible with the old system, which is in and of itself another indication of poor marking.