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Memetics is the study of memes, be they phrases, behaviors, or any idea that is transferred from person to person. What is typically thought of as a "meme" today is an internet meme. Memes in general are simply popular thoughts and ideas that drive culture change. A meme, in this way, is sometimes called a thought contagion or a virus of the mind, not unlike an "ear worm" or song that gets stuck in your head.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins introduced the term "meme" as a transmittable piece of cultural information. Similar to the way genes pass through parents to their children, as people share these bits of cultural information, they are replicated and further distributed until ultimately becoming a cultural phenomenon. Memetic evolution involves meme replication and distribution often through cultural transmission. For example, a man may share the story of his latest dream about a rocking chair amongst friends. Those friends then share that dream with their families, each interpreting the story a bit differently. The family members then spread their versions of the information across their social media pages, school groups, office teams, and such. Soon, the whole town is talking about their version of the rocking chair dream and it inspires local cafes to start putting rocking chairs on their patios for guests. Suddenly, the town is full of rocking chairs and this town's niche was created by the sharing of a single idea, or "meme".

This utilization of an evolutionary model to understand how information is interpreted and shared between people and throughout cultures is a further study into the human brain and its effect on cultural evolution. Understanding the complex system of the human mind and how it values information is beneficial for any customer-facing organization.

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What is Memetics? | Virtusa

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Memetics is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme.

The term comes from a transliteration of a Greek word and was used in 1904 by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon in his work Die Mnemische Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalenempfindungen, translated into English in 1921 as The Mneme.

In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), the ethologist Richard Dawkins coined the slightly different term "meme" to describe a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, arguing that replication also happens in culture, albeit in a different sense. In his book, Dawkins contended that the meme is a unit of information residing in the brain and is the mutating replicator in human cultural evolution. It is a pattern that can influence its surroundings and can propagate. This created great debate among sociologists, biologists, and scientists of other disciplines, because Dawkins himself did not provide a sufficient explanation of how the replication of units of information in the brain controls human behavior and ultimately culture, since the principal topic of the book was genetics. Dawkins apparently did not intend to present a comprehensive theory of memetics in The Selfish Gene, but rather coined the term meme in a speculative spirit. Accordingly, the term "unit of information" came to be defined in different ways by many scientists.

The modern memetics movement dates from the mid 1980s (a January 1983 Metamagical Themas column by Douglas Hofstadter in Scientific American was influential). The study differs from mainstream cultural evolutionary theory in that its practitioners frequently come from outside of the fields of anthropology and sociology, and are often not academics. The massive popular impact of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene has undoubtedly been an important factor in drawing in people of disparate intellectual backgrounds. Another crucial stimulus was the publication in 1992 of Consciousness Explained by Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett, which incorporated the meme concept into an influential theory of the mind. In his 1993 essay Viruses of the Mind, Richard Dawkins used memetics to explain the phenomenon of religious belief and the various characteristics of organised religions.

However, the foundation of memetics in full modern incarnation originates in the publication in 1996, of two books by authors outside of the academic mainstream: Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by former Microsoft executive turned motivational speaker and professional poker player, Richard Brodie, and Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch, a mathematician and philosopher who worked for many years as an engineer at Fermilab. Lynch conceived his theory totally independently of any contact with academics in the cultural evolutionary sphere, and apparently was not even aware of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene until his book was very close to publication.

Around the same time as the publication of the books by Lynch and Brodie, a new e-journal appeared on the web, hosted by the Centre for Policy Modelling at Manchester Metropolitan University Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. (There had been a short-lived paper memetics publication starting in 1990, the Journal of Ideas edited by Elan Moritz. [1]) The e-journal soon became the central point for publication and debate within the nascent memetics community. In 1999, Susan Blackmore, a psychologist at the University of the West of England, published The Meme Machine, which more fully worked out the ideas of Dennett, Lynch and Brodie and attempted to compare and contrast them with various approaches from the cultural evolutionary mainstream, as well as providing novel, and controversial, memetic-based theories for the evolution of language and the human sense of individual selfhood.

The memetics movement split almost immediately into those who wanted to stick to Dawkins' definition of a meme as "a unit of information in the brain", and those who wanted to redefine it as observable cultural artefacts and behaviours. These two schools became known as the "internalists" and the "externalists". Prominent internalists included both Lynch and Brodie; the most vocal externalists included Derek Gatherer, a geneticist from Liverpool John Moores University and William Benzon, a writer on cultural evolution and music. The main rationale for externalism was that internal brain entities are not observable, and memetics cannot advance as a science, especially a quantitative science, unless it moves its emphasis onto the directly quantifiable aspects of culture. Internalists countered with various arguments: that brain states will eventually be directly observable with advanced technology, that most cultural anthropologists agree that culture is about beliefs and not artefacts, or that artefacts cannot be replicators in the same sense as mental entities (or DNA) are replicators. The debate became so heated that a 1998 Symposium on Memetics, organised as part of the 15th International Conference on Cybernetics, passed a motion calling for an end to definitional debates.

The most advanced statement of the internalist school came in 2002 with the publication of The Electric Meme, by Robert Aunger, an anthropologist from the University of Cambridge. Aunger also organised a conference in Cambridge in 1999, at which prominent sociologists and anthropologists were able to give their assessment of the progress made in memetics to that date. This resulted in the publication of Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science, edited by Aunger and with a foreward by Dennett, in 2000.

In 2005, Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission ceased publication and published a set of 'obituaries' for memetics. This was not intended to suggest that there can be no further work on memetics, but that the exciting childhood of memetics, which began in 1996, is finally drawing to a close, and that memetics will have to survive or become extinct in terms of the results it can generate for the field of cultural evolution. Memetics as a social, Internet-fueled popular scientific movement is now probably over. Many of the original proponents have moved away from it. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have both expressed some reservations as to its applicability, Susan Blackmore has left the University of the West of England to become a freelance science writer and now concentrates more on the field of consciousness and cognitive science. Derek Gatherer found the academic world of the north of England to be unsympathetic to his ideas, and gave up to work as a computer programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, although he still publishes the odd memetics article from time to time. Richard Brodie is now climbing the world professional poker rankings. Aaron Lynch disowned the memetics community and the words "meme" and "memetics" (without disowning the ideas in his book).

Susan Blackmore (2002) re-stated the meme definition as whatever is copied from one person to another person, whether habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said that memes, like genes, are replicators. That is, they are information that is copied with variation and selection. Because only some of the variants survive, memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Memes are copied by imitation, teaching and other methods, and they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called co-adapted meme complexes, or memeplexes. In her definition, thus, the way that a meme replicates is through imitation. This requires brain capacity to generally imitate a model or selectively imitate the model. Since the process of social learning varies from one person to another, the imitation process cannot be said to be completely imitated. The sameness of an idea may be expressed with different memes supporting it. This is to say that the mutation rate in memetic evolution is extremely high, and mutations are even possible within each and every interaction of the imitation process. It becomes very interesting when we see that a social system composed of a complex network of microinteractions exists, but at the macro level an order emerges to create culture.

Dawkins responds in A Devil's Chaplain that there are actually two different types of memetic processes. The first is a type of cultural idea, action, or expression, which does have high variance; for instance, a student of his who had inherited some of the mannerisms of Wittgenstein. However, he also describes a self-correcting meme, highly resistant to mutation. As an example of this, he gives origami patterns in elementary schoolsexcept in rare cases, the meme is either passed on in the exact sequence of instructions, or (in the case of a forgetful child) terminates. This type of meme tends not to evolve, and to experience profound mutations in the rare event that it does. Some memeticists, however, see this as more of a continuum of meme strength, rather than two types of memes.

Another definition, given by Hokky Situngkir, tried to offer a more rigorous formalism for the meme, memeplexes, and the deme, seeing the meme as a cultural unit in a cultural complex system. It is based on the Darwinian genetic algorithm with some modifications to account for the different patterns of evolution seen in genes and memes. In the method of memetics as the way to see culture as a complex adaptive system, he describes a way to see memetics as an alternative methodology of cultural evolution. However, there are as many possible definitions that are credited to the word "meme". For example, in the sense of computer simulation the term memetic programming is used to define a particular computational viewpoint.

Memetics can be simply understood as a method for scientific analysis of cultural evolution. However, proponents of memetics as described in the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission believe that 'memetics' has the potential to be an important and promising analysis of culture using the framework of evolutionary concepts. Keith Henson who wrote Memetics and the Modular-Mind (Analog Aug. 1987) [2] makes the case that memetics needs to incorporate Evolutionary psychology to understand the psychological traits of a meme's host. [3] This is especially true of time varying host traits, such as those leading to wars.

The application of memetics to a difficult complex social system problem, environmental sustainability, has recently been attempted at thwink.org. Using meme types and memetic infection in several stock and flow simulation models, Jack Harich has demonstrated several interesting phenomenon that are best, and perhaps only, explained by memes. One model, The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace, argues that the fundamental reason corruption is the norm in politics is due to an inherent structural advantage of one feedback loop pitted against another. Another model, The Memetic Evolution of Solutions to Difficult Problems, uses memes, the evolutionary algorithm, and the scientific method to show how complex solutions evolve over time and how that process can be improved. The insights gained from these models are being used to engineer memetic solution elements to the sustainability problem.

In Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution (2004, Cambridge University Press), Austrian linguist Nikolaus Ritt has attempted to operationalise memetic concepts and use them for the explanation of long term sound changes and change conspiracies in early English. It is argued that a generalised Darwinian framework for handling cultural change can provide explanations where established, speaker centered approaches fail to do so. The book makes comparatively concrete suggestions about the possible material structure of memes, and provides two empirically rather rich case studies.

Memeoid is a neologism for people who have been taken over by a meme to the extent that that their own survival becomes inconsequential. Examples include kamikazes, suicide bombers and cult members who commit mass suicide. Compare with Zombie

The term was apparently coined by H. Keith Henson in "Memes, L5 and the Religion of the Space Colonies," L5 News, 1985 pp 5-8, [4] and referenced in Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene, 2nd ed., page 330. ISBN 0-19-286092-5.

Memotype is the actual information-content of a meme.

A meme-complex (sometimes abbreviated memeplex, sometimes miss-pronounced/spelled Memoplex) is a collection or grouping of memes that have evolved into a mutually supportive or symbiotic relationship. Simply put, a meme-complex is a set of ideas that reinforce each other. Meme-complexes are roughly analogous to the symbiotic collection of individual genes that make up the genetic codes of biological organisms. An example of a Memeplex would be a religion.

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Memetics | Psychology Wiki | Fandom

Meme means copy. Bio means two. Biomemetics is (the study of) (the belief that) the tokenization of reality is a (continual) (and perpetual) copy of the number two. Yin and yang, ancient, zero and one, modern.

A meme is, technically, a copy (more technically, a copy of the number two). It looks (to Nature) like this:

The meme has meaning because it is, most technically, the circular-linear relationship between, a one and a two (an observer and an observation).

Thus, everything in Nature is a meme. Again, more technically, everything in Nature is a meme for the circular-linear relationship (of the numbers one and two). The word Nature, then, is a meme for the word circle. And, always, vice versa.

This explains tokenization and representation (tokenization as representation) (representation as tokenization). That is, we are, always, tokenizing our relationship with Nature (because Nature is, always, tokenizing its relationship with us).

It is impossible to separate Nature and its constituents (Nature and its tokenizations), thus, the meme is able to communicate with Nature and its constituents (because, technically, Nature and its constituents communicate through a meme) (the meme is, always, a circular-linear relationship between an individual and a group) (again, more basically, a one and a two) (an observer and an observation) (any alpha-numeric expression) (any algorithm) (any tokenization) (tokenization as a noun and tokenization as a verb).

Only a meme can communicate with a meme (meme is an other word for tokenization and, also, then, communication). Where all of us are memes creating (and communicating with) (tokenizing) memes.

The alphabet, and the number line, for example, are strings of characters, where the word string is a meme for a line, and a line is a meme for the diameter of a circle. So, all of the constituents of an alphabet, and-or a number line, are memes (tokenizations) (representations) for the circular-linear relationship between an individual and a group (Nature and its constituents).

Memes are mash-ups, mixes, and-or matches, of, (other) memes. This is because all memes are unified (tokenized, represented, communicated) by the diagram in this article (the conservation of a circle) (a zero and a one) (a circumference and a diameter).

So, for example, the word Einstein (and, Einsteins famous equation) is a meme for (and a tokenization of) a very smart person. The photo above (and, thus, the diagram) is, also, a meme for a very smart person. We are able to decode memes because we are, all of us, memes (tokenizations of) (the exact same circular-linear relationship) (very smart people).

Thus, Nature expands, and reduces, to the meme. Which is faster and easier to understand than a string of alphabetic or numeric characters (where all of the characters in any string, alphabetic or numeric) (symbols in general and specific), expand and reduce to one zero and one one (a circumference and a diameter) (the diagram). (Its impossible to escape the meme (the diagram) (the circular-linear relationship) if you, truly, want to understand Nature.)

The meme (for a circle) (the circular-linear relationship) (yin and yang, ancient, zero and one, modern) is found in all narratives.

In media, for example, (0 (1) 0) is a meme for this narrative: Nature-man-Nature (man against Nature, Nature wins). Likewise, (1 (0) 1) (man against Nature, man wins).

The meme above can, also, be interpreted to mean ((01)(10)), man against Nature (or a constituent of Nature) (man against woman, for example) (or man against man, or man against institution) where both win half-the-time (or, one-or-the-other wins all of the time) (its impossible to have a half without a whole) (a two without a one). Again, the meme is involved in everything.

Thus, all memes require one-one and one-zero (1) (0), and you can see, now, the narrative is exposed as the conservation of a circle, no matter how it is expressed (how it begins) (how it ends). This is because 101 is, also, a meme for beginning-middle-end (again, all narratives), or input-process-output (input-output-process). And here we can see the narrative can, easily, become chaotic, because, again, the meme chaos is not possible without the meme order (order-no-order) (101) again.

This explains magical thinking (also found in all narratives) (a meme for the conservation of a circle) (where we choose to see one side of a meme or the other). Where Nature is communicating with us and we are communicating with Nature (we our communicating with our selves) using the meme. (Read a book, watch a movie or a TV program, listen to music, go to a store, or an art museum) (you are communicating with a meme) (a meme is communicating with you) (in order to conserve the circular-linear nature of Nature).

(Parentheses (in any language) are an obvious example of a (circular-linear) meme.)

So, once you think this through, it explains the confusion and the clarity in a complex communicative environment.

It, also, explains, why we are, all of us, moving toward a memetic reality that communicates a point of view (one side or the other), where both sides of a point of view are, always, communicated by the same meme (an observer makes a decision about which point of view (which observation) the meme communicates).

While the meme is, technically, a constant, the interpretation of the meme, is, always a variable (where, again, the meme is the circular-linear relationship between variable and constant (again, always, one and two)).

Lovers of the meme are dependent on haters of the meme, and, always, vice versa. Because a meme is dependent on the circular-linear relationship between a lover and a hater (always, two observers)(in one way, or another, always, the number two)(the conservation of a circle).

Thus, the meme is a constituent of Nature (and the constituent of Nature is a meme) (the conservation of a circle).

Memetics move all of us to a simpler (and, thus a far more complex) understanding of Nature (complexes in all disciplines) (emojis, tik-toks, instagrams, texts, hashtags, tweets).

Weve moved past ancient thinking (which is based on time, while Nature, and, therefore, Natures constituents, have no understanding of, and, thus, no requirement (no use) for, time) (where the word time is a meme for sequence, (and, always, vice versa) (again, the circular-linear relationship)).

Where an understanding of how (and why) memetics operates in Nature exposes the true meaning of Einsteins equation (all equations) (all Einsteins).

Conservation of the Circle (memetics) (tokenization) (representation) is the core, and, thus, the only, dynamic in Nature. (For the memetic genius in you.) (For the memetic genius in all of us.) (The memetic genius called Nature.)

See, also, articles on Biomemetics

See, also, articles on Tokenization

See, also, articles on Representation

See, also, articles on Meme

See, also, articles on Self

See, also, articles on Virtual Persona

See, also, articles on Fundamentality, Universals, Abstraction, Identity, Complementarity

And, especially, Youd Better Understand Miranda

Music is (as is art in general), always, a meme (it demonstrates, and proves, the conservation, and the tokenization, of a circle) (lifes ups and downs) (the moodiness in all of us) (so, listen while you think) (while you interpret the meme for your self) (it doesnt take much to remind you: youll hear a circle in the background) (no matter what you listen to) (no matter how you interpret what youre listening to):

To prove Nature is a memetic circle, watch (or, listen to) trees blowing in the wind, look closely, and you will see (hear) (feel) (observe) an always-present (always-moving) circle (circular-linear relationship) (memetics in action).

Read more from the original source:

Memetics. Meme means copy. Bio means two. | by Ilexa Yardley | The ...