Memes and Viruses

[ryan]

Does anyone find it strange, but also interesting, that so many different brains will take the same meme input and give the same meme output?

I get why language needs to spread for tribal advantages, but why do some very useless things like memes spread so fast and so effectively?

If I said "blaaaaaaaa", it probably will not leave your brain the same way it came in. But some information inputs (memes) that are just as useless will.

Memes will also mutate. One particular brain will not have the same output as the thousands of brains before it; it will not process the meme properly for the sake of the meme. Then the new meme's competition will rival and sometimes lessen the effect of the original meme.

Are memes just like viruses in the sense that they duplicate themselves? But instead of travelling as organic material, they travel as just a collection of photons (or in a joke's case, sound waves)?

The memes today are not very useful for survival, so why do we spread them? Similarly, why do we spread jokes?

 

[rousseau]

meme - An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. 'The gene explains natural evolution and survival, while the meme explains cultural evolution and survival

In this light, your comment that 'the memes today are not very useful for survival' seems to be talking about something that is more narrow than the broader definition of memes and meme flow.

 

[ryan]

meme - An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. 'The gene explains natural evolution and survival, while the meme explains cultural evolution and survival

In this light, your comment that 'the memes today are not very useful for survival' seems to be talking about something that is more narrow than the broader definition of memes and meme flow.

I am more interested in why so many brains will put out the same thing as the input. Like what are the chances that information would go through our eyes, through the visual system, through memory comparisons, logical analysis, etc, etc, etc, and then just spit out exactly what was put in???

And all that happens with something as useless as a meme.

It would be like eating a cookie and then after a billion processes the waste becomes a cookie again, like seriously, wtf.

 

[rousseau]

meme - An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. 'The gene explains natural evolution and survival, while the meme explains cultural evolution and survival

In this light, your comment that 'the memes today are not very useful for survival' seems to be talking about something that is more narrow than the broader definition of memes and meme flow.

I am more interested in why so many brains will put out the same thing as the input. Like what are the chances that information would go through our eyes, through the visual system, through memory comparisons, logical analysis, etc, etc, etc, and then just spit out exactly what was put in???

And all that happens with something as useless as a meme.

It would be like eating a cookie and then after a billion processes the waste becomes a cookie again, like seriously, wtf.

That is the exact result you would expect from a successful meme. The holder sees survival value in the meme, and so shares it how he/she found it. Physically, people reduce the amount they think as much as they can, too, so there's going to be a tendency to not critically analyse input. In other words, the forces of the universe work toward ideas being stagnant. Only when the survival value of mutating the meme exceeds the survival value of blindly passing it on, does a mutation happen.

 

[Juma]

Does anyone find it strange, but also interesting, that so many different brains will take the same meme input and give the same meme output?

I get why language needs to spread for tribal advantages, but why do some very useless things like memes spread so fast and so effectively?

If I said "blaaaaaaaa", it probably will not leave your brain the same way it came in. But some information inputs (memes) that are just as useless will.

Memes will also mutate. One particular brain will not have the same output as the thousands of brains before it; it will not process the meme properly for the sake of the meme. Then the new meme's competition will rival and sometimes lessen the effect of the original meme.

Are memes just like viruses in the sense that they duplicate themselves? But instead of travelling as organic material, they travel as just a collection of photons (or in a joke's case, sound waves)?

The memes today are not very useful for survival, so why do we spread them? Similarly, why do we spread jokes?

Im not so surprised. Very little of what goes in goes out exactly the same.
You are focusing of the tiny part of our information shit storm tgat actually does.

 

[ryan]

I am more interested in why so many brains will put out the same thing as the input. Like what are the chances that information would go through our eyes, through the visual system, through memory comparisons, logical analysis, etc, etc, etc, and then just spit out exactly what was put in???

And all that happens with something as useless as a meme.

It would be like eating a cookie and then after a billion processes the waste becomes a cookie again, like seriously, wtf.

That is the exact result you would expect from a successful meme. The holder sees survival value in the meme, and so shares it how he/she found it. Physically, people reduce the amount they think as much as they can, too, so there's going to be a tendency to not critically analyse input. In other words, the forces of the universe work toward ideas being stagnant. Only when the survival value of mutating the meme exceeds the survival value of blindly passing it on, does a mutation happen.

Like a warning that a hurricane is coming or that a bear is nearby makes sense that we would duplicate that information rapidly for survival purposes. But then some things like religion and other not-so-necessary information distributions somehow use the same kind of mechanism. It's just weird. I am just going to chew on this for a while.

 

[ryan]

Does anyone find it strange, but also interesting, that so many different brains will take the same meme input and give the same meme output?

I get why language needs to spread for tribal advantages, but why do some very useless things like memes spread so fast and so effectively?

If I said "blaaaaaaaa", it probably will not leave your brain the same way it came in. But some information inputs (memes) that are just as useless will.

Memes will also mutate. One particular brain will not have the same output as the thousands of brains before it; it will not process the meme properly for the sake of the meme. Then the new meme's competition will rival and sometimes lessen the effect of the original meme.

Are memes just like viruses in the sense that they duplicate themselves? But instead of travelling as organic material, they travel as just a collection of photons (or in a joke's case, sound waves)?

The memes today are not very useful for survival, so why do we spread them? Similarly, why do we spread jokes?

Im not so surprised. Very little of what goes in goes out exactly the same.
You are focusing of the tiny part of our information shit storm tgat actually does.

Yeah, and we can see so much other stuff in the universe that also doesn't replicate things. I guess if you look at the entire universe objectively, we would see so many more things that don't process information in a regular over the tiny fraction of things that do, namely life. It probably means that life will never become a common "machine" because what it does is so statistically improbable in the vast space of possible universes of QM.

And then again I can no longer be surprised by anything.

 

[rousseau]

That is the exact result you would expect from a successful meme. The holder sees survival value in the meme, and so shares it how he/she found it. Physically, people reduce the amount they think as much as they can, too, so there's going to be a tendency to not critically analyse input. In other words, the forces of the universe work toward ideas being stagnant. Only when the survival value of mutating the meme exceeds the survival value of blindly passing it on, does a mutation happen.

Like a warning that a hurricane is coming or that a bear is nearby makes sense that we would duplicate that information rapidly for survival purposes. But then some things like religion and other not-so-necessary information distributions somehow use the same kind of mechanism. It's just weird. I am just going to chew on this for a while.

Religion predominated in a world that was looking for answers to the nature of existence, and which had no concept of science or any of it's theories. And so passing on religious ideas had a *ton* of survival value during the period, which is why we still see remnants of them.

Interestingly, though, religion during the period doesn't meet your criteria of concept in, concept out in the same form. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Throughout history existential concepts have been in an almost constant state of mutation.

 

[Juma]

Im not so surprised. Very little of what goes in goes out exactly the same.
You are focusing of the tiny part of our information shit storm tgat actually does.

Yeah, and we can see so much other stuff in the universe that also doesn't replicate things. I guess if you look at the entire universe objectively, we would see so many more things that don't process information in a regular over the tiny fraction of things that do, namely life. It probably means that life will never become a common "machine" because what it does is so statistically improbable in the vast space of possible universes of QM.

And then again I can no longer be surprised by anything.

wrong again. Self replicating complex structures are very likely to occur in our universe.

 

[rousseau]

Yeah, and we can see so much other stuff in the universe that also doesn't replicate things. I guess if you look at the entire universe objectively, we would see so many more things that don't process information in a regular over the tiny fraction of things that do, namely life. It probably means that life will never become a common "machine" because what it does is so statistically improbable in the vast space of possible universes of QM.

And then again I can no longer be surprised by anything.

wrong again. Self replicating complex structures are very likely to occur in our universe.

Depends on how you define 'very likely'.

More politically correct answer: self replicating structures occur exactly the amount they should given the laws of physics and the make up of the universe.

 

[ryan]

I know that the "Boltzmann brain problem" presents a similar problem. It goes that if the universe really did start from scratch (nothingness) and was just in a probabilistic state coming into existence, then it is almost impossible for a brain to exist for more than a few minutes never mind years.

Somebody legitimately actually calculated that this universe should only have about one brain that should only last for a very brief amount of time.

Not trying to imply magic, but there is something very wrong with what we understand or at least incomplete.

 

[none]

You don't know how to run a meme thread

 

[none]

Ryan, can you express the OP in the form of a meme?

 

[bilby]

The memes today are not very useful for survival, so why do we spread them? Similarly, why do we spread jokes?

You are just looking at this from the wrong perspective. The effect of memes on the survival of humans is of only passing relevance - pretty much only in the extreme case of a meme that gets you killed or saves your life is human survival significant.

What matters is how useful a meme is at ensuring the survival of the meme.

The same is true for viruses - Influenza isn't useful for the survival of humans (quite the reverse), but we spread it around a lot. And the reason that we spread influenza, is simply that the influenza viruses that take as much advantage as possible of humans to spread around are the influenza viruses that survive. Memes die if they don't propagate; If a joke is popular, it will thrive, and when a variation of the joke is made (and some variation occurs every time it is told), the new variant will dominate if it is more popular (funnier) than the original, and will die out if it is not as funny.

Evolution is all about survival - but parasite evolution is driven by the survival of the population of parasites, not the survival of the population of hosts.

Memes are a good example of the inevitability of evolution. As soon as an idea forms that is able to be reproduced, and do so with variations that affect the probability of further successful reproduction, evolution happens, and drives a rapid and explosive diversity of memes.

Being useful (or harmful) to a host or vector are just niches - some replicators (like Ebola or Fundamentalist Wahhabism) will fit niches that actively harm humans who host them, while others (like gut flora or the Golden Rule) might be useful to the host. But none of that matters for the evolution of the replicator; All that matters when looking at the evolution of a replicator is the survival of the replicator itself, be it DNA, religious belief, or a knock-knock joke.

 

[ryan]

The memes today are not very useful for survival, so why do we spread them? Similarly, why do we spread jokes?

You are just looking at this from the wrong perspective. The effect of memes on the survival of humans is of only passing relevance - pretty much only in the extreme case of a meme that gets you killed or saves your life is human survival significant.

What matters is how useful a meme is at ensuring the survival of the meme.

The same is true for viruses - Influenza isn't useful for the survival of humans (quite the reverse), but we spread it around a lot. And the reason that we spread influenza, is simply that the influenza viruses that take as much advantage as possible of humans to spread around are the influenza viruses that survive. Memes die if they don't propagate; If a joke is popular, it will thrive, and when a variation of the joke is made (and some variation occurs every time it is told), the new variant will dominate if it is more popular (funnier) than the original, and will die out if it is not as funny.

Evolution is all about survival - but parasite evolution is driven by the survival of the population of parasites, not the survival of the population of hosts.

Memes are a good example of the inevitability of evolution. As soon as an idea forms that is able to be reproduced, and do so with variations that affect the probability of further successful reproduction, evolution happens, and drives a rapid and explosive diversity of memes.

Being useful (or harmful) to a host or vector are just niches - some replicators (like Ebola or Fundamentalist Wahhabism) will fit niches that actively harm humans who host them, while others (like gut flora or the Golden Rule) might be useful to the host. But none of that matters for the evolution of the replicator; All that matters when looking at the evolution of a replicator is the survival of the replicator itself, be it DNA, religious belief, or a knock-knock joke.

Yeah, okay, they are abusing/exploiting our ability to replicate information for their own benefit or continued existence. That makes total sense. (this seems sarcastic when I read it back, but it isn't)

 

[J842P]

meme - An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. 'The gene explains natural evolution and survival, while the meme explains cultural evolution and survival

In this light, your comment that 'the memes today are not very useful for survival' seems to be talking about something that is more narrow than the broader definition of memes and meme flow.

I am more interested in why so many brains will put out the same thing as the input. Like what are the chances that information would go through our eyes, through the visual system, through memory comparisons, logical analysis, etc, etc, etc, and then just spit out exactly what was put in???

And all that happens with something as useless as a meme.

It would be like eating a cookie and then after a billion processes the waste becomes a cookie again, like seriously, wtf.

It's not surprising. The brains of most people are mostly the same.

- - - Updated - - -

You are just looking at this from the wrong perspective. The effect of memes on the survival of humans is of only passing relevance - pretty much only in the extreme case of a meme that gets you killed or saves your life is human survival significant.

What matters is how useful a meme is at ensuring the survival of the meme.

The same is true for viruses - Influenza isn't useful for the survival of humans (quite the reverse), but we spread it around a lot. And the reason that we spread influenza, is simply that the influenza viruses that take as much advantage as possible of humans to spread around are the influenza viruses that survive. Memes die if they don't propagate; If a joke is popular, it will thrive, and when a variation of the joke is made (and some variation occurs every time it is told), the new variant will dominate if it is more popular (funnier) than the original, and will die out if it is not as funny.

Evolution is all about survival - but parasite evolution is driven by the survival of the population of parasites, not the survival of the population of hosts.

Memes are a good example of the inevitability of evolution. As soon as an idea forms that is able to be reproduced, and do so with variations that affect the probability of further successful reproduction, evolution happens, and drives a rapid and explosive diversity of memes.

Being useful (or harmful) to a host or vector are just niches - some replicators (like Ebola or Fundamentalist Wahhabism) will fit niches that actively harm humans who host them, while others (like gut flora or the Golden Rule) might be useful to the host. But none of that matters for the evolution of the replicator; All that matters when looking at the evolution of a replicator is the survival of the replicator itself, be it DNA, religious belief, or a knock-knock joke.

Yeah, okay, they are abusing/exploiting our ability to replicate information for their own benefit or continued existence. That makes total sense. (this seems sarcastic when I read it back, but it isn't)

Yeah, you've stumbled onto the theme of the book where the term "meme" was invented: The Selfish Gene. Genes act the same way.