X-Message-Number: 11952 Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 10:00:54 -0700 From: Peter Merel <> Subject: Why I am not a Memeticist Memetics predicts nothing, reveals nothing, constructs nothing, but reduces everything - just as does any dogmatic religion. If there is any value at all in memetics, I don't know what it is. I regard it as an academic tar-baby that can neither be falsified nor tested - as a grandiloquent kind of horological astrology. Why such distaste? Because the notion that minds are mere replicators for expressions denies the basic process of mind - the flow, growth, and continuity of experience. We understand experiences by constructing maps for them, certainly, but nothing suggests these maps are replications of some platonic ideal. We commonly discard and digest our maps whenever this is convenient - something a replicator can not do. We don't simply accept and copy passing expressions - we test and construct and modify and harmonize and symmetrify our ideas. Each human mind is as unique and dynamic as a garden - where memetics teaches that minds are only machine-like containers for replicating ideals. Minds are more like ecosystems than they are like organisms. So genetic replication is a flawed metaphor to begin with; ideas engage in cycles of growth, predation and decay, they are symbiotic, parasitic, antagonistic and interdependent in the manner of zygotes, not statistically competitive in the manner of gametes. To understand mind we must map the ecology of mind, not bucketsort its spoors and signs. Memetics draws its sole claim to scientific validity on an analogy with the science of genetics. Genetics relies on the digital propagation of alleles; when we empirically identify a gene, we can both taxonomically compare its form with other genes and make reproducible predictions about its effect on biological intercourse. We can't do either of those things with memes. Taxonomic classification of memes can't be done because to identify two expressions as related is to make value judgements about what is and what is not significant in their relation. For example, I think Judaism and Islam are similar but many jews and moslems don't; I think Taoism and Buddhism are different but many chinese folk don't. And I think Memetics and Astrology are much the same but most memeticists don't. Mental taxonomies are based on the observer's value system where biological taxonomies are based on reproducible empiricism. Even given some well-defined taxonomy, the effects of memes can't be predicted because we don't know anything about the way an expression will be received by an arbitrary person. Memetics explains this by suggesting that a person may already be "infected" with other memes that affect their reception of a meme. This logic is not only circular, but analogically flawed; it is the immune systems of organisms, not the genes in their genome, that defend them against infection. Now I don't have any problem with memeticists classifying experiences as "memes" and deconstructing their worldview that way. Neither do I have a problem with scientologists classifying experiences as "thetans" and deconstructing their worldview this way. But neither can I find either approach constructive, especially as a scientific or dialectic method. What's scientifically and dialectrically predictive in human affairs is the relationship between physical possibility and human theory. The history of architecture provides plentiful examples of this. The relationship between the christian cathedral and the moslem mosque, for example, is not explained by the interrelationship of their various dogmas, but by the relationship between watershed politics and the purely physical limitations of the building materials employed. Human power structures hoard wealth in order to construct fetishes, the bigger the better. Lots of compressile strength but no tensile strength makes for arches, domes, and buttresses. Arches, domes and buttresses make cathedrals and mosques look alike. There was simply no other way for medieval engineers to build their big fetishes. It was not transmission of memes but physical restriction that created this convenient similarity. In fact the discipline of architecture has recently evolved a taxonomic method that recognizes convenient similarities without recourse to the mumbo-jumbo of memetics. This method has generalized well within the software engineering community. Originating in the work of Christopher Alexander, this is the study of "patterns". What's a pattern? Well, it's not some genetic atom of ideation. It is a well-tried, explicit solution to a particular problem in a particular context. Patterns are not transmitted; they are applied. Their recorded form is not digital; there are often many different descriptions of the same pattern, all equally effective. Patterns fit together in languages or systems, not in hierarchies. The applicability and success of a particular pattern depends not on its vectors, but on its harmony with the other patterns in its language. And patterns can't be cut and paste - they don't work by replication - because they all depend explicitly on mapping the contexts of problems. Best of all, patterns are not invested with any mysticism. They explain nothing. They predict and enable particular results. Folk desiring a science of Memetics might profitably examine Alexander's "A Timeless Way Of Building" and "A Pattern Language", or Gamma, Helm, Vlissides & Johnson's best-selling "Design Patterns" for a more constructive alternative. Folk infected by the cult of Memetics may be surprised to find that these patterns, peculiarly, work well without recourse to any such construct as a meme. Peter Merel. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11952