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`... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.(3) When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.'
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Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution.
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"So, why do I hate the concept of ‘ideas replicating from brain to brain.’ After all, I work on physical education and imitative learning; shouldn’t I be happy that memetic theory places such a premium on imitative learning? What is my problem!? Ah, let me count the problems… I’ll just give you 10 Problems with Memetics to keep it manageable." (Neuroanthropology)
Here we show that repeated learning and multiple characteristics of cultural traits make cultural evolution unique, allowing dynamical phenomena we can recognize as specifically cultural, such as traits that both spread quickly and disappear quickly.
in list: Evolution
Selfish genes broadly refer to all genes that evolve by natural selection, which by definition are more fit than the genes they replaced. Similarly, "selfish memes" broadly refer to all traits that spread by cultural evolution. It would be impossible to say goodbye to these definitions because, by including everything that evolves, they come perilously close to explaining nothing in the first place.
Godfrey-Smith makes an excellent argument at some point in the book (chapter 7, on the gene’s eye view) that genes are not at all the sort of things Richard Dawkins and some other biologists think they are. (Psychology Today)
British scholar Susan Blackmore, who delivered a presentation on memes at the TED conference Thursday morning, says that human beings are being overrun by memes that want to use us for their own advancement. Wired.com spoke with her at TED.
In a recent review Mark Pagel argues that language is a culturally transmitted replicator (Pagel, 2009).
"Susan Blackmore, the noted parapsychologist and author of The Meme Machine, gave an interesting talk on memetics at this year's TED conference. (The video is embedded below, click here to go directly to the video at the TED website). While I found her talk interesting and stimulating, overall, I must say I wasn't all that impressed." (Ionian Enchantment)
"The application of natural selection to culture has been called 'memetics'. This is the theory that, like living things, ideas - or 'memes' - naturally vary and that (generally) the 'fittest' ideas survive and are replicated across generations." (PsyBlog)
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