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Organisms evolve through natural selection - culture evolves in a different way. Memes might be similar in some ways to genes - but there is no natural selectio

by zby 11y ago

Organisms evolve through natural selection - culture evolves in a different way. Memes might be similar in some ways to genes - but there is no natural selection of cultures.

fennecfoxen 11y ago
Isn't there? A culture, idea or a meme that doesn't spread from person to person in some way isn't going to exist after the people participating in it die. When you get down to it, "natural selection" is just a similar application of population dynamics. The real differences are in the radically different composition of an organism and an idea/meme/culture/institution, with implications for the way these ideas are transmitted and transformed.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I believe the 'selection' abstraction holds in culture. It happens to ideas, products and of course living forms. The "forces" are different but still.
- linhchi 11y ago
  There is. The evolution force is an iterative updating process. Fitness can be one-dimensional like "number of likes" or "payoff in a game". Keep feeding in variety and the selection process will do its job.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  It's obvious this idea is crap if you think about fads. These are ideas that propagate rapidly until they become quite popular and then mysteriously vanish. This flies in the face of an inherent superiority driving the propagation of the idea. As an evolutionary biologist and a student of cultural transmission this idea (memetics) has always annoyed me from both ends. It is a bad idea, and I wish it would die. It's even more annoying that it somehow manages to add to Dawkins' misplaced prestige.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Any references for counter arguments ? I'm very curious about that.
  - tetrep 11y ago
    > These are ideas that propagate rapidly until they become quite popular and then mysteriously vanish. This flies in the face of an inherent superiority driving the propagation of the idea. isn't that because fads become "locked" in time? the fad is well evolved for the current culture but as the cluture changes the fad becomes very poorly suited for it, and dies. i could make the same argument that you make against fads against any once-prolific-but-now-dead species, e.g. how could species x be wiped out by a change in its environment? that flies in the face of evolution creating a superior species. evoltuionary advantage stems from a superior adaption to the current environment, and culture happens to change vastly more frequently than the environments most (if not all) species live in. hence the rapid rise and fall of memes.
    - astazangasta 11y ago
      No. Fads happen too quickly; culture doesn't change significantly on the scale of weeks or months.
  - greggyb 11y ago
    A biological analog that pops into mind is fermentation. Bacteria produce alcohol in an environment until the alcohol reaches toxic levels and all the bacteria die. I am not saying they are equivalent, just that the propagation of a fad has similarities to the propagation of alcohol-producing bacteria in a closed environment.
    - astazangasta 11y ago
      So now the analogy is to growth and dying off rather than selection, and the analog of the meme is the bacterial population, rather than a gene? Why are we trying to make these ham-fisted analogies at all? Ideas do not behave anything like genes; they have almost no properties in common with genes.
- ArekDymalski 11y ago
  The crucial difference is that memes (thanks to the way we store them) can be quickly and easily revived, in short time span. However in a long perspective they aren't durable. The genes work exactly in opposite way.
  - greggyb 11y ago
    Look at any major world religion for a counter example to durability.
    - vegedor 11y ago
      It's an unjust counterexample, because religion is in our genetics, a tendency to symbolism, hierarchy and dogmatism, awe and fear of the unknown. Theism though is anything but durable in the face of scientific progress, but the same can be said about genes. It is durable only in ignorance. Therefore faithful believe is a marker for predisposition, so the carrier will have to adapt or die out at which point the meme has to be revived, as the GP stated. Religions do change much quicker than the gene-pool. They hardly qualify as memetic if really anyone (counting in antheists with their own cults and rites modulo the theism) follows them, anyway.
    - ArekDymalski 11y ago
      When compared to durability/persistence of genes, religions are just short blinks with their mere few thousands years. Actually cave paintings or tools are better examples of memes longevity.
  - vegedor 11y ago
    It is an antagonistic relation. Cultural preferences influence the selection which influences the genetics, while genetics influence cultural selection. Genetics have a negative feedback on culture, the culture can only develop as much as the genes allow, but the culture has a positive feedback on the genes (sexual selection).

by zby 11y ago

Organisms evolve through natural selection - culture evolves in a different way. Memes might be similar in some ways to genes - but there is no natural selection of cultures.

fennecfoxen 11y ago

Isn't there? A culture, idea or a meme that doesn't spread from person to person in some way isn't going to exist after the people participating in it die. When you get down to it, "natural selection" is just a similar application of population dynamics. The real differences are in the radically different composition of an organism and an idea/meme/culture/institution, with implications for the way these ideas are transmitted and transformed.

agumonkey 11y ago
I believe the 'selection' abstraction holds in culture. It happens to ideas, products and of course living forms. The "forces" are different but still.
linhchi 11y ago
There is. The evolution force is an iterative updating process. Fitness can be one-dimensional like "number of likes" or "payoff in a game". Keep feeding in variety and the selection process will do its job.
astazangasta 11y ago
It's obvious this idea is crap if you think about fads. These are ideas that propagate rapidly until they become quite popular and then mysteriously vanish. This flies in the face of an inherent superiority driving the propagation of the idea. As an evolutionary biologist and a student of cultural transmission this idea (memetics) has always annoyed me from both ends. It is a bad idea, and I wish it would die. It's even more annoying that it somehow manages to add to Dawkins' misplaced prestige.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Any references for counter arguments ? I'm very curious about that.
- tetrep 11y ago
  > These are ideas that propagate rapidly until they become quite popular and then mysteriously vanish. This flies in the face of an inherent superiority driving the propagation of the idea. isn't that because fads become "locked" in time? the fad is well evolved for the current culture but as the cluture changes the fad becomes very poorly suited for it, and dies. i could make the same argument that you make against fads against any once-prolific-but-now-dead species, e.g. how could species x be wiped out by a change in its environment? that flies in the face of evolution creating a superior species. evoltuionary advantage stems from a superior adaption to the current environment, and culture happens to change vastly more frequently than the environments most (if not all) species live in. hence the rapid rise and fall of memes.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    No. Fads happen too quickly; culture doesn't change significantly on the scale of weeks or months.
- greggyb 11y ago
  A biological analog that pops into mind is fermentation. Bacteria produce alcohol in an environment until the alcohol reaches toxic levels and all the bacteria die. I am not saying they are equivalent, just that the propagation of a fad has similarities to the propagation of alcohol-producing bacteria in a closed environment.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    So now the analogy is to growth and dying off rather than selection, and the analog of the meme is the bacterial population, rather than a gene? Why are we trying to make these ham-fisted analogies at all? Ideas do not behave anything like genes; they have almost no properties in common with genes.
ArekDymalski 11y ago
The crucial difference is that memes (thanks to the way we store them) can be quickly and easily revived, in short time span. However in a long perspective they aren't durable. The genes work exactly in opposite way.
- greggyb 11y ago
  Look at any major world religion for a counter example to durability.
  - vegedor 11y ago
    It's an unjust counterexample, because religion is in our genetics, a tendency to symbolism, hierarchy and dogmatism, awe and fear of the unknown. Theism though is anything but durable in the face of scientific progress, but the same can be said about genes. It is durable only in ignorance. Therefore faithful believe is a marker for predisposition, so the carrier will have to adapt or die out at which point the meme has to be revived, as the GP stated. Religions do change much quicker than the gene-pool. They hardly qualify as memetic if really anyone (counting in antheists with their own cults and rites modulo the theism) follows them, anyway.
  - ArekDymalski 11y ago
    When compared to durability/persistence of genes, religions are just short blinks with their mere few thousands years. Actually cave paintings or tools are better examples of memes longevity.
- vegedor 11y ago
  It is an antagonistic relation. Cultural preferences influence the selection which influences the genetics, while genetics influence cultural selection. Genetics have a negative feedback on culture, the culture can only develop as much as the genes allow, but the culture has a positive feedback on the genes (sexual selection).