memes

[mark]

ok i'm a little distorted so bear with me.



we haven't discussed memes here (at least as far as i have seen) . i love the idea, it fits so well that the idea of a meme is a meme itself. it's the propagandist tool, finding ideas that fit right in peoples minds. Advertising executives trying to find the brand image that releases the exact levels of seritonin in the brains of their target audience. but i digress (a lot)



what are your thoughts on memes, addictive thoughts, brain virus's, synaptic patterns, etc.



i feel like there's a little groove in my brain that my thoughts run through most of the time. it's like now they're building a highway through my head, theres no side roads and once it's finished i won't be able to go anywhere but where the road goes.







know what i mean?

[CtrlAltDel]

pardon my holy ignorance, whats a meme?

[Lucifer]

Pardon my unholy ignorance. What is a meme?

[Ar!e$]

pardon my holy ignorance, whats a meme?

xactly whts a meme?

[~akidna~]

Well i vaguely understood what u were talkin about coz i read it somewhere before...but as most of us are unaware...



Read it its very interesting





Memes: Introduction

by Glenn Grant, Memeticist

"An idea is something you have;

an ideology is something that has you."



--Morris Berman



What if ideas were viruses?



Consider the T-phage virus. A T-phage cannot replicate itself; it reproduces by hijacking the DNA of a bacterium, forcing its host to make millions of copies of the phage. Similarly, an idea can parasitically infect your mind and alter your behavior, causing you to want to tell your friends about the idea, thus exposing them to the idea-virus. Any idea which does this is called a "meme" (pronounced `meem').



Unlike a virus, which is encoded in DNA molecules, a meme is nothing more than a pattern of information, one that happens to have evolved a form which induces people to repeat that pattern. Typical memes include individual slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions. It may sound a bit sinister, this idea that people are hosts for mind-altering strings of symbols, but in fact this is what human culture is all about.



As a species, we have co-evolved with our memes. Imagine a group of early Homo Sapiens in the Late Pleistocene epoch. They've recently arrived with the latest high-tech hand axes and are trying to show their Homo Erectus neighbours how to make them. Those who can't get their heads around the new meme will be at a disadvantage and will be out-evolved by their smarter cousins.



Meanwhile, the memes themselves are evolving, just as in the game of "Telephone" (where a message is whispered from person to person, being slightly mis-replicated each time). Selection favors the memes which are easiest to understand, to remember, and to communicate to others. Garbled versions of a useful meme would presumably be selected out.



So, in theory at least, the ability to understand and communicate complex memes is a survival trait, and natural selection should favor those who aren't too conservative to understand new memes. Or does it? In practice, some people are going to be all too ready to commit any new meme that comes along, even if it should turn out to be deadly nonsense, like:



"Jump off a cliff and the gods will make you fly."



Such memes do evolve, generated by crazy people, or through mis-replication. Notice, though, that this meme might have a lot of appeal. The idea of magical flight is so tantalizing -- maybe, if I truly believed, I just might leap off the cliff and...



This is a vital point: people try to infect each other with those memes which they find most appealing, regardless of the memes' objective value or truth. Further, the carrier of the cliff-jumping meme might never actually take the plunge; they may spend the rest of their long lives infecting other people with the meme, inducing millions of gullible fools to leap to their deaths. Historically, this sort of thing is happening all the time.



Whether memes can be considered true "life forms" or not is a topic of some debate, but this is irrelevant: they behave in a way similar to life forms, allowing us to combine the analytical techniques of epidemiology, evolutionary science, immunology, linguistics, and semiotics, into an effective system known as "memetics." Rather than debate the inherent "truth" or lack of "truth" of an idea, memetics is largely concerned with how that idea gets itself replicated.



Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies, and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it can help to provide immunity from dangerous information-contagions. You should be aware, for instance, that you just been exposed to the Meta-meme, the meme about memes...



The lexicon which follows is intended to provide a language for the analysis of memes, meme-complexes, and the social movements they spawn. The name of the person who first coined and defined each word appears in parentheses, although some definitions have been paraphrased and altered.

[lizard king]

i would simply kill it with alcohol or sex, which ever comes cheaper

[akhilis2cool]

what u ppl. talking abt...idont know yaaron

[Jaszalcatraz]

Putting in simpler words basically a meme (pronounced meem) is a theory which states that all theories propogate by attaching themselves to brains and evolving before moving on to another host body. Theories and ideas thus evolved have defined man's actions for thousands of years. Hence in conclusion memes have made the world what it is.

Nice meme about a meme innit??

[HH]

...
Memes: Introduction

Meme ... "Me Me" ... "Me ... Me" ... Great Goat God ... Dost "Azazel" ... Please ... HELP!

[mark]

I first came across memes when i saw the phrase "all of your bases are belong to us" online. Basically it was from a Japanese computer game which was poorly translated to English, and this phrase stuck out as being particularly meaningless. But it spread through the internet like wildfire, and i'd be amazed if i'm the only one here whos heard of "all of your bases". The internet is a prime breeding ground for these ideas, and it totallly changes the way that humans propigate ideas.



Its like there's certain ideas the human mind likes to process, like the hook in the song, or a catchy slogan. Proverbs are another one. They fit into our head neatly, even if they're not true (e.g. urban legends)



Don't know if any of you read terry pratchett, in some of his books he refers to stories and ideas as things with a life of their own, trying to play themselves out again, and again, and again.



It's a pretty cool topic though, how ideas spread from 1 person or small group of people to eventually become incorporated into our human culture.





nice article Akidna.

[lizard king]

...
Memes: Introduction

Meme ... "Me Me" ... "Me ... Me" ... Great Goat God ... Dost "Azazel" ... Please ... HELP!

i dont think he ll be of much help. he ended up in biryani last night

[ycr007]

Saw something abt Memes in thsi month's Chip.....Link to http://www.flickr.com

[Red Combat]

Saw something abt Memes in thsi month's Chip.....Link to http://www.flickr.com

http://www.flickr.com and meme ?

[ycr007]

Saw something abt Memes in thsi month's Chip.....Link to http://www.flickr.com

http://www.flickr.com and meme ?

well,are they not connected?? Actually i did'nt check,just posted the stuff...

[Red Combat]

Saw something abt Memes in thsi month's Chip.....Link to http://www.flickr.com

http://www.flickr.com and meme ?

well,are they not connected?? Actually i did'nt check,just posted the stuff...

I think this is actually leading to a meme. what say ?

[ycr007]

Saw something abt Memes in thsi month's Chip.....Link to http://www.flickr.com

http://www.flickr.com and meme ?

well,are they not connected?? Actually i did'nt check,just posted the stuff...

I think this is actually leading to a meme. what say ?

U betcha



Actually i had read that the said site had something to do with memes

but now i see only pics....

[HH]

Memes are contagious ideas, all competing for a share of our mind in a kind of Darwinian selection. As memes evolve, they become better and better at distracting and diverting us from whatever we'd really like to be doing with our lives. They are a kind of Drug of the Mind. Confused? Blame it on memes.

see the work of KMO

Visit:
http://www.c-realm.com/

John Stoner has created a designer virus to spread the meme of generosity. Here's what he says about the virus: "A little while ago, I made up these cards. They create a chain of generous acts, memetically. How do you use them? You do something nice for someone, and you do it anonymously. For example, you could pay the toll of the car behind you at a tollbooth. One thing I've done is go to this wonderful bakery near my home, and buy a treat for the next person who walks in the door after I leave. Be creative! And you pass on one of these cards.... check them out."

Visit:
http://www.generosity.org/

Visit:
http://www.memecentral.com/

[HH]

Meme
Meme, (comes from Greek root with the meaning of memory and its derivative "mimeme"), is the term given to a unit of information that replicates from brains and inanimate stores of information, such as books and computers, to other brains or stores of information. The term meme was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his bestselling book, The Selfish Gene. Inanimate sources of information have been termed 'retention systems'.

In more specific terms, a meme is a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution having some resemblance to the gene (the unit of genetics). The difference lies in the replicative potential and minimally required resources to replicate. Memes can represent parts of ideas, languages, elemental particles, tunes, designs, skills, moral and aesthetic values and anything else that is commonly learned and passed on to others as a unit. The study of evolutionary models of information transfer is called memetics.
The is an example of a visual meme. Having seen it one is likely to copy, reproduce, or modify it and then show it to others.



The smiley is an example of a visual meme. Having seen it one is likely to copy, reproduce, or modify it and then show it to others.

In casual use, the term meme is sometimes used to mean any piece of information that is passed from one mind to another. This is much closer to the analogy of "language as a virus" than it is to Dawkins's analogy of memes as replicating behaviors. Memes on the Internet tend to proliferate for periods of time then quietly die off, and many start as obscure running jokes within net cliques which gradually lose their original meaning or otherwise become detached. Some people consider absurdist humor to be a good source of memes.

"The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Madhappyfaceblob.gif

[HH]

Meme

*
A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

**
n : a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation); "memes are the cultrual counterpart of genes"

***
<philosophy> /meem/ [By analogy with "gene"] Richard Dawkins's term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do.

Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.

The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, "meme" is often misused to mean "meme complex".

Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.


****
memetic algorithm
<algorithm> A genetic algorithm or evolutionary algorithm which includes a non-genetic local search to improve genotypes. The term comes from the Richard Dawkin's term "meme".

One big difference between memes and genes is that memes are processed and possibly improved by the people that hold them - something that cannot happen to genes. It is this advantage that the memetic algorithm has over simple genetic or evolutionary algorithms.

These algorithms are useful in solving complex problems, such as the "Travelling Salesman Problem," which involves finding the shortest path through a large number of nodes, or in creating artificial life to test evolutionary theories.

Memetic algorithms are one kind of metaheuristic.

Visit:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=meme
http://dictionary.reference.com/search? ... 0algorithm

[marko]

Richard Dawkins is a real skull opener, i've only read "The Blind Watchmaker" but it really influenced my view of life.



Actually it was a weird chain, I've always been a huge Douglas Adams fan (not just his books but his attitude and outlook on life), and in his book "Last chance to see" he recommends Blind Watchmaker as a great book for transforming agnostics to athiests.



gotta recommend "last chance to see" for anyone interested in wildlife or conservation, DA almost had me convinced to go back to college to do zoology.

[HH]

... Douglas Adams ...

DNA : Douglas Noel Adams : 1952 - 2001

Visit:
http://www.douglasadams.com/
http://www.douglasadams.com/funeral.html

[HH]

The "be happy" and "make others happy" memes

Some spiritual practices, e.g. Buddhism, clearly promote ecological and moral goals recognizable to most people, e.g. The Noble Eightfold Path emphasizes limited consumption, reduced cruelty, no delegation of violence or participation in violent systems, and a withdrawal from sexual and ethical processes that have no clear ecological or moral value to the practitioner - regardless of the value they may have to others.

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic "Western" religions, however, focus more on devotion to a transcendent deity and moral codes of behavior, including social and ethical codes affecting every aspect of life from selfless love to commerce to sexual behavior. People are urged to devote themselves to the needs of others.

The contrast between "be happy" and "make others happy", although not as stark in practice or theory as the traditional debate suggests, may satisfy constraints of different ecological or sexual norms in some non-obvious way. But it seems entirely unlikely that "they aren't particularly valuable to the believer." At least, the majority of people on Earth clearly don't think so.

Visit:
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme