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Is this word really pronounced to rhyme with "gem" in the US? I've never heard the word before, so I wouldn't know.-- Tea and crumpets 00:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
It's pronounced mee-mee. Ernestrome 13:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm thoroughly American, and I've only heard it pronounced meem, to rhyme with 'seem'. - Someone
Thoroughly Australian, and also only ever heard it pronounced to rhyme with 'seem'. Every dictionary searched by dictionary.com lists the pronunciation as being a single syllable. Furthermore the first entry gives the IPA pronunciation /mim/. - Someone else
The entry says that it was meant to rhyme with "gene" -- so \meem\ (like seem) seems to be the correct pronunciation. Jim Sowers
Why is this in the article? This is listed as a meme phrase, but an internet search shows no hits. 65.79.30.55 18:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
The entire criticism section looks as if someone just tossed it of the top of their head. It consists of straw men and other misconceptions, as well as some criticisms that are downright incoherent! ('It just doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy' should not count as a valid criticism to be addressed!)
In any case I know too little about the current opinion of Memetics to create a valid criticism section from scratch, although the facts that a) at best it is a proto-science, and b) it has attracted flak from some of the vocal religious would be the logical starting point. As it is a proto-science, criticism from other scientific disciplines can be regarded as 'not-invented-here' until such time as it *does* become a science or is entirely discredited.
Memetics is not a protoscience. It is a hybrid field of sociology and cybernetics.-- Scorpion451 17:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
This article is too long, and could be broken up into seperate sections. One on "memes", one on "memetics" etc. There is also way too much information relating to culture, which could be placed in a "cultural memes" section. I read the article wanting to understand the theory of memes, but was instead presented with what seemed like a non-NPOV article that merely espoused examples of memes, without going into the essence of what a meme is. Under current definitions almost anything could be a meme inluding the theory of meme's itself, which would make it completely nonsensical and also a tautology or even fatal theory. What about Thomas Kuhn's and Paul Feyeraband's work that shows that scientific knowledge, itself, is dependent on the culture of groups of scientists rather than on adherence to a specific, definable method. Thus whatever paradigm that is the dominant zeitgeist in science (for example genetics), tends to use language of that discipline to explain away phenomena outside of that discipline. Where the article does say there is criticism it does not list the actual criticism but tends to ignore it and skim over it. In the mean time, someone should clean up the article removing redundant parts, perhaps breaking it up. I will try working on providing a comprehensive criticisms section, using critical theories from philosophy, science, sociology of ideas and language.
There is much well founded criticism of Memes out there. Notably:
Darwinizing Culture : The Status of Memetics as a Science http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192632442/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_2/103-1056305-1539030?%5Fencoding=UTF8
and
I have amazon extracts from the relevant chapters and am attempting to put some sort of critique together. I rather suspect that this may be somewhat controversial, does anyone suggest a correct way forward? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ChurchOfTheOtherGods ( talk • contribs) 10:47, 25 April 2006 (UTC2)
Thanks to ChurchOfTheOtherGods for above references - v good:
From Adam Kuper - Dawkins using terms loosely
If memes are the answer, what is the question? The question that memes are designed to address evidently concerns culture, but culture is itself a notoriously question-begging notion. And culture is supposed to provide the answers to another very big question, which is in what way human beings may be unique. "Most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one word: culture", Dawkins wrote, continuing, with a perhaps disingenuous insouciance, "I use the word not in its snobbish sense, but as a scientist uses it" (Dawkins 1989: 189). Unfortunately, he does not specify how a scientist uses the word, and little wonder. In truth, there is no single, unsnobbish, scientific conception of culture.
and using dodgy references
Dawkins even suggests that memes drive suicide epidemics, arguing that "a suicidal meme can spread, as when a dramatic and well-publicised martydom inspires others to die for a deeply loved cause" (Dawkins 1982: 111). In support, he cites Gore Vidal, 1955. This turns out to be an early novel by the American writer, about a messianic cult. Dawkins would surely be apoplectic if a social scientist were to cite Hitchcock's film The Birds to make a point about ornithology. 134.115.68.21 10:57, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Memes are not similar to Darwinism in the way that stronger genes out survive weaker ones. It is more of a constant influence of the ideas being transmitted. The strength of the lines of communication or amount of communication is what influences memes to survive. Darwinism reflects on how genes are passed on through offspring. Memes are passed from one individual to the next, not necessarily offspring genetically. It is only passed onto offspring by communication not through heredity. For example, a child raised by white supremists have the meme of racism passed on through communication not heredity. The child grows up and now shares the similar views or weltanschauungs. More times than not there is an exterior factor that influences the transmittal of memes. I don't think Dawkins was making a correlation to memes in the way of Darwinian genes being passed on through heredity as it is being suggested. This is a common misconception of the meme theory. Have you read these books? What are the disputes that they are arguing? It appears the main point from the amazon link states that the only thing in dispute is the fact that memes spread themselve and not the entire meme theory. The way memes spread themeselves is a fraction of the meme theory and it does need to be explored further. But this doesn't disprove the entire theory.-- Gnosis 14:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The Biologist Dawkins does not understand religion and criticises his own prejudices about it. However, it has provided him with a concept the "meme" that has some use. Unfortunately he does not discriminate between various types. He is also unaware of the existence of a much better concept, namely the "Psychon". These are socio-psychological units, not like genes in Biology, but more like bacteria or viruses. Three types have distinguished, named cultons, theons and satons according to their different source and function. Cultons as the name suggests are cultural ideas and behaviour patterns. Theons refer to units of real experience and satons refer to delusional ideas that cause much social disorder and outbreaks of social hysterics.—Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Altway (
talk •
contribs) 04:57, December 19, 2006
This entire section is based on a misunderstanding of the term "gene". Whoever wrote this is referring to a microbiologist's gene (i.e. a cistron, a visible region of DNA) whereas the analogy is to an evolutionary biologist's gene (i.e an abstract replicatory unit of information).
The genes that Dawkins discusses are not "a one-dimensional series" nor can they be viewed "through a microscope". I suggest replacing this section with a section discussing the very common confusion over what a gene is in the evolutionary sense. Kernow 18:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
This section is also flawed and should probably be deleted:
I find the method used to cite references in the Meme page unhelpful and unscholarly.
Those ‘problems’ give the text a non-scholarly look. Should we undertake to rework the referencing method?
TonySebas 23:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Has any thought been put towards the transmission of memes from, to and between non-human animals. Much of our technology was probably inspired by animals e.g. Aeroplanes from birds, but most of this information is a physical characteristic of the animal rather than a mental construct. However, when one animal learns a behavioural response from another, this is surely a form of memetic transmission. It is also likely that a number of human memes (not necessarily still 'alive' today) were aquired from watching the learned behaviour of an animal. Kernow 01:59, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
(reduce) This page is for discussion relevent to improving the article "Meme" not for discussion about memes. Please find a forum for this. KillerChihuahua ?!? 02:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I moved it out. Too cluttered, not the place for ongoing discussion. What follows was unsigned discussion. Kaisershatner 15:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I'll find a better place for this later, OK?
Memetics was/is 'controversial' only because it hit the wall of the existing meme(plexe)s. It hit the resistance of all the other memetic constructs that were just doing what they do -- replicating. There's nothing inherently controversial in memetics -- on the contrary, it is nothing but a re-application of an old and rather widely recognized philosophical approach that has been found to work very well in explaining, and even predicting, natural process, indeed life itself.
I don't see the point of explainging 'why it looks like pseudo-science to many', because there's nothing pseudo about the idea of the meme nor the science of memetics itself. Yes, it is in it's infancy (although I'd rather say it's sprouting), and there should be some silly directions tried and a wasted resource or few -- that's how science works -- personally, I wonder why someone has spent the time on the ethymology of the word 'meme' when Dawkins very clearly tells us why and where he takes the word from and what he means with it ... but my skepticism, nor yours, doesn't make memetics pseudo, nor controversial.
I found this article in all its musing-ness quite fantastic! A big thank you and lots of respect for whomever contributed this. There were some places that resonated a bit ill with how I perceive / use the idea of memes, and I hope to come back and give my 2 cents. Oh, I don't think it's 100% fair to attribute Dawkins but not Blackmore.
The article throws a ton of flood on a first time reader's head. It seems to me that most quit without any idea of what meme is. Several people I sent link didn't understand it.
I think - the introductionary part should be made as short and sharp as possible, to give new reader a solid understanding in the mimimum possible words. -- Neonil 16:17, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure the recent change is correct. In specific, I could swear that Dawkins was responsible for coining the term "meme". Where would we look to find authoritative confirmation of this? Alienus 16:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Here's a link that says Dawkins coined it, but I'm not sure if it's sufficiently authoritative: http://www.cybermeme.net/meme.html Alienus 16:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
And another: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/2/2/review4.html Alienus 16:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I find the intro less than clear. To be frank, the whole article reminds me of Christian propaganda (begging the question of its own truth and authority when it should be arguing for that authority, for instance), which is very ironic considering that Dawkins is the father of memetics. But in the intro, could someone perhaps add something about the distinctive purpose of memetics? What are the advantages of using memetics rather than traditional tools of cultural anthropology, for example? At the moment the article makes it sound like "meme" is just more trendy, useless jargon. Chris 64.131.157.221 20:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I've largely rewritten the intro and hope people will agree it reads more clearly now and gives a better idea of what memes are. WadeLondon 14:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I feel like the introduction is still very vague. From what I have previously understood about memes, they are transfered though cultural interactions and are equivilent to the transmission vehicles. I may be wrong about that, but the intro still leaves it unclear.
Let's not be overly enthusiastic here. It's not even certain that memetics is an accurate theory, or that it's even useful (if it is), or just extra terminology. Ephilosopher link -- Maprovonsha172 14:31, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"Now you are just being disingenuous- in what ways can you discuss ideas as entities subject to evolutionary forces, with behaivour analogous to that of 'selfish genes', which still has the explanatory power of memetic terminology? -- maru 21:26, 11 May 2005 (UTC)" -- By explicitly describing the evolutionary activity that occured and/or is occuring. It took me a while (reading bottom to top), but I understand what Maprovonsha172 is talking about. The point he's making is that in articles not explicitly about memetics, memetic terminology not (yet) be used. If you want to describe the evolution through time of a specific thing an article is about, you do a simple historical description. Why would you use evolutionary terminology in an article on killer whales (for instance)? You wouldn't, though you could use it in another article on the evolution of killer whales (though this would probably be an article on the evolution of the killer whale genus, Cetaceans, the animal kingdom or life in general). Break out a new page and link to the new page if you really want to talk about memetic evolution of a specific term, movement, etc.... 24.22.227.53 19:42, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I've talked to many people who consider 'meme' an interesting metaphor, and many on Wikipedia have their own definition of meme (which could usually be substituted with the word fad), but meme theory as I have read makes clear one basic premise of all memetics: namely, that memes are 'units of imitation'(verbal, visual, etc.) which REPLICATE THEMSELVES.
I tried to wrap around this concept of self-replication, and in Susan Blackmore's book The Meme Machine I found their theoretical justification. Towards of the end of her book she presents her theory of the Selfplex. It seems only to make sense that there would be such things as 'memes', self-replicating units of imitation, if the Selfplex theory is true. Without it 'meme' is a metaphor, or substitute word for fad, or, quite possibly, an altogether unnecessary and pseudo-scientific neologism.
I know of no other explanation for memetic's insistence on 'self-replication' other than the theory of the Selfplex, in which Blackmore argues that the brain is the result of the coevolution of memes and genes. She claims that the concept of the self, as we know it, is itself a collection of memes, which has evolved in order to protect and increase susceptibility to other memes. This would mean that there is no you or me, that I am a person but not an 'I'. I would still be a person, meaning that I am a homo sapien sitting here typing this, but not an 'I', an innate persona or self that is Matthew, PCHS student, slacker/amateur philosopher. All that (all my likes and dislikes, proclivities, desires and fears which I attribute to MYSELF) would just be socially constructed, supporting the Selfplex, the meme that I consider myself. The Selfplex theory, as far as I know, however, isn't justified by any scientific experiments and cannot be proven true or false, so why are so many people accepting it whole-heartedly (just because it's interesting or they think they could impress someone by knowing such a comprehensive yet on-the-surface-technical idea, I imagine)?
In any event, the Meme article is still too POV. I'm not saying you can't say meme on Meme, obviously, I'm just saying that it shouldn't be presented as Gospel Truth for Christ's sake. ;)
Anyone want to defend Selfplex theory of the idea of memetic self-replication? Until it seems that we can be sure they're verifiable fact we shouldn't present them as such in supposedly NPoV articles. I'm going to put the NPoV template on meme because as I have said, it violates the NPoV Policy by presenting a hypothetical (a rather dubious one at that) as an established fact. -- Maprovonsha172 20:53, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Is it possible to be a "self" without having a concept of self? (ie. do you need to have a concept (implicit or explicitly known) in order to have an implicit understanding?)-- I'd postulate the answer is yes 24.22.227.53 18:49, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I've been thinking about how the discussion has come to the problem of the two different connotations for the word meme, and I think it can best be solved by agreeing that the difference is that so-called 'internet memes' are replicated and (Blackmore's) 'memes' self-replicate. So to say they replicate themselves is POV, while saying that 'internet memes' are spread all over internet communities is not. So, to disavow my initial thought that all memetic terminology violates the NPoV, I think we could balance the POV by making certain everyone knows the difference between the two concepts and how it's not proven that memes self-replicate, just that some people think they do. -- Maprovonsha172 14:22, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
for me, a meme is an idea that seems to have its own life, and copy itself to other people, sometimes apparently without media/medium. it seems to infect the social culture, in a parasitic/symbiotic way. it passes between minds in various ways and forms, sometimes subliminally, subconsciously.
to me, i think i can recognise a meme when i feel i might know it already, or have worked it out already, or have guessed at it already. when i see it reflected from another mind back at me, i feel this meme or idea (or line of argument) must have its own independent existence, somehow.
it spreads, sometimes like wild fire, and by normal network principles, multiplies as it migrates. and each person who encounters it, adopts it for their own. each person who enters the meme, feels like they are coming home to the idea, and feel comfortable with the idea. a meme is always truly right.
[ jo abbess : 14 oct 2005 : uk ]
I think it would be interesting to have a section for political memes named "Politics" that would be situated near the "Religion" section. I oftentimes run into Democratic activists who claim that the Republican Party has been using memes over the past generation or so to manipulate the American people. Whether that's true or not, I think this could be a good seed for a new section on this topic. Any thoughts? — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 19:36, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
I have removed the following text by 211.30.190.44 because, in addition to being unwikied, it has no context or source, and is therefore not a comprehensible part of the article:
[0] Non Newtonian phenomena, may spontaneously create or modify memes. All that follows are subject to [0] in so far as these phenomena occur.
[1] A meme is subject to the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of mass.
[2] A possessor is any thing that can support a meme.
[3] A meme hosted by a possessor changes the net energy(j) of that possessor.
[4] A meme that confers greater net energy(j) to any possessor(s) without destroying itself will be capable of destroying any lesser net energy conferring meme in any possessor.
[5] A net benefit energy calculation must include, acquisition, retention and transmission energy costs of the meme.
[6] Destruction of meme renders it unrecognisable.
[T Edwards]. Note possessors do not have to be human or even "alive" in the common usage of the term.
Bovlb:01:04 (UTC)
Well I put it back. You have to apply your mid a bit, like the really comming to grips with the laws of thermodynamics. These rules will build a structure that allows memes to be understood and verified. You will have to think about what the implications are.
For example one implication is that a personalilty, is nothing more than a collection of memes that confer sustained energy and mass on the body of the person, That is you are but a compistion of memes that inabit/ reflect the structure(t) of your brain. Interestingly because this "law" meme was not able to compete with your own memes you rejected it. I humbly sugest that you think hard about the implications of these laws /this particular meme.It deos, I think offer for the fisrt time away to quaitfy the whole meme area, w.r.t to almost all of the do they exist what is it.
It does have a source, T Edwards, [Me] derived the laws after sufficent contemplation and study.
The disitinctions made in this policy are meaningless. Esspecially in the area of memes, thus the rule is without juristiction on this topic and a Nulity [Look it up an understand why your "privitive clause" attempt is void ab initio.
http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6268155-1.html?tag=txt
What is the process for updating the list of cited articles and such? Anyone want to do it as I have no idea what's involved?-- Lord Shitzu 20:05, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
For now, I'm moving the content that has been commented out to the talk page -- it clutters the main article's edit box. General comments remain intact. -- jiy 19:13, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
I've commented out the following paragraph because it doesn't seem to fit here. Is there a better place? It also seems to assume a particular definition of a meme, which seems perhaps like a bad idea. --wpegden Some memes, such as many on the Internet, tend to proliferate for periods of time then quietly die off: many start as obscure running jokes within net cliques, which gradually lose their original meaning or become otherwise detached. Some people consider absurdist humor as a good source of memes. Generally, the better the communication medium, the faster memes can come into and out of vogue.
I'm commenting out this next block because, apart from being blatantly one sided on its view of memetics (nearly all of these claims would be contested by many scientists), this stuff is surely better suited for the article on memetics.
The conception and study of memes, known as memetics, has led to new insights in:
Memetics and the introduction of the meme as a concept build on several previous fundamental scientific discoveries:
Memeticists may regard meme evolution as a new level of biological evolution, whereby new ideas evolve in seconds rather than over generations (as in biological evolution); this may explain the rapid progress of Homo sapiens.
Memetics may lead to a new level of understanding of meta-science and common thinking practices, such as scientific approach, skepticism and conservatism.
Memetics provides another level of understanding of mental parasites, such as chain letters, urban myths and ideologies.
Memetics can serve as a bridge between artificial intelligence and biology (See also expert systems, knowledge-based systems).
That this entire topic is ridiculous, given that the first visual example, the smiley face, hardly has any of the supposed power implied in the gobblygook explantation of what a "meme" is supposed to be. It's a friggin' icon, a symbol, a graphic. It doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, it doesn't convey any (meaningful) meaning, and it was probably copyrightable when it was created. Is the Windows logo a "meme", or is it a logo? Maybe the whole meme thing actually has some weight (although it could be argued that it's just a neologism to give a scholarly sound to someone's original research, and hasn't been all that useful for understanding culture or communication), but this first example really makes it all seem like a hoax. Are social scientists really that afraid to call a spade a symbol for a playing card suit? DavidH 08:12, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
I understand where you're coming from, David. The fact of the matter is that no one knows yet whether memes even exist. There are many philosophical questions left unanswered. A good deal of our understanding of the word itself depends largely on which memecist we're talking about, as well. Edward O. Wilson has used the word meme in a mild sense, because he has found that our brains have evolved with large with knowledge, and has come to call these things the brain holds memes. Susan Blackmore is quite extreme in her sense of the word meme, in which she says memes are all we are, and we have no control over which memes we copy and dispurse because we have absolutely no free will, and are merely memetic/genetic constructions. All around I think they're overly certain about some philosophical questions we have reason to be uncertain about (and most of them aren't even philosophers!). Maprovonsha172 18:45, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
My favorite example of a meme is "pork is unclean, don't eat it". I know at least Judaism and Islam incorporate it into their religion. It may have given cultures an advantage in the days when pig-borne parasites were a serious matter. - R. Forsman
I'm no expert, and only a newbie wiki users, so shoot me down if I'm way off here: I see an internal incosistency with this page. The "basic introduction" talks about evolution, including mutation and competition, as "their fundamental property". But the list at the bottom of the page seems to have mostly non-mutated examples. For example, jingles, Moore's law, etc. BenBildstein 07:16, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Some questions (I wouldn't mind answers on my talk page if anyone knows of them):
1) Other molecules can reproduce, and probably even reproduce in stages. Are analogs present in memetic theories?
2) How much differentiation goes on between symbolic (physical, vocal, etc...) representations of memes, and memes themselves?
3) How much do the default personality and cognitive characteristics of individual memeticists (and memeticists in general) color memetic theory?
4) Genes die out, but some still have effects (because or in spite of dying) on the genes which remain or are newly created (this can be species or inter-species), is this represented in memetic theories?
5) Which came first: the gene or the organism/shell which houses the gene? Substitute meme for gene. (And don't try to literally figure out which came first, this is a memtic question, not a question of genetics)
6) By assuming the equivalence between "gene" and "meme", is this begging the question? (The question being language, ideas, etc... as discussed in Talk:Meme#Memes and Memetics vs Diffusion of Innovations) 24.22.227.53 22:23, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
This article (and seemingly the study of memetics itself) references back to culture at the cost of a more coherent and complete understanding.
You could reference back to individual desires (which do alter over time). You could reference back to other things.
Meme structures may not have an underlying "genotype", but they do have underlying organizations. And these memeplexes do have some structural elasticity (ie. rebuilding emotional memories based on the non-emotional things about a situation you remember).
Hold on, meme structures do have underlying "genotypes":
This is also wrong in that it is comparing apples and oranges. If a mouse gets it's tail cut off, everything is fine with the genotype, but if a mouse is exposed to a mutagen, everything isn't. If a memeplex loses part of itself, but the possesor still retains the memes the memeplex was built from, everything if fine with the genotype.
If an already built memeplex loses (some of) the memes it is built from (but not built of), it will still retain itself(1), just as the exposed mouse will still retain it's characteristics. In both of these situations, the memeplex and the mouse will have great difficulty (if not impossibility if the mouse's germline has been compromised, and the necessary requisites for building an understanding of the memeplex in another carrier are no longer available) in passing themselves "down a generation". Freaks and sports still have a possibility of being created by the mutated memeplex or the mutated mouse.
If the memeplex needs continual "protein transcription" from the destroyed memes it will die, analogous to the physical body of the mouse.
This is not lamarckian, this is darwinian/mendelevian (and seems more analogous to bacterial plasmids than standard sexual reproduction -- hmm... a possible new interpretation/addition along the biological mold).
(1) - The same way I can forget how to add, but can still multiply (having originally learned multiplication via the "3 * 4 = 4 + 4 + 4" manner) 24.22.227.53 22:37, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
this paragraph seems to be a veiled biased criticism of religious use of memes:
Fear: If a meme constitutes a threat then people may become frightened into believing it. The memes "if you do not do this you will burn in hell..." and "...do this and you will go to heaven" provide common examples
it is not supported whether or not these examples are in fact "common". it is also up for debate whether these examples are a fair characterization of the teachings of any religious organization.
(as an aside, i personally think that those are very prevalent examples of, for example, the catholic church's historical abuse of power, but my opinion doesn't belong in this article)
The Meme Resistance subsection uses NPOV negative langague directed towards science and technology.
A general NPOV question: do most people consider memes to be an established explanation of cultural phenomena or a doubtful theory? This article seems in places (such as the "Forms taken by memes" section) to assume that the meme concept is largely correct. Perhaps a few more "According to memetic theory" phrases or such like would be appropriate... Trevor 20:33, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
"In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions." -- http://thedailymeme.com/what-is-a-meme/
Examples of this usage:
It is interesting to speculate on how the usage of the word "meme" arrived here, starting with Dawkins.
Bayle Shanks 00:45, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Is there a need for the internal link to good? It only serves as a useless link to a disambiguation page in my opinion, but I'll leave it up to other editors to judge its merit. The Hooded Man 00:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Should there be a refrence to internet mems on the top of the page? I would think most users searching for Meme would be looking for that dimo414 00:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
A recent change by [[User:129.71.207.114|129.71.207.114] says that memes, unlike genes, can be horizontally transmitted. Wouldn't retroviruses constitute horizontal transmission of genes? Alienus 22:26, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
The section on horizontal transmission seems to confuse memetic and genetic modes of tranmission. For example, when saying something like 'memes transmit vertically, from generation to generation', it should be pointed out that this refers to genetic generations, rather than memetic generations. What I am saying is that in terms of replication, there is a genetic vertical/horizontal which is distinct from a memetic vertical/horizontal. I am not sure whether memetic transmission can be divided into vertical and horizontal, but it can definately be divided from genetic transmission (both vertical and horizontal). The division of genetic transmission into vertical and horizontal is really just a product of the (misleading) organism's eye view rather than the gene's eye view anyway. This whole idea is difficult to convey so any help would be appreciated. Kernow 17:09, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
On, 24.248.65.198 removed the "in need of expert attention" notice on this page. I can't see any sign that there was any consensus for its removal, so I've put it back again. Perhaps the notice should go, but surely not without discussion. Gareth McCaughan 21:11, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I cannot see the need for 'Expert Attention' in an article on a topic that is too young to have experts. I can appreciate the concern about the content of the article, but I fear that the appeal for 'Expert Attention' will go unheeded for at least a generation. My only objection to the current version of this article is that it needs substantial structural revision. --
die Baumfabrik
15:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
since it is specified in the article that some memes change rapidly and are subject to analogue blending and some memes are resistant to change and may only change slowly by gradual mutation or pruning. I would say the article does.
# explain whether memes follow Darwinian or Lamarckian evolution;
so im gonna mark it off. Solidusspriggan 20:29, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I archived about half the page, sections dead since May 2005. I removed some bullets from the long To Do, specifically those about memetics rather than meme. The current article is quite long and points rather nicely to the sub/main article about memetics, which can address the bullets I removed. I'll post them on the talk page there. Finally, I moved the discussion out of the to do box and onto Talk at the top. Kaisershatner 15:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
The "Intro" doesn't. The first two paragraphs under Introduction and definitions do. Sugges the content above Introduction and definitions be moved to a more logical place in the article, and the Introduction and definitions be moved to top. KillerChihuahua ?!? 18:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Is anyone aware of any work done to establish that the meme theory of religion is correct - I'm thinking of some sort of scientific test, or predictive ability about religions mutating ? Springald 20:17, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Science and the scientific method does not need "converts." Larry R. Holmgren 03:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
"Some consider religion itself a meme" - Whether or not you agree with memetic theory, religion is a meme by definition. Kernow 16:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
"Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism and Islam (and their descendants) all arose (presumably) through variation, modification and memetic recombination from a common one or few ancestors, probably monotheism."
Actually the root of all these religions is the religion of Abraham, and early Judaism. Monotheism is not as seems to be suggested here a religion, rather a theory of the nature of God.
"The Religious Right in the United States of America has, in cases, a unified message built around religious dogma."
This statement is extremely problematic. The Religious right of the USA dos NOT possess a unified dogma - ther eis for example considerable doctrinal variation, and the difference between say the Reconstructionists and other Religious Right theologies is huge.
"By attaching conservative political views to Christian religious evangelism (meme piggybacking), they have associated a particular set of political ideas/memeplexes with a separate set of religious ideas/memeplexes that have "replicated" very effectively for many centuries."
References? I would seriously dispute that the association of conservative political ideas and Christian Evangelism dates back centuries in this context. See the entries on the Religious Right and its history.
"Christianity has won converts for centuries; now in many cases a religious conversion also becomes a political conversion. Compare cultural hegemony."
Again, questionable. It may be a feature of some American Religion, but is not for example a feature of European Evangelical thought... user:cj.23
Paragraph II in the article: "Memes in themselves appear morally neutral; not necessarily good nor bad. However the application of memes can have moral implications, such as altering the thinking of others which may manifest catastrophic events." (reworded from a more drastic wording)
I have removed "such as altering the thinking of others which may manifest catastrophic events." Given that memes altering thinking is something to phrase carefully to begin with, as a case can easily be made that all thinking is using memes as the building blocks of our thought processes, this statement has the additional problems of 1) highlighting moral implications (which I have left pending this discussion), and 2) highlighting not only the negative, but in an hysterical, panic-inducing manner. Not only do they "alter your thinking" but the results can be "catastrophic"! Well, incorporating new memes is an alteration of the thoughts you have to think with, and the results can range from "catastropic" to "sublime" and everything in between and off in different directions. Why fear-monger that memes have "moral" implications which can lead to "catastrophe"? Is there a point to this? Is it informing our readers accurately, in a non-biased manner? I fail to see that this sentence adds anything of value whatsover, whereas I do see that it feeds and inflames misunderstanding of memetics. KillerChihuahua ?!? 15:51, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm, I see what you are saying. My aim was not to fear monger as you call it but let people know that in the past the use of memes have created catastrophic events, but just as well it has produced peaceful as well with protestors during the vietnam war and the whole love child peace movement (hippies). My ultimate goal was to inform that we must be careful in the way we use means as they may cause undesirable events. However I think it is critical to understand that memes do "Alter your thinking". This is what I propose, we change it so it reads; Memes Alter one's thinking and in themselves appear morally neutral; not necessarily good nor bad. However the application of memes can have moral implications. Incorporating new memes as we both agree "Alter a person's thinking" But that aspect shouldn't be left out. It should be clearly defined as it is key to understanding memes. I do agree however with leaving out the catastrophic events.
(UTC)--
Gnosis
16:56, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, this is much better. I can understand your desire to not make memes seem like a mind controlling device, although they can be. I understand the goal of the article is to express a neutral POV and I think this last edit accomplishes that. Job well done KillerChihuahua!!!-- Gnosis 01:51, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The section which is currently at the end of the article, "Common misconceptions", is pretty confusing. It brings in Freud's concept of the Ego, Superego and the Id and proceeds to talk about hard to understand concepts in a hard to follow way. Basically, IMHO, the section is currently unreadable. Maybe it should be removed or completely rewritten. And do we really need to go into Freud? PragmaticallyWyrd 00:28, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree the section is slightly verbose. I wouldn't choose to delete however I think it should be reworded or restructured so that the intent or idea becomes more clear. If Freudian concepts are being used as a point of reference it should give a complete correlation to how this compares to memes. Currently it doesn't do this.-- Gnosis 01:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The section on horizontal transmission seems to confuse memetic and genetic modes of tranmission. For example, when saying something like 'memes transmit vertically, from generation to generation', it should be pointed out that this refers to genetic generations, rather than memetic generations. What I am saying is that in terms of replication, there is a genetic vertical/horizontal which is distinct from a memetic vertical/horizontal. I am not sure whether memetic transmission can be divided into vertical and horizontal, but it can definately be divided from genetic transmission (both vertical and horizontal). The division of genetic transmission into vertical and horizontal is really just a product of the (misleading) organism's eye view rather than the gene's eye view anyway. This whole idea is difficult to convey so any help would be appreciated. Kernow 22:53, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Memes can be transmitted vertically from one generation to the next without being genetic. Same as if I was to pass a bit of information to another person that transmission doesn't have to be genetic. I am not sure if they can be be transmetic genetically. It is possible but I haven't read proof of that. I will however research that. In theory information can be passed from the mother's mind to the child. An example however would me more helpful.-- Gnosis 03:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I've tried rewriting it again. Here is what was wrong with the previous wording:
"Unlike genes, life-forms which typically transmit vertically (from generation to generation)" - This seems to be confusing transmission with replication. When a gene replicates, creating a new generation, this defines a vertical axis. However, vertical transmission refers to parasitic organisms that spread along this vertical axis, not the actual replication itself (which defines what vertical is). Like memes, most parasites transmit horizontally not vertically.
"memes can also spread horizontally, within groups of contemporaries." - So do most biological parasites.
The confusion here seems to be that genetic replication is being counted as type of vertical transmission. I am fairly certain this is not the case, and even if it is this sentence is still wrong for the reasons I gave above. Kernow 17:32, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
While Darwin lacked proof for a biologically-heritable element, he had postulated one and seemed quite comfortable with the concept of biologically-inherited social traits. (A modern biologist might characterize the latter concept as "Social Darwinism".) Given the early events and tragedies of the century following Darwin's death one can readily understand that modern scientists and intellectuals approach the meme concept with healthy skepticism and caution.
This sounds suspiciously normative. "Modern scientists and intellectuals" is far too vague and "healthy skepticism and caution" is unsupported and biased. I've taken the liberty of removing it. If you're going to restore you ought to clarify who the "modern scientists and intellectuals" are and how ubiquitous they really are, as well as what this community's skeptical criticisms are. davesgonechina 03:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
There is stuff on weather religion is as a result of memes, but would it be possiable to argue that someone's atheist beliefs are a result of how they were brought up and that someone does not believe in God because they caught the atheist meme?
Please help build policy at: Wikipedia:Notability (memes). Thank you, -- Urthogie 15:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
The page is still hopelessly POV (at least in the introductory section), as it presents memes are established fact, rather than the theoretical concept that they are. Because they are an abstract concept, they aren't really based on physical evidence (as the theory of evolution), or statistical evidence. As an idea, I find them interesting, and even plausible, but it is disinformation to claim that their existence is cut and dried. It reeks a bit of post-modernism, and may as such find itself out in the cold when po-mo ceases to be fashionable. -- MacRusgail 18:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
As Vault pointed out this resource is excellent as a "Wikipedian theory of memetics" but it's very Dawkins biased. IMHO Dawkins is a tool and given far too much credit in this article for his "contributions" that are merely regurgitated self replicating ideas in their own right. All in all my grandmother probably knows more about the evolution of thought patterns than Dawkins. -- Burns 11:00, 04 May 2006 (UTC)
It is pretty obvious that a lot of the difference of opinion about memes derives from their remorselessly reductive explicative nature, something that people like Dennett like. So it is equally obvious that all of the arguments about the mind/brain distinction have a parallel here, and the arguments of Charles Taylor (philosopher) about the reductiveness or otherwise of teleological explanation of mental states are totally applicable. As Taylor says - if you can account for all of the teleological workings by a reductive mechanism, then freewill falls apart. But if you can't, then hypothesising the putatively-reduceable features because of a nifty explicative paradigm is not even a close second to explaining the mind away. This is not to deny the power of cognitive science or neurology, or to argue for a Mind/Body distinction, just to say that as an explicative paradigm it is insufficient in and of itself. The force of Taylor's argument is to move the burden of proof away from the people who hold with mental states, and onto the shoulders of the reductivists.
In a similar way, cultural forms (the kind the Semon, as well as Dilthey, Riegl, Cassirer, Aby Warburg and the other Kulturwissenschaft thinkers were interested in) must be shown to be reductively explicable in a way that accounts for the apparently teleological nature of cultural inheritance and transference.
So I propose the notion of a Seme (named both after Semon for the idea that he orginally had and for the idea of the seme that Charles Peirce had - the unit of semantic meaning) to contrast with the notion of the Meme. It stands in relation to the Meme as the Mind does to the Brain.
Thus the central question of the Meme controversy becomes one of showing that the Meme can always provide a reductive explanation for the Seme in every case: not that it might be possible, or that it could one day provide the basis for one, but that it right now provides a complete explicative paradigm in and of itself. And as with Taylor's argument, the burden of proof shifts from the culture-scientist justifying that the Seme is not reductive, to the Memeticist proving that the Meme can acount for it. 202.72.136.39 07:56, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
OK - but why not make the less flashy but more devastating criticism that traditional terms used for analysis in history of ideas scholarship are superior (terms such as theme, trope, idea, concept) precisely because they have no a priori baggage relative to the discourses they are then used to analyse? 134.115.68.21 09:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
This is aricle is unsalvageable. Plato, Descarte memes ha ha.
"Unlike genes, life-forms which typically transmit vertically (from generation to generation), memes can also spread horizontally, within groups of contemporaries. Memeplexes can be viewed as assisting the survival and transmission of the entire memeplex in a symbiotic relationship." - If by "transmission" this means replication, then both memes and genes always replicate vertically. If by transmission you mean infection of a host, then both memes and genes (e.g. viruses) almost always infect horizontally. The article should read something like this:
"Infectious parasites can spread between biological hosts. When a parasite spreads from parent to child, or visa versa, this is known as vertical transmission. Spread to non-parent, non-offspring individuals is known as horizontal transmission. The same terminology can be applied to the transmission of memes. It should be noted that this usage of a vertical/horizontal axis is in relation to genetic descent rather than memetic."
Please also refer to my points in the /Horizontal Transmission 2/ section above. Kernow 21:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
The section clearly states "memes can also spread horizontally" (emphasis added.) The section is not trying to explain that memes spread horizontally only. Concur on the phrasing being unclear (obviously, as we disagree as to the meaning) and needing some tweaking. The terminology is certainly being used rather loosely. Brainstorm? Ideas? Should we dig out our books and see if we can find some sourced descriptions? KillerChihuahua ?!? 01:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I have removed this section, which read like an OR essay and had no sources whatsoever. If there are sources, and this section 1) Can be salvaged and 2) Is viewed as necessary or helpful to this article, please make your case and post your sources here. Thanks - KillerChihuahua ?!? 16:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
could someone add how u pronounce meme? --Anon.
"even though their differences lack a definitive racial basis"...what is a definative racial basis? Kernow 00:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Given that "White Supremacy" is the original and most empirically observable paradigm of memetic racism, I am curious why the Ruwandan case is mentioned without overt, specific reference to the "Caucasoid" Belgians? Importantly, given that the Belgians were arbitrary and capricious in their formulation of Hutus and Tutsis, how do they escape identification here? This seems bizarre, to say the least. -- Temple3 19:19, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I've never encountered this word in my life until I saw it EVERYWHERE on Wikipedia. This really irritates me. I hate the word. Ya this is more of a comment than a contribution. The wikipedians dug up this word from some obscure book and created a new vocabulary word. I think if it weren't for wikipedia this word would be known by a total of 7 people on earth. I don't even know what I'm trying to accomplish by writing this so don't ask. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.40.60.37 ( talk) 16:22, July 9, 2006
...and if you intend accusing people of "mental retardation" you should probably get your facts straight: Darwin didn't coin the term, Dawkins did. -- Adam Brink 10:23, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I have heard this term many times, from sociology classes, psychology classes, to books on cultutal anthropology and cybernetics. It is a very useful word in analysing individual interactions with psychology.-- Scorpion451 20:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
What are talking about you never encountered a person with real mental retardation? Have you been living in a cave? These are the types of people that are editing these articles?
I moved the following sections here, partly because they're unsourced, and for other reasons:
-- Smahoney 00:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
-- Lucaas 23:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The "Memetic accounts of religion" section is full of weasel words, unsourced and therefore unverifiable claims and original research. I've tagged some examples and removed the worst bits outright. However unless proper sources are provided for many of the claims made, I will go through and remove a lot more of it. I suspect that there are similar problems throughout the article. Gwernol 12:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I would welcome a removal or revision of the phrase "... and fundamentalist Christianity has associated..." because it implies that fundamentalist Christianity is a single movement or ideal. It isn't. In America, it perhaps seems to be, because you have a socio-political right-wing groupung that has identified itself with Christianity. However, in the rest of the world, particularly Britain, one original source of Protestant and nonconformist views, it is difficult to define any one group or person who could fall into this group. Maybe the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chairman of the Methodist assembly and so on are fundamentalist Christians, yet this would be difficult to reconcile with the views of the "religious" right in America. Please excuse (or if you must, explain) any breach of Wikietiquette, I'm new here. ATeacher 10:23 GMT, 26 November 2006
Hi, as someone who has been much quoted in the early days of memetics (google "meme lee borkman"), I'm saddened to see the state of this page. Why all this long-winded discussion about "meme", which is not a diffcult thing to explain for an encyclopedia, and which, in itself, is not particularly controversial? The only thing controversial about "meme" is the amount of seriousness with which we take it. The Meme page really needs nothing more than a simple definition of meme, which is after all, little more than a suggestive new word for "idea". Move discussion of the science versus pseudo-science debate to the memetics page where it belongs. At present, this page looks like an ill-disciplined undergrad web forum.
I would suggest something like this for the Meme page: "Meme" is a word coined by Richard Dawkins meaning almost exactly the same as the existing words "idea" and "concept". The word was coined in order to suggest a correspondence between biological evolution and the evolution of ideas (ie, "meme" corresponds to "gene"). In particular, the use of the word "meme" implies that ideas evolve by Natural Selection, ie due to replication, variation, and competition. Consideration of the "meme" and its implications has given rise to a controversial new field of study known as " memetics". Leeborkman 02:32, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Somone, I think it was Lucaas (if I can read history entries properly) has removed the vast majority of the Meme article. It looks great. That looks about the right amount of content for such a simple thing as "Meme". thanks. Leeborkman 04:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC) ---note: no it was not Lucas. Lucaas 18:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Well I hardly think just deleting the vast majority of the article qualifies as improvement (it is quite lazy too). Now I agree its overly long and also worryingly unsourced. However and unfortunately, more work will have to go into trimming it down without removing much that is good. As such I am reverting this. I suggest any further revisions should be done section by section rather than in a wholesale manner. Barnaby dawson 09:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Just a question... how long should we leave content with a "citation needed" comment before the content is deleted? Great chunks of this article have "citation needed", and without these citations, they are just POV. This article should not be an undergrad essay critiquing memetics. thanks. Leeborkman 09:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Personally I think anything that's remained with a citation needed tag for a month or longer should be removed to a subpage of this talk page talk:Meme\citation needed to be reinstated upon production of a citation.
Having performed a comparison of this article with the one one month ago I would say the apart from the memetic accounts of religion section and the first paragraph of the General Response to Criticisms section any other statement that still has no citation should be removed to the above subpage (i.e the vast majority). If you do this perhaps mention the subpage in your edit summary so people know where the material is going. Barnaby dawson 15:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please explain how the ref tags are meant to work? In the "Lack Of Philosophical Appeal" section, for example, although I can see that there are references, clicking on the reference links has no effect. Thanks heaps. Leeborkman 00:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
<ref>...</ref>
tags you also need to add a <references/>
tag somewhere in the article to mark the place where the references should appear. I have added a new section "
Footnotes" to the article for the references you added. Eventually, the "References" sections and the "Footnotes" section that I added should probably be merged once consensus is reached wrt. the preferred references mechanism. —
Tobias Bergemann
08:40, 6 September 2006 (UTC)If you poll most people they will have never heard of the word meme in their life. This on its own is not enough to constitute a complaint against the word's heavy use on Wikipedia, but accompanied by the fact that it is often interjected in articles where another word would have been more descriptive or the word meme could have been left out while still leaving the article with the same meaning, the word is definitely seeing over use and meme theory in general is being abused because of it.
Because of meme's general lack of use by experts and scientists*, and its prominent use to describe internet fads, I am betting that in a few years we will see the generally understood meaning of the word by most people to mean fad or trend, with a few people here and there trying to educate everyone on its "real" meaning to no avail, whatever that meaning is. Thus, the new theory of information and cultural transferable units which I think many want memes to become will never be realized or crtiqued unless we stop the general use of meme as a replacement for otherwise descriptive words which pertain to the subjects being discussed. We owe it to the not so tech savvy Wikipedians and potential new users not to abuse the word meme by its interjection where other more descriptive words would help the reader understand the subject more completely and with less chance of confusion.
-as mentioned elsewhere in the discussion, it is a theory and has criticisms, and it it isn't a theory that all 'experts' believe in. I don't know the statistics for how many 'experts' believe memes to be a valid theory (but I get the impression it isn't anywhere near as accepted as things like the theory of evolution) and thus should something not reasonably fully accepted be widly used and treated as a fact?
OK. While reading Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, I came across a section on "Popular Fads of great Cities" (I hope I'm quoting it right). While it originated prior to the concept of the Meme, it does have some similar ideas, i.e. phrases originating from a known or unknown source, rapidly spreading and then dying out. Does this deserve being referenced in the article? 65.12.114.98 02:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I noticed the following in the beginning of the Historical anecdotes of the meme concept section relating to Snow Crash:
I've read the book, and really like the concept, but how verifiable is this theory? Are there actual Sumerian mythology experts who have subscribed to this idea? It works great for his plot, but I'm not so sure that it's as set in stone as this section suggests. // Montag 18:58, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I second Montag. I've read the book, and while it's interesting, I don't know that we should be citing a fiction book in an encyclopedia. There is an entry in Sumerian_mythology (the Mesopotamian Cosmology section) that appears to support it, but the entire article is marked as needing expert attention. Next person who comes across this and has no evidence to the contrary (ie, supporting the Sumerian memetics idea) please remove the reference. If there are no comments in a few weeks, I'll remove it. Pkcirtap 22:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I've removed it, we shouldn't be citing a work of fiction as verification of historical facts/theories Tomgreeny 14:45, 2 June 2007 (UTC) It could go in a memes in fiction/popular culture section though Tomgreeny 14:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
The "Memes as discrete units" section starts off by indicating that there is confusion over the definition of "meme", and the last part of the "Origins and concepts" section somewhat implies that as well. However, I don't see any actual confusion over the definition. Basically, any concept you can think of is a meme, right? Seems pretty clear to me. The last part of the "Origins and concepts" section is more about how to approach memes, not define them. I'm not sure I see any "controversy" there, as the same paragraph admits the approaches are not mutually exclusive. So if there is something unclear or controversial about the definition then someone needs to explain what the confusion is and who the sides are in the debate, or if there is no confusion, someone need to remove the parts saying that there is a problem with the definition. Am I missing anything? -- HiEv 19:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I've seen this line of argument before: (from the Memetic Virus Exchange? section) "Others maintain that the wide prevalence of human adoption of religious ideas provides evidence to suggest that such ideas offer some ecological, sexual, ethical or moral value; otherwise memetic evolution would long ago have selected against such ideas." It's a severely flawed line of reasoning in two major ways. First, it's like arguing that the fact that many humans are infected with HIV is evidence that the virus provides some benefit to people and thus sticks around in the population, clearly a poor argument. It sticks around in the population because it takes advantage of people and uses them to keep itself alive. That's what parasites do. Second, if you read the original Dawkins chapter from the Selfish Gene where he first describes the meme, you will see that he quite effectively argues that a meme can and will spread itself through a population as long as it is capable of doing so, and regardless of the effect it has on the individual carriers. Thus 'memetic evolution' will not 'select against such ideas' and they will spread. Fisherted1
{{
Merge}}
tagging{{
Mergeto|Meme}}
{{
Mergefrom|Memetic engineering}}
I'm sorry, what evidence is there that meme was coined by Dawkins? Is he older than the Greek language? Perhaps he's older than the French tongue? Please, please don't come back with "my dictionary says...": dictionaries can be wrong. They're only as good as their researchers. Dictionaries do not fix language, they explain it in relevant terms. Besides which, without even looking myself, I feel confident that those of you who are near a library with a copy of the second edition OED (that's the 20-volume set) will find that it has an entry for meme. I shall tag the appropriate sentence; please do not remove the tag without adding a reference.
O-K. But that's not terribly helpful. Opening paragraph still says Dawkins coined the term. If even he admits it comes from a contraction of mimeme then he did not coin it, he misspelled it. The concept described would be from Plato, or Aristotle with their "life imperfectly imitates imitations of perfection" spiel. You're really not making a case for his having started a new way of thinking about information transmission, which is what the need to coin a term would suggest. Please make it explicitly clear as early as possible within the article how, precisely, the transmission of a meme is demonstrably not mimesis - because if it is mimesis, then meme and mimeme are cognate irregardless of what may be claimed to the contrary. (Of course if it isn't, it remains to be seen why he contracted mimeme at all - the "I needed a cool word so I rhymed one with gene" argument does not wash.) Right now it reads as though circa 1975 his agent called to say "Ricky love, great script but the publishers want a thicker spine to make it stand out on the shelf. Anything you can do about it? Maybe drag out some of these shorthand terms a bit? You know, 'transmit a meme' instead of 'mimesis', that sort of thing? C'est la même chose, n'est pas, mon ami?" The only thing that seems to stand out from a reading of this article as different from mimesis is his attribution of memes as useful for their "meme's-eye view", which is somewhere between notions of synchronicity and psychohistory; that is to say, he seems to be also describing mimesis in the active (or conditional) as well as the passive, without attributing animate qualities. But it's hardly new whether it works or not, is the trouble: observation of conceptual dissemination predates him considerably. And if he's only claiming pristine discovery or invention, then this article should reflect that throughout, as it should reflect any notable, populist or academic and substantially similar theories which predate Dawkins' work and would have been available to him at the time of writing. Damn. Just realised what I've been doing with apostrophes on his name. Change it to "deliberate misspelling" and include his own quote if you can't bear to take his name from the first paragraph, and remember that the longer the article is the less likely many readers are to get beyond that paragraph. It needs to reflect the genuine origins of the term, and not just as an endnote. -- 172.202.234.253 06:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I've read his chapter 11 and frankly find it bankrupt of new ideas. Lots of overstressed metaphors and BS prose, but nothing new. What I am saying is not "there must be other people who have said Dawkins is a fibber", but rather, Dawkins is self-evidently a fibber. He has created nothing new, all he's essentially done is change a few names of public-domain concepts. It's no more original than the semiotics that informed academia when he was young: yet by citing his claim in the manner in which it is cited we are unreasonably legitimizing it. If I have not made it clear to you by now, then here it is for the last time: Dawkins' own claim is not a statement of fact, it is a statement of opinion. It makes the article POV from inception. It precludes a proper description of his work as it fails to allow for the contextual framework into which they fit, and in doing so, attributes far more originality and creative responsibility to Dawkins than is factually correct. I have told you three important things over the past few days: why I have not provided the citations myself (the books are in store until after I move house, and the internet is spammed up with this PR for Dawkins), what the work his quote (as it is attributed) states is his own creation is actually drawn from, and in the above para, three standards of any lit-crit or philosophy course for you to look up. Here they are again:
Derrida -
Foucault -
Barthes. Go on, I dare you. If you find Dawkins readable you may even enjoy Barthes.
What I fear has happened is that this article has, over the past six years, been copied and re-copied by every lazy student who wasn't prepared to do anything but parrot book blurbs and is now staring out virtually unchanged from a myriad of websites. The basic claim to which I object has been on that first line for that entire period - I don't think you can bear to believe such a glaring inaccuracy would survive that long, but to paraphrase Dawkins, there's no reason for bullshit to die out. You're actively nurturing it by implying that I should provide a quote from in some cases long-dead authors that Dawkins stole their work, when in fact I have no such duty; it is your duty to provide evidence to support Dawkins' POV claim, otherwise put in context, or remove it. Would our Christianity article be better if it began "Jesus Christ is our one true Lord and Saviour, and anyone who says different will burn for eternity in the fires of hell." ? How about the Hitler article starting with "Of all the Master Race, only Hitler had the pure strength of will to lead, and he's dead, so basically we're all screwed." ? No? Thought not. Please don't parade your ignorance of semiotics around as though it lends the article gravitas, because it doesn't. Over the past few days I've read comments on other sites about the supposed difference between Meme and Mimeme, and you know what? According to your second para, there isn't one. Even Dawkins himself gives us examples which could be straight out of Barthes' Mythologies or any Structuralist primer, and these analytical modes, many and varied in their iteration and application, predate Dawkins' own birth!
Yes, meme as Dawkins would have us say is his "own" work - he shortened it. He even popularized it. But what else did he actually do? Develop it's etymology from the classical Greek period? Of course not. Perhaps, like Propp, he developed his own structural theory in enforced near isolation from European philosophers? Er, no. He even helpfully tells us as much - unless that is, he decided to hijack mimeme without so much as glancing at an encyclopedia to make sure it didn't have any unpleasant connotations. Few paid authors are dumb enough to do that, and fewer publishers reckless enough. Did he even develop the notion of prediction via meme before Asimov released Foundation (and by extension popularized Psychohistory (fictional) in 1942? No. He's certainly no Shakespeare spewing out true neologisms at a rate of knots.
Did Dawkins assemble and tinker with a wide array of ideas already extant? Yes. Should we credit him with creating those ideas? No. Should we passively allow his words to credit him with creating those ideas simply for want of clicking a few links? No. To descend into Dawkinsian simile, "Though he wears clothes, can speak, and comes from another dimension, and even has his own wikipedia article, Howard the Duck is a Duck. Stripped of that context, he'd just be Howard the."
Meme is a contraction of mimeme - even Dawkins admits it. Why then can you not understand the context in which meme resides? Why cling to the irrational belief that Dawkins' opinion is worth making into the opening statement and directing force of the article? It strikes me as deeply ironic that an article about the analysis of cultural propagation, and more ironically it's main source for a fairly specious opening claim, fails utterly to recognise the existence of the basis from which the subject matter springs.
Now as I have said, I am in the process moving house. Thursday, to be exact, and how soon I get back online remains to be seen. -- 172.202.234.253 05:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The section Meme#Memetic account of personality ends with:
In the spirit of WP:NPOV and WP:Avoid Weasel Words, I mildly object to the use of "We". (Many schools of psychology would not define personality that way.) I'm considering changing "We conventionally" to simply "Memeticists" or something synonymous. Any objections? -- JEBrown87544 22:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
"One cannot view memes through a microscope in the way one can detect genes" should be "One cannot view memes through a microscope in the way one can sequence genes". Otherwise it is implied that genes can be observed through a microscope (too small if you are wondering) or that macromolecular imaging techniques such as x-ray crystallography or NMR are employed to obtain the sequence of the base pairs of a gene. Instead chemical sequencing is used.
A better analogy for a meme than a virus is a mostly asexually reproducing organism (mutation and gene reshuffling are still active) with occasional sexual reproduction (resulting in new memes with heritage from more than one parent meme). It is still only an analogy though and not a precise description.
84.238.13.209
00:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Comment on my recent edit: The article notes that the transmission of nursery rhymes helps to keep "otherwise obsolete" words alive, giving as examples "tuffet" and "chamber". It used to include "pail" as well. It seemed odd to me that "pail" would be considered obsolete. I checked a number of online dictionaries, but I could find no evidence, other than the article, that anyone considers "pail" to be an obsolete word. Therefore, I removed it from the list in the article. -- Tugbug 01:25, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Memetics needs to merge into this article. The subjects are quite indistinct, and Memetic redirects here already anyway; this split is confusing to the reader, and the combined material may well lead to a Good Article, on up. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:05, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, this doesn't seem to going anywhere. If the articles aren't merged, than the huge section on memetics in this article must be cut to a short, one paragraph summary. The reduncancy cannot be justified. But even then, there will still be lots of redundancy, no? So why doesn't someone be WP:BOLD and do the merge? Finell (Talk) 04:05, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree that these articles should be merged. It will take some devotion, due to the elimination of redundancy. Trefalcon ( talk • contribs) 14:48, August 28, 2007 (UTC)
The pro- and anti- global warming camps together with their respective activities, including gross misrepresentations, viscious personal and scientific attacks, covert merchanising, overt cencorship, legal and personal threats and attacks, and all the debates and media coverage that are resulting are the most brilliant example of rapid Meme propogration I have ever witnessed. I beleive it would make a good example for addition to the Meme section.
203.206.137.129 08:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
The reversed quotes (»impression«) are annoying. -- Diz 15:20, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Some statements not directly supported by inline citations have been deleted without justification or allowance for the provision of citations. This is a perversion of Wikipedia policy. What should be done instead, as has been suggested, is that {{ fact}} be used, which is a request for other users (primarily the original authors) to provide sources that verify the statement. To quote Wikipedia policy on verifiability:
“ | Any edit lacking a source may be removed, but editors may object if you remove material without giving them a chance to provide references. If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider moving it to the talk page. Alternatively, you may tag the sentence by adding the {{ fact}} template, or tag the article by adding {{ Not verified}} or {{ Unreferenced}}. Leave an invisible HTML comment, a note on the talk page, or an edit summary explaining what you have done. | ” |
What User:Pixelface is suggesting by deleting the text on sight is that {{ fact}} has no purpose, and that all information must be corroborated upon submission. This is false, and directly contradicts Wikipedia policy, which states that to be the case only in controversial circumstances (such as WP:LIVING). Furthermore, even in such carefully mandated and outlined cases, it must be considered that the external links and passim references may be the sources for such statements, and only not cited in-line due to novelty or laziness. If there is such a possibility, {{ fact}} should be used. This is how I have left it. Please desist from deleting information from the encyclopaedia without giving users the opportunity to prove the statements verifiable. Bastin 21:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
The book explicitly states both.-- Scorpion451 rant 06:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts.
The idea of memes has proved a successful meme in its own right, gaining a degree of penetration into popular culture rare for an abstract scientific theory.
The use of amazon for fact checking is useless. There are far more than six pages devoted to the concepts of memes in this book. The word meme is not used on all of them. I am sitting here holding the book which apparently contains information that all of the copies amazon recieved do not, according to your findings. Also, I did not accuse you of vandalism. I told you that many on wikipedia consider removal of cited information to be tantamount to vandalism. Find something constructive to do.-- Scorpion451 rant 07:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Also, I noticed that one sentance containing the word meme
As Richard Dawkins has shown, systems of self-replicating ideas or memes can quickly accumulate their own agenda and behaviors.
clearly confirms this statement.
"Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts."
Kelly reffers to memes variously as self replicating ideas or cultural entities for the sake of clarity of how he is refferencing them at that time, and also to avoid overusing the same word over and over. The subject recurs numerous times in the book, and has a chapter devoted entirely to memes. Also I just noticed your comment about clear citations. I find it odd that you complain about this after finding the book on amazon; you debunk your own claim. Unless you have read a book or the book obviously has not relation to the subject, assume good faith and do not remove properly cited material.-- Scorpion451 rant 07:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
My opinion: Wow, what a disagreement. To begin, yes, WP:V has the above mentioned quote from Jimmy Wales, but I think Pixelface may have taken it a bit too far at first. There's a difference between "information the original editor thought was unlikely to be challenged" and "random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information". If the information doesn't violate WP:BLP, is encyclopedic and relatively uncontroversial, and looks like it could be sourced easily, a {{ fact}} tag and removal after a reasonable period of time would be more appropriate than immediate deletion.
As for the book source: Page numbers for book references are required in most cases, and yes this means you may end up with several citations that differ only in the page number. Citing the book as a whole is not particularly helpful in the vast majority of cases. However, I am wary of consulting Amazon's "search inside this book" feature to determine that information is not present in a book, and immediately deleting the reference rather than requesting addition of page numbers (and only deleting if they are not forthcoming) is certainly not assuming good faith.
I do agree that
this represents
original research, as the quoted sentence does not state anything about meme survival probabilities or their possible detriment to their hosts; I don't doubt that there is support for the statement, but that sentence is not it. At this point, it would not be out of place to quote the specific sentences eventually used for the above statements (either here on the talk page, as a quote=
parameter in the {{
cite book}}, or as a link to Amazon if a useful one can be found) to forestall further accusations of original research.
To summarize, both of you should remember to assume good faith, remain civil, and keep your cool. Anomie 17:20, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
This comment deserves some attention.
Wikipedia readers should not have to read an entire book to verify a statement.-- Pixelface 09:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
You just excluded every book ever written as being ineligible for being a cite. You are wikilawyering to the point of ludicrisness. You accutually challenged the word "meme"'s status as a word. You need to reread the policy pages. You are completely distorting the entire point of the policies, not to mention removing information from an article which has been cited. I have added back a cite onto the information several times, yet you for some reason seem to be unwilling to accept it. I have a citation on my side, you have your own opinion which is challenged by said citation. It is not surprising that you cannot find the exact sentance in the book. This would be plagerism. Richard Dawkins is the origin of the concept of memetics, quite possibly the best person to cite about memes. Kelly examines the information about memetics in several parts of the book, and information he presents includes the possibility of memes which are detrimental to their hosts.-- Scorpion451 rant 16:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I would also like to mention that this section was written before the above comments from the admin.-- Scorpion451 rant 21:59, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
The Game Tree Project has been set up to monitor the memetic transmission of The Game, an interesting meme than only exists because of its inherent memetic properties. My addition of this link to this article keeps getting removed, does anyone else feel this link will be of interest to people reading about memes?
IMHO, it seems at best to be a See also. Is it even unique? Have any conclusions been drawn? What is the design of the experiment, if an experiment it is? DCDuring 14:53, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I am only a college freshman and I am new to wikipedia. So, sorry in advance if this is a worthless contribution...
I was reading "The Gay Science" and came across a certain passage where it seems to me that Nietzsche was basically talking about memes. Check out Book III, Aphorism 110, "Origin of Knowledge".
See: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/diefrohl7d.htm if you don't own a copy of the book. This also works, but I prefer Kaufmann's translation: http://www.publicappeal.org/library/nietzsche/Nietzsche_the_gay_science/the_gay_science.htm
I was thinking that this could be used in the section regarding "Historical usage of the meme concept"...anyways, hope this helps and good luck with the article...
I agree that Nietzsche seemed to think in a similarly reductive way, as did Foucault... who was influenced by Nietzsche. Foucault created the idea of the episteme which is remarkably similar in my opinion. I hope some parallels can be drawn in this article
Please forgive my introduction of the subheading above out of time sequence. Nietzsche's concept, Foucault's episteme, and Kuhn's paradigm seem to operate at a higher level than meme. One important novelty of the meme concept is that it draws our attention to smaller units of analysis than seem customary in much of the social "sciences". It is hard enough to keep this article focused without having extended discussions of weakly connected predecessor concepts. DCDuring 15:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I think Nietzsche is a clear influence on the idea of memes - they mimic his thinking in so many ways, and Dawkins, I would expect, would be familiar with Nietzsche's work.
Sorry if I'm writing this in the wrong place, it's my first discussion on wikipedia, but I would like to address the potential influence of Nietzsche on the idea of Memes, as these appear to mirror many of his ideas, as shown particularly in 'Beyond Good and Evil':
1.) Will to Power. This is a subconscious drive that is the root of all other drives and controls all living organisms, i.e. everything biological is caused by Will to Power. He suggests that the Will to Power applies to human ideas passed on by particularly strong wills, for example the ideas of Christianity being part of St Paul's and Jesus' (among others) Wills to Power. Nietzsche also said that everyone's different Wills were struggling against one another, and some become dominant over others - a clear parallel with the theory of memes.
2.) Dogmatism. As a result of everything being caused by Will to Power, Nietzsche sees much of past philosophy (i.e. ideas) as a result of prejudices - rather similar to these memes being passed from one person to another (NB Dawkins's idea of the concept of hell being a meme vs Nietzsche's idea of religion being a 'prejudice').
3.) Truth; the idea of memes being ideas rather than truth. As Nietzsche says that everything is caused by Will to Power, this leaves no room for truth to be the ultimate aim of science, etc, this parallels the idea of memes being passed on due to their being ideas rather than being true.
What do other people think of this idea - to me the influence, or at least similarity, between memes and Nietzsche's thinking (particularly the Will to Power)? I realise what I have said is not good for putting in the real article as it is, but in theory I think it would be a useful, interesting, and reliable addition if written correctly and sourced (there is bound to be an online copy of BGE and other of his texts).
Cheers guys
How do memes and memetics compare and contrast with cultural/anthropological diffusion studies? Gabriel Tarde's laws of imitation and Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations set out models for transfer of new ideas. Is a meme different from an innovation? How do sociologists, anthropologists, communications academics and other specialists treat memes? I see these traditional concepts in all sorts of academic papers, but memes seems to be a favourite of Internet users. The meme meme is very strong. Why is this? Perhaps the article should delve into these areas. -- Westendgirl 04:18, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Why are there so many "citation needed" "who says this" "blah blah sources" etc. all over the article, almost every three words? There's even multiple tags stacked together! Either you tag the whole article, or you delete all that lacks sources (according to the tags, almost the entire article). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zim ( talk • contribs) 00:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I find it very helpful to have specific unsupported claims tagged. It specifies exactly where the potential controversies are. It should make it easier to improve the article, which certainly hasn't reached high standards yet. DCDuring 15:31, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Is meme theory a scientific theory? Is meme theory more closely connected to "critical theory"? Is it a theory? Could someone state a testable proposition in the theory or rather provide an example of a proposition in the theory that survived some kind of valid test? I'd like this to be a better article. DCDuring 19:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
So... is this merge still being considered? The tag is pretty annoying. -- Antonio.sierra 01:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Have you looked at Meme lately? It's going downhill fast, IMHO. I'm beginning to think that it's better to look at applications of evolutionary thinking in specific fields instead of in some proto-discipline. I could be wrong, but look at some of the "Evolutionary ..." articles. Some resemble real articles. DCDuring 03:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
From my POV, I only found out about meme, BECAUSE of the word memetics. A cross reference is all that is needed so one can find out about the true, more base word, by association. So leave memetics alone, as a stand-alone entry, just continue to point the way to meme. Rohb Vogue —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.72.255.108 ( talk) 03:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
if memetics is merged with meme the resulting article would be pretty huge, although i can see an argument for the merger
Ragingbullfrog
10:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree thoroughly with the suggested merger, despite the resultant article length this would produce; as the principal concept behind the theory, it makes every bit of sense for the Meme section to be a part of the article on Memetics in general. LSmok3 22:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I can think of one good reason not to merge them, it would be a pain in the ass chunk of work. Keith Henson 03:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it would be a job for someone, I suppose. Whilst I'm here, does anyone know where the 'examples of meme' have been taken from, or is anyone allowed to add suggested general examples to the list? I was thinking particularly of myths and folklore, brand icons (advertising is mentioned, but only in relation to jingles), perhaps spelling errors (where copied from other sources), and also images and archetypes (like the
Three Hares example I added to the See Also list . . .
LSmok3
01:31, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I oppose the merge not only because of the amount of work involved in the process, but also because they are entirely different things with different origins. Richard Dawkins has nothing to do with memetics but everything to do with memes. Both articles should be allowed to grow; one as the definition and explanation of the term and the other as a chronological account of the developments in the field. -- Antonio.sierra 07:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
i am also opposed to the merge, because they are becoming different things. There are a growing number of people who are working in memetics (in my experience). We would not propose combining gene and genetics - and why the analogy is not fully comparable, there is something to it. The science is not the same as the thing being studied. This is, of course, a very separate issue than the quality of the current articles. Another interesting piece of information would be to look for the number of people who come looking for the definition of the word "meme" in the wikipedia search engine (since it appears the proposal is to have the meme entry be inside the memetics definition) - if many people are asking what a meme is, do we really want them having to wade thru the memetics article to find it ? Paxuscalta 13:20, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Is this idea overtly related to the idea of a "meme" on Livejournal? I know that's how I found this entry; looking for a definition of meme as LJ uses it. If not, should there be a note? Sort of a "pop culture" section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.14.183.201 ( talk) 19:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
What's the difference between a meme and mores? 63.103.4.4 15:06, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
In the subset on Transmission: "In the absence of telepathy, memes generally do not spread directly from one mind to another, but via the behaviors which they generate in their hosts. For example, the fashion-value that "less is more" spreads through the behavior of people dressing down in understated clothes and acting superior; this behavior then has the effect of showing others a real-life example of this fashion-value, thereby conveying to them the fashion statement that "less is more". Verbal transmission can supplement or replace this imitative method." - This seems like furtile ground for a semiotic analysis.. does anyone know whether this has been done? (Since it seems to me it would be a great approach, and might be worth mentioning if this work has been done and if it has picked up steam) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.103.122 ( talk) 03:27, March 11, 2007
i have a habit of deleting "Citation needed" tags because they make wikipedia look like an unprofessional battleground of edit wars. wikipedia should look proper. so you can imagine my reaction when i saw this page. take care of the "citation needed" tags (in other words, find citations or delete the text or delete the tags) or i will simply delete the tags myself. i'll give y'all 3 days. Special:Contributions/160.39.129.60 00:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Capture bonding is a psychological mechanism that requires evolutionary psychology to account for it. The same is true for memes. You really have to understand the evolved nature of a meme's host in order to make any predictions about how well it is going to propagate in a group. This is particularly the case for classes of memes that spread well when the host population is stressed or anticipating hard times a-coming. Google for "evolutionary psychology, memes and the origin of war." Keith Henson ( talk) 22:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
hey i don't have the time to go through this section and clean up its citation problems, but three sources for this idea are:
"Viruses of the Mind" by Richard Dawkins; in Dennett and His Critics ed. by B. Dahlbohm available here: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html
Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie
Thought Contagion by Aaron Lynch
hope that helps...
Yonderboy 01:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The introduction to this article says that Richard Dawkins coined the term. Then in the historical antecedents section, there appears to be a disagreement between John Laurent and Dawkins as to its actual Greek etymology. Wouldn't Dawkins be aware of which Greek root inspired him, if he did in fact coin the term? ≈≈ Carolfrog≈≈ ♦тос♦ 23:36, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
"The Religious Right in the United States of America has a unified message built around religious dogma. By attaching conservative political views to Christian religious evangelism (meme piggybacking), they have associated a particular set of political ideas/memeplexes with a separate set of religious ideas/memeplexes that have "replicated" very effectively for many centuries. Thus Christianity has won converts for centuries; now in many cases a religious conversion also becomes a political conversion. Compare cultural hegemony."
If the Wikipedia is meant to be a serious attempt at approximating an encyclopedia, should this political viewpoint really be included? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.130.22 ( talk) 08:32, 21 March 2006
This is an example about the way memes work from a particular point of view (probably Dawkin's) that doesn't add to the definition. Politics and religion be damned but get rid of stuff that's surplus to needs.
Tohobbes ( talk) 11:35, 3 March 2008 (UTC) I agree. If anyone doesn't mind, I am going to go ahead and erase that paragraph now. I think that section has more than enough examples without needing one more that may violate the neutrality guidelines.
The summary of memetics in this article seems too long to me. It is clearly longer than the whole memetics article. A summary should surely be significantly shorter (at most not much more than half as long) as what it is summarizing. I'm not sure how the content of the two differ, having not read the memetics article yet, but something surely needs to be done about this if the article memetics is to have an independent existence, as it seems the consensus favours. If that is to be so, some of the 'load' here has to be shifted to that article. Richard001 ( talk) 05:59, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and MGS2: Substance should be mentioned because they are both games with a theme of how meme effects people in life. This is along with Kojima-san's other themes of Gene and Scene, what your parents do and how it affects you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GamerSam ( talk • contribs) 15:11, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Tohobbes ( talk) 11:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC) I don't know, I think that would overstep the scope of this encyclopedia. Maybe we can create a section titled something like "useage of Meme's in Science Fiction", and include a mention of the Metal Gear Solid games. Otherwise, that's basically like an advertisement for the game which is not what we want here.
Tohobbes ( talk) 11:05, 3 March 2008 (UTC) This page was marked as having external links that don't comply with guidelines.
I was going over them just now, I think the link called " Meme Warfare" should be removed because it is not a work published by a respected journal or publisher. I read through it and it doesn't really describe memes, so much as the author describes his own personal politics, techniques he used to protest Geroge W. Bush, and how these topics relate to memes.
This doesn't really do much to explain memes, and I think this article would be more Wiki-clean without it. I am going to go ahead and remove it. If anyone really really wants it there, they can copy this link and put it back.
I'm removing this link
"Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission" Journal of Memetics. Since it is dead, and an article with that name does not exist in the
Journal of Memetics
Poderi (
talk)
10:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I just removed the following text from the article:
ORIGINAL MEME. Each civilization has its meme that injects its desire to surge. It has often been proposed that western societies driving force is the original sin. You are born and automatically cast out from a harmonious union with god. This little cultural string, or meme would put the human in a desequilibrium which forces him to search for a new center. This situation is different from the aboriginal cultures which "only" pretends to be in harmony with nature. EQUILIBRIUM MEME. An original meme also needs an equilibrium meme which allows the system to stabilize. Otherwize would the driving force of the original meme never find an equilibrium and permit it to cristalize. In western humanistisc society would this equilibrium meme be LOVE. This equilibrium meme or LOVE gives the system the ability to have tolerance and cooperate.
...
UNEQUILIBRED MEMEPLEX. The inca empire is an example of an unequilibred memeplex. As an original meme was the fact that the new inca, or leader, would just inherit the title and military leadership. The lands conquered by the previous inca, or leader would still be under the administration of the old incas court. This ment that the only alternative for the new inca was to conquer. This resulted in an explosive expansion. Westerns think that the Spaniards conquered the incas but the fact was that they showed up in a moment when the empire was in unequilibrium. The fact is that the empire couldn’t keep conquering. To the north there were strong central American cultures, to the west the sea, to the east the jungle and to the south the Chilean aborigines to the day still unconquered. So the last inca, Atahualpa, tried to get hand on the old incas wealth which was well guarded by it’s old courts. In this moment of internal intrigues came Francisco Pizarro whom ruthlessly used the situation and conquered it all in a single move, the Battle of Cajamarca. (Prof Fernando Flores would be an acceptable interlocutor)
This article has been cited as a source by the Los Angeles Times. Can someone who knows how, update the cite box above?
Rickrolling is an example of an Internet “meme” (defined by Wikipedia as “any unit of cultural information ... that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another").
Web Scout exclusive! Rick Astley, king of the 'Rickroll,' talks about his song's second coming
— IncidentFlux [ TalkBack | Contributions ] 11:23, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
The following is BS... >>Another philosophical criticism sees memetics as re-introducing, or re-inforcing, the classic pre-20th-century form of Cartesian dualism, that of mind versus body. Memetics seeks to include in the overall science of evolution such a dualism in the form of meme/gene.<<
Susan Blackmore clearly states that there is no separate mind as such, and thus no dualism. The author of this Wikipedia piece has clearly confused this with another kind of dualism - genetics v memetics, and this has absolutely nothing to do with Cartesian Dualism which addresses the mind-brain relationship. Please delete the above text. In fact the entire article needs a complete overhaul.
Maybe noteworthy in the section "Meme-like concepts pre-Dawkins": William Jones (philologist) developed in 1786 a meme-like theory on languages to establish relations between languages. -- 89.247.108.127 ( talk) 17:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Herbert Spencer used a meme-like inheritance concept in his model of social evolution (cf. Social Statics, 1851, refined in Progress: Its Law and Cause, 1857, First Principles of a New System of Philosophy, 1862). -- 89.247.108.127 ( talk) 17:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Since there's a "citation needed" on the pronuntiation of "meme", I'd like to add that on the Selfish Gene it is specified that it should be pronounced to rhyme with "cream". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.22.25.165 ( talk) 23:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
The article slangs God, chastity and Catholicism. Real sciences are not so specific. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.249.171 ( talk) 13:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Phoney. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.5.71 ( talk) 12:16, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm hesitant to edit such a large entry, but perhaps the fact that the word isn't in the Official Scrabble Dictionary (as of 2001) should be mentioned. You could lose a turn! —Preceding unsigned comment added by B0blee ( talk • contribs) 22:02, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
To me there seems to be some disarray over what belongs in the Meme entry and what belongs in Memetics. Has anyone else noted this? Do the 'Meme-like concepts before Dawkins', 'Well-known memeticists' and 'Doubts about memetics' sections belong in Meme or Memetics?
On another note: Is the 30 long list 'Examples of memes' a bit overkill? Aren't 5-10 good examples enough to illustrate that every human idea is a meme? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Memespace ( talk • contribs) 04:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Here's my plan. Sections 5-6 and sections 10-22 should be in memetics. Section 9 should be increased in size here for an overview of memetics, which should be much larger after the moves. And we'll need lots of subsections there with sections like "Memetic explanations" and "Memetic concepts". I'd really rather not do this myself. Opinions? tehgrisp ( talk) 15:30, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
This section discusses how memetics may be philosophically inadequate because it allegedly resurrects the idea of mind body dualism. But proponents of memetics have not argued in favor of dualism. Nor is there anything implicit in memetics requiring dualism. Nor do most opponents of memetics focus on this criticism. The discussion seems tangential.
1snailbyte ( talk) 20:03, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Why is everything in this article so feverishly transcribed into American English, as happened in the recent edits? Must it all be in American English, bearing in mind that I'm sure Dawkins wrote "The Selfish Gene" in British English. Is there a convention of which we are not aware? Dieter Simon ( talk) 23:49, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Why would racism be a meme? Is there any study or validation to support that racism is a meme?
Racism might just as well be described as an empiric behavior. We can only guess how it's activated or spreads.
If there is agreement on the uncertainty on whether racism is a meme I would suggest to review the relevant section. Maybe it may just be a matter of adding sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.193.54.27 ( talk) 20:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
This post is intentionally polemic, but think about this. The idea of a meme began when Dawkins tried to think of a way how beliefs are transmitted through population and different generations. He knew much about biology, so taking a gene as a basis he coined the term "meme", which should be somehow be comparable to a gene in culture (self-replicating, survives through generations). The concept of a meme is full of hot air right now: there's no research about its structure (assuming it is a material entity). There's no research about how it exactly spreads through population. Please point out if there really is something hard (empirical evidence, not philosophical talk) to grasp on this subject. The current examples of memes kind of contain everything how a person influences other people. So now the big question: why not Invisible Raindow-colored Forest Fairies? They also have power to influence people with their magic wands. Of course some evil fairies want to wreck havoc and make people to use violence. The good fairies give us jokes and a sense of humour. How is this different (on empirical basis) from memes? 86.50.9.167 ( talk) 20:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
If you can get people to believe in Fairies, it's a meme. If you can get enough people to act as if they do, then it's also a meme.
I don't see the relevance of structure, and I don't think Dawkins (or anyone else) has suggested they are material entities. As to there being no research about how they spread, I suggest advertisers might disagree. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.72.119.190 ( talk) 12:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
It is most likely that "meme" or "memetics" is not mature enough concept to be a scientific consensus. It should be noted on the opening paragraph. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.50.9.167 ( talk) 07:46, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
For sure there's a lack of scientific consensus about the prospects of developing a useful science of memetics, but since the opening paragraph defines "meme" as a popular neologism denoting any "learned thought, feeling or behavior" and there's little doubt about the existence of those it's misleading to suggest that the existence of trends is controversial. (And the statement "A meme is currently a controversial subject in the scientific community" embodies a confusion of levels: the *idea* of memes may be controversial, but individual trends need not be controversial subjects; for instance, the idea of an electron is a meme but not particularly controversial.) I'm removing that claim of controversy. (And also removing the claim that "meme" = "cultural trait"; that's too specific.) Gareth McCaughan ( talk) 23:14, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Note: at the same time as 161.149.63.107 added the section below headed "Prominence of Memetic Theory demonstrates Systemic Bias", s/he replaced most instances of "meme" in my paragraph above with "trend", thus falsifying what I wrote and making nonsense of some of it. "Meme" and "trend" are not synonyms. 161.149.63.107, I don't know what you're trying to achieve (though I have a not-very-confident guess), but modifying other people's words on a talk page is well out of order. I have undone the damage. Please don't do it again. Gareth McCaughan ( talk) 12:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Memetics as a subject, while of Philosophical, Socialogical and Evolutionary Biological interest, may be too technical, specific and theoretical to be used as a widespread replacement for the more readily understood word "trend". Indeed, most pages that at one time used the word "trend", "fad", and "phenomenon" have been redirected to ones that use the word trend in its place. I would suggest that this reflects a Systemic Bias on the part of Wikipedia Editors, who tend to have scientific backgrounds and have a favorable opinion of Richard Dawkins and his various works. Most casual readers that are concerned with recent trends that have emerged on the internet and elsewhere are mainly concerned about the trends themselves, and may not wish to be sidelined into a philosophical discussion about modern genetic evolutionary theory. To illustrate this bias using a different subject, how appropriate would it be to redirect references of the words money and currency to pages that used the word monetarism in its place? Certainly monetarism is concerned with money and currency and involves a great deal of theory with a loyal set of adherents. But casual readers, while likely to be concerned about fundamental facts about money and its methods of exchange, may not be interested to read a lengthy thesis on the subject of macroeconomics as it relates to currency, and any links to monetarism in lieu of currency or money would be immediately recognized as systemic bias.
Remedies of the over-usage of memetics involve 1) reverting to usage of the word "trend" or "fad" in topics of a non-scientific nature, and providing a link to memetics in the "See Also" section of the pages, and 2) Re-evaluating this article from points of view other than the materialist one (which the predominantly materialist authors of this article will hopefully acknowledge). 161.149.63.107 ( talk) 21:10, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Please give some examples of pages that have been redirected as you allege. In any case, I'd have thought that their talk pages would be more appropriate places to complain. In what way do you think the "Meme" page would be improved by the inclusion of non-materialist ideas, and how would it help to counter the overenthusiasm for the idea of memes that you claim? Gareth McCaughan ( talk) 12:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Are languages[1] carried by memes? They are passed from person to person, but not genetically. The article mentions literature, poems etc - but how about the building blocks those are constructed from?
[1] I mean like French and German, not Fortran and C++. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.72.119.190 ( talk) 11:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I know Dan Dennett suggested words could be considered memes. This certainly seems true of slang, the way new words quickly spread within certain groups. And if it is true of some words, why not all? So I guess using this logic, each language would count as a memeplex —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.75.113.106 ( talk) 16:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Accepting the idea of memes certainly does not create a dualism. The type of problematic dualism which is alluded to in the article is of a different type from that which is propped up for examination. The problematic dualism is one in which the individual is truly and completely separate from the rest of reality as in the famous "cogito ergo sum". The thinker sees his "virtual head space" as immaterial in the normal sense and so separate from all that is "outside" it including the body and the rest of reality.
The "duality" created by the acceptance of the idea of memes is a different thing - probably a semantic error. To prove the point, I am a body, part of the universe, and memes run as personality software on my brain. There is no implied duality —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.85.2.68 ( talk) 03:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
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Just wanted to share this information with you: McGrath has written a good book about Richard Dawkins' worldview. He also discusses the concept of memes and why they lack scientific credibility. Please do yourself a favor and read it. The meme dies a painful death by self-reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.16.103.22 ( talk) 22:03, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Bluntly, the article in it's current state is a mess. Repetitive, incoherent, full of trivial miscellanea, way too long, unfocused, just a mess. Editors have been too tempted to play around in it, I think. But the topic warrants much more serious editorship, weeding out the junk, sticking to an outline, etc. Professor marginalia ( talk) 00:48, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
Meme: something that can be learned. Is this a good definition? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.74.126.23 ( talk) 21:30, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
The article is literally carpeted with policy violation templates-more than in any other article I've seen yet at wikipedia. There are easily an additional hundred inline tags alerting to violations in terms of reliable sources and original research, and now I'm finding serious problems in dozens of sources that were given, especially problems with synthesized claims. It is completely unallowed to incorporate content into the article, whether it be claims, arguments, examples, allusions, associations, conclusions, etc, unless that claim, allusion, etc, has already been published in a reliable source. So I'm posting this general reminder that editors must aquaint themselves with WPs core content policies, particularly verifiability and original research. Blogs, self published websites or uploads are almost never allowed to source claims at WP, and for this topic we need to focus especially on the key scholarly publications for sourcing. Professor marginalia ( talk) 23:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
I've replaced the fact tags and removed sources given. This is important: editors may not tease out likely historical precursors or associate the meme to Girard's mimetics or group psychology. They must find sources that do this, explicitly. In other words, find a source that wrote "the historical precursors of the meme concept are ex, why, zed"--or a source that claims "memes are akin to the earlier such and such". WP editors cannot make these associations, or identify certain similarities with earlier concepts. To do this is to engage in original research. I have no idea why this article attracts so much of it, but it is unacceptable for editors to add their own analysis into the articles at wikipedia. This article had what may have been a WP record 18 warning templates tacked to it at a week or so ago - it still has one because all the original research isn't cleaned up yet. Please heed it and stop adding new original research to this article! Professor marginalia ( talk) 20:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
The concept of a unit of social evolution predates Dawkins - it appeared in 1904 in a work by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon: Die Mnemische Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalenempfindungen, this was translated into English in 1921 as The Mneme. Dawkins certainly popularized the term, but the statement that he coined the term is not a NPOV.
Martin.Budden ( talk) 09:44, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
There is no such thing as a meme.
Pass it on. Karpinski ( talk) 17:36, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Haha... thank you. Memes are pseudoscience, as any psych, soc, or anthro student will tell you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.173.74.64 ( talk) 00:00, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
The idea of a meme is fascinating because it appeals to an analogy from biological evolution. However, this alone doesn't justify its use in cultural evolution. Analogy is usually the first try to explain different things when the scientists have no clue what the phenomenon really is. This is best described with light and wave motion. "Light functions as a wave, therefore we need a medium through which it can travel". This analogy gave birth to ether, which is now widely believed to be false. Why should we invent an analogy from biology (just for the sake of it) if there's already scholarship on the evolution of cultures? First the "meme theoreticists" should criticize current ways of studying the progress and change in cultures and provide a better theory. In my opinion memetics just won't do it.
The whole concept of meme seems superfluous, because it "explains everything". Any idea can be explained through the filter of memetics. Additionally, the problem of self-reference is troubling me. The ideas that "there are memes" or "there are no memes" are both explained with the theory of memetics, which means it is inconsistent. 94.101.5.97 ( talk) 16:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
That's what a meme is? I thought it was going to be something clever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.208.242.8 ( talk) 15:46, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
It would be interesting if the René Girard's notion of mimetic desire could be included in the article, which would explain how similar or how different it is to Richard Dawkins' theory. The ironic aspect of this is that Dawkins' theory almost looks like a meme of Girard's theory. Also, Girard believes that memes are very much compatible with the anthropological and sacrifical foundations of Christianity, while Dawkins takes the exact opposite view and sees it as evidence for atheistic evolutionism. ADM ( talk) 16:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Right now this is the opening paragraph:
This is most confusing since it fails to assert beyond any doubt what a meme is understood to be. I would like to know what a meme is asserted to be so that one can base one on such description to identify memes. A better alternative might be this:
I'm not contending this description is at all correct, but if it would be correct it would leave no mistake as to what a meme is and it would allow one to test whether or not anything in particular is a meme or not. The existing opening reads too casual, and asserts less powerfully than is possible what a meme is understood to be.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.193.54.119 ( talk) 01:19, 15 January 2009
I agree transmission can occur via vectors such as writing/reading as well. Exnewfie ( talk) 16:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
For some reason, this image was removed from the main page. Does anyone have any opinions on how to better integrate it into the article? Redwoodneo ( talk) 23:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
well that is what a meme pic is 174.131.0.138 ( talk) 19:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
otoh it sure spices up the talk page -- Utopianfiat ( talk) 20:46, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Dawkins invented the word "meme" and wrote "It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'." That seems an excellent reason to keep the word "cream" in the lead. There have been a number of edits to the "rhyming with" word recently. Most have been without edit summaries so it is not clear what the motivation for proposed changes is. Would anyone care to comment on what word should be used in the lead? Meanwhile I think changes with no stated reason should be reverted. Johnuniq ( talk) 01:56, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Memes are something that emerged from human evolution in our faces. They began appearing when mothers recognized that certain screaming fits their children were having, were from the children as members of the population of their own age - often three year old young children. The 'screaming fits' were quickly called the Screaming Me-Me's because children would recurrently cry out - screaming - Me! Me! as if no other word would mean anything, though a dinosaur would imagine the word should mean "Us! Us!". That children could recognize their age group was being quartered by callous treatment was a shock to grownups. SyntheticET ( talk) 17:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Dawkins did NOT invent the word meme, he says so in 'The Selfish Gene', which apparently was not read by the people citing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.167.254.100 ( talk) 15:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
If you're going to say he invented the word, you better site it correctly. Otherwise, it's baseless information and has no place in an encyclopedia type entry. I'll keep reverting your vandalism edits until you can cite your source.-- Mattbrown04 ( talk) 07:37, 25 March 2010 (UTC)