A First Foray Into the Ill Defined Field of Memetics
In 1979 Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" to mean an idea that would spread and mutate from mental substrate to mental substrate much the same way that genes mutate and spread from genetic substrate to genetic substrate, borrowing the ancient Greek word for "mimoses", meaning "mind". 50 years later "memetics" is a horribly abused term used only by people who take themselves way too seriously and is not a formal academic discipline. Yet doing an intial foray into "memetics" would be worth it in its many potential future applications, especially in dealing with large populations, and could pave the way for it to become an academic disciplene. So, I will be writing about "memetics" as the study of how ideas spread, and I will start exploring the field of memetics by analysis/synthesis: first listing many topics that could be a core tenant or could touch tangentially to the field, then distilling it to a few principles.
Analysis - List of Topics
This will be a list of topics or potential research questions at least indirectly related to "memetics"
- How social pressure reaches a "tipping point" in mass adoption of behavior or in-group signifiers
- How reaching a "tipping point" differs from nation to nation
- How genetic compositions determine how a "tipping point" is reached in a group (see)
- How genetic composition determine which behaviors a people is predisposed to spreading
- Lifespan of certain behaviors (fashion trends)
- "Top-down" vs. "Bottom-up' spread - whether behaviors are encouraged through distributed influence, such as "incubators", or whether they come from small in-groups that people want to demonstrate they are a part of
- "Incubators". Small in-groups that design behaviors that are intended to be propogated. What projects are successful, and what are not?
- "Latiators" - word of my own invention. From the latin word "latitat, latare" which means "to hide". When a small group of people adopt an insignia to identify themselves with that other people want to copy, spreading that way. Frequently not intentional, normally not designed. Spreads through interpersonal contact, not through information distribuition networks (news, magazines)
- Reasons why people would want to demonstrate being part of an in-group: strength in numbers, signifies well-socially adjusted or can make friends:
- Phrase counts will be easily quantifiable, but will not be as impactful as behavioral "memetic" spread
Who will use this?
Giving the tools to make ideas spread to large swaths of the current population sounds like a really bad idea. There are some positions taken that putting most of the third world on the internet (see here on Wikipedia, sort descending by "users") - a vision articulated by Larry Page in his Project Loon and executed by Google with the Android One Project (I think I remember on Larry Page's Wikipedia Page in 2023 it explicitly said he said he wanted to get the whole world on the internet, but it does not seem to be there anymore) - was a big mistake and filled the internet with low quality material, and I am personally inclined to agree with that. In the same way I do not think this knowledge should be widely distributed.
Synthesis
Any impactful study on the field of "memetics" will have to investgate the genetic composotions of populations to understand what emergent patterns