Help me understand memes please.

[CharonY]

I do not understand your point. Which is fair, I guess as you do not seem to understand mine. Associating Christmas time with a tree is a meme. Many people do it because, well everyone is doing it. It typically does not get anyone laid. Therefore it is an example of a meme that is successfully propagating, yet does not have any effect reproduction. Other memes may include chance of reproduction. This is not optional for selection of genes, which was what the original comparison was about.

 

 

These replicators respond to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival.

 

Or in other words, if you do not have a tree you are unlikely to have less kids.

[Robittybob1]

Well obviously we are both just guessing here for I doubt whether it has ever been studied.

But the birthdates of the population can be graphed.

 

Ok putting up a Christmas tree is one of those end of year activities.

 

http://www.medicaldaily.com/pulse/happy-birthday-science-explains-why-september-16-most-common-birthday-america-352918

Though we don’t really know why so many babies are conceived in winter and born in autumn, a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology came up with a few hypotheses, including deterioration of sperm quality during summer, seasonal differences in anterior pituitary-ovarian function caused by changes in the daylight length, and variation in quality of the ovum or endometrial receptivity. Or, it could be the increased sexual activity that comes with end-of-the-year festivities.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Robittybob1

[CharonY]

Are you suggesting that Xmas trees got popular because it gets people to procreate....?

[Robittybob1]

Are you suggesting that Xmas trees got popular because it gets people to procreate....?

What I had come to realise was that all successful memes improve the person's chance of procreating if they carry those memes.

I don't think I'm the only one who has come to this conclusion.

 

So to answer your question it would be yes, but if the meme is dying out maybe it isn't so successful today.

Read #27 again for it has been edited.

this scene from Friends may have destroyed the meme for some people!

Edited January 30, 2016 by Robittybob1

[Robittybob1]

This idea is obviously correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

 

 

Dawkins noted that in a society with culture a person need not have descendants to remain influential in the actions of individuals thousands of years after their death:
But if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea...it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G.C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong.

But it is not the influence on the genetics of the host species I have seen proposed that the memes encouraged the development of the large brained human. I can see that the large brain enables memes to become included in culture but do they have the feed-back feature of encouraging by selection pressure of an increased brain size?

 

The person initiating the meme may have no offspring, Jesus of Nazareth certainly was the example that sprung to mind, but there definitely has been a major influence at least attributed to his teachings.

Initially his followers were persecuted by the Romans so it didn't seem to be the best superstition to have if you were expecting your genetics to influence future generations. Not only that but there were sects of the Christian superstition that advocated celibacy. Now that meme seems to go contrary to any concept I have been promoting. Maybe this was the reason that the sects practicing the celibacy memes soon died out.

 

I wonder if I can find an example that supports the contention?

In a paper by Susan Blackmore "Evolution and Memes:

The human brain as a selective imitation device"

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/cas01.html

 

This allows me to draw the following conclusion. Imitation is restricted to very few species and humans appear to be alone in being able to imitate a very wide range of sounds and behaviours. This capacity for widespread generalised imitation must have arisen at some time in our evolutionary history. When it did so, a new replicator was created and the process of memetic evolution began. This, I suggest, was a crucial turning point in human evolution. I now want to explore the consequences of this transition and some of the coevolutionary processes that may have occurred once human evolution was driven by two replicators rather than one. One consequence, I suggest, was a rapid increase in brain size.

The basic memes associated with making and using tools, making and using fire, and the use of cooking must have really put the pressure on for the evolution of intelligence.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Robittybob1

[Endy0816]

Memes persist via spreading to new minds. They don't depend upon carriers themselves reproducing(though somewhat obviously do depend on someone reproducing).

 

ie. The monks might be celibate, but parents of their newest Brother were not.

[Robittybob1]

Memes persist via spreading to new minds. They don't depend upon carriers themselves reproducing(though somewhat obviously do depend on someone reproducing).

 

ie. The monks might be celibate, but parents of their newest Brother were not.

What I haven't got across adequately is the spin off to the genetics of the population when one lives out his/her meme.

Take a male suicide bomber his meme ends up killing him and hence any evolution that may have resulted from his genome will never be tested.

While with priests nuns etc whom have proclaimed celibacy, yet still assist in the spreading of their memes (through their vocations).

Their genetic loss is probably made up through the size of their sibling family group.

Above I was thinking of sects where the whole group practiced celibacy (if it is really possible) in these groups the teaching would truncate any genetic predisposition that allowed the human organism to adopt the meme. That seems to have a self limiting effect on the viability of the congregation IMO.

[Strange]

What I haven't got across adequately is the spin off to the genetics of the population when one lives out his/her meme.

 

I don't think anyone has proposed such a connection. Do you have any evidence for it (beyond random speculation based on made up "facts"; e.g. "their genetic loss is probably made up through the size of their sibling family group").

 

The nearest thing I am aware of is the studies of language families and genetics to try and work out if, for example, agriculture and Indo-European languages arrived in Europe at the same time, and whether it was by cultural diffusion or invasion. The results are, as far as I know, inconclusive.

 

So if the question can't be answered for something where we have quite a lot of hard data, I don't see how it can realistically be applied to what is just a marketing buzzword.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Strange

[Robittybob1]

 

I don't think anyone has proposed such a connection. Do you have any evidence for it (beyond random speculation based on made up "facts"; e.g. "their genetic loss is probably made up through the size of their sibling family group").

 

The nearest thing I am aware of is the studies of language families and genetics to try and work out if, for example, agriculture and Indo-European languages arrived in Europe at the same time, and whether it was by cultural diffusion or invasion. The results are, as far as I know, inconclusive.

 

So if the question can't be answered for something where we have quite a lot of hard data, I don't see how it can realistically be applied to what is just a marketing buzzword.

In post #30 the work by Susan Blackmore supports it. Now how much research she has done I'm not too sure. But I could definitely understand what she was saying and it really made sense to me.

[i do watch a lot of YT videos so it wasn't just from that quote above but generally that I have come to admire her thoughts.]

 

That study on language would not really be the right one to pick up what I have come understand about memes. OK I could still be wrong but since a similar idea has been expressed by Blackmore, I am now looking for more evidence to support this relatively obscure notion that it was by the success of using and remembering a large number of memes that humans were naturally selected for increased intelligence (big brain).

We used activities that were learned and not just those known through instinct.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Robittybob1