(Note: This version is very slightly different from the published,
edited, version)
Massimo Pigliucci’s objections to memetics ("The Trouble with
Memetics", Skeptical Inquirer, September/October 2007) mostly
misconstrue the basic idea of memes. So I’d like to explain where I
think he has gone wrong and why memetics really could have a bright
future.
Several of his arguments take the following form:
Memes are not like genes in respect of X
Therefore the analogy between memes and genes is false
Therefore memetics is false.
But analogies between memes and genes need not be close. To see why
we must go back to the origin of the term ‘meme’. As Pigliucci
himself explains, Dawkins invented the term to refer to a cultural
replicator; that is, to information that is copied from person to
person, or person to artefact. This information (whether ideas,
skills, habits or stories) varies, and the variant forms are subject
to selection, so this counts as a replicator. Genes and memes are
both replicators and therefore should have much in common, but they
are very different kinds of replicator, so we should expect many
differences too. This means that analogies may help us in deriving
hypotheses about the way the new replicator works, but could also
lead us astray if we expect them to be too close.
Pigliucci’s first “X” is that “there doesn’t seem to be any
distinction between memes themselves and the phenotypes they
produce.” Agreed – in many cases but not all. More interestingly I
think that memes are actually evolving this distinction right before
our eyes. Think about it this way. Genes have been evolving for
about 4 billion years. Starting from very simple self-replicating
molecules they have ended up packaged inside elaborate vehicles, and
with fabulously high-fidelity, effective copying machinery,
involving accurate transcription, random variation, and a separation
between the germ line (which is copied) and its phenotypic
expression (which is not). Memes have been around for, at most, 2
million years but now they are catching up very fast indeed, and are
rediscovering such “good tricks” as separating out the replicator
itself from the products it makes possible; a trick that, among
other advantages, avoids errors accumulating and allows for easier
redesign of phenotypes.
This direction of change can be seen all around us. Suppose someone
sings a song and someone else copies it – there is no split, and
errors accumulate. Compare this with the song being written down in
musical notation and lots of perfect copies being printed. The
number of copies made depends on the popularity of the song, just as
in biology the number of genes passed on depends on the success of a
phenotype. Or think about the difference between someone watching
someone else build a grass hut or a wattle fence and then trying to
do it themselves, and the building of a block flats in which
instructions for making bricks, windows, pipes, roof tiles, etc. are
accurately copied in computers or on paper, and then the block of
flats is built but not itself copied. You can think through similar
examples such as cars produced in factories, books printed in
presses, clothes fashions spread by competition between factory
produced items. Then there are computers. Think about Microsoft
Word. This software is copied with perfect fidelity in billions of
computers around the world, but its success depends not on anyone
seeing the code, but on the success of the documents it produces – a
germ line/phenotype split if ever there was one.
Memes are already overtaking genes in their evolutionary
innovations. Whereas until now human brains (the original, slow and
imperfect meme machines) have done most of the copying, varying, and
selecting of memes, this is changing. Already computers, especially
on the Internet, do much of the copying, and they are beginning to
take on the tasks of producing variants and even of doing the
selecting (think viruses, crawlers, automated essays, but especially
search engines). I believe that we can only understand what is going
on here by taking a meme’s eye view and being realistic about our
own, diminishing, role in the process.
Among Pigliucci’s other Xs is that memes have no obvious physical
basis, but this is simply wrong. They are information that is copied
– whether as variations in the airwaves of human speech, or as
something hard to pin down like a dance or a vague idea, or
(increasingly) as digital information stored in physical systems.
I
won’t pretend that memetics is easy, but these objections will not
do. I think we’ll find that memetics’ greatest strength lies in its
vision of culture as a vast parasitic system evolving increasingly
fast, and using we human meme machines as a resource for its own
inevitable expansion. The way it sucks up the planet’s resources
without care of the consequences is now our greatest challenge.
