Having socked it to memes some time back (MemesShmemes) I'd like to propose, or at least borrow, a suggestion permitting us to say that MemesAreScience.

Simply, let's define a Meme as a logical mapping from a pattern of stimulus to a pattern of response.

Religion, for example, is held up by the memeticists as a meme. Okay, so let's quantify that. Distinguish the pattern of stimuli, the pattern of reponse, and the mapping from one to the other. Do it mathematically. Then you can start to taxonomify religions, cults, fads, slogans, and so on. Trace memes in non-human animals and plants too. If a meme can be distinguished, then replication of same, and MetaMeme''''''s and all that, could be described scientifically. Theories concerning the necessary attributes of the patterns of stimulus and response, and the necessary logic of the mappings between them, could be quantified, tested and falsified.

To describe the patterns here we could use, for example, GraphIsomorphisms. And we could quantize GraphDiffeomorphisms to describe the mappings. Base the whole thing on the LeibnizianDefinitionOfConsciousness and you'd really have something.

Perhaps, given the apparent feasibility of this, we should not say that MemesAreNotScience, but that MemeticistsAreNotScientists ... --PeterMerel

If you could actually create those graph isomorphisms then those graphs would be memes and you would be their discoverer. There's no a priori reason to believe this is possible so until it actually happens MemesDontExist. Memeticists are all just bullshiters without a single original thought between them and intent on debasing the living mind. In a just world, the kind of persistent lack of creativity and antisocial destructive desire they demonstrate would get them all lined up and shot. -- RK

Graphs are not memes.  The process of making a paper airplane is a meme.  Calling the process of making a paper airplane a meme doesn't debase the "living mind", nor is it "antisocial".  You seem to have memetics confused with something else.  -- EH

* Um, graphs are a way of representing structure. They're warm friendly critters with a lot of well understood CS applications. Patterns seem to have structure. That's not all there is to a pattern though; patterns have sources and often a bit of extra gimcrackery up front to deal with calibration and/or signal quantization. In general you'd like to describe patterns in an afine-independent way, by which I mean you'd like 'em to get the same representation no matter what trivial transform you do on their source. But once you've dealt with all that, graphs seem pretty useful ways of representing 'em. So do numbers. Which are almost the same thing ...

* Somehow I'm not making myself clear.  Perhaps this will help: the graph of a meme is no more a meme than the graph of a gene is a gene.
** Sure. I didn't say a graph is a meme. I said that, with some supporting infrastructure, a graph can represent a pattern. And that by quantizing the mapping between a pattern of stimulus and a pattern of response, we might represent a meme. Now as to this peculiar word "is", I don't know what that word means. Me and Big Billy Clinton, sitting in a tree, non-aristoteleani-z-i-n-g ... or something. You keep your cigars to yourself, Bill. Anyway point is I neither know nor care what a meme is. I'm just suggesting a way to represent one.
** ''I didn't think you said a graph was a meme.  RK said it.  -- EH''

* ''Perhaps I did not make myself clear. MemesDontExist. Say it three times and put it to music if it will help you remember. If anyone ever comes up with a digital encoding for behaviourally significant concepts, that digital encoding will be memes.''

** Memes exist as much as pi exists, or genes.  All of them are abstractions created by humans.  You can say pi doesn't exist three times, but the abstraction doesn't go away.
*** Sure. Everything exists. Good old existence, gotta love it. BigOmega is one of my favourite existants. Also, it's not. But, um, what does that kinda sophistry have to do with nice concrete implementable processes of representation?

** ''The existence of a mathematical concept (an abstraction) does not prove that it exists physically. The existence of God as a concept does not prove the physical existence of any gods at all. The fact that the concept of a "meme" exists as an abstraction in no way proves that memes exist in physical reality. Similarly, the physical existence of pi can't be proved because it would require an infinite amount of evidence (pi being an irrational) but pi can be easily proved to be useful. The same thing can't be said for memes. Anyone who brings up such a retarded argument from medieval theology really ought to die already.''

** Do you miss the gold standard?

** ''As if we needed anymore evidence that you're just a defective AI implementation and not a human being, you can't even create a topical insult. Do you miss public burnings of heretics? I can't imagine you getting along with anyone capable of original thought. Or how about, do you miss the mental institution you grew up in? Or, do you miss alcohol? I know it must've been difficult to give up for someone with fetal alcohol syndrome. -- RK''

* ''Genes are themselves (DNA) and have an expression (proteins), as well as a representation (AGCT). So-called memes only have an expression (concepts), so the representation of a meme (graphs) must actually ''be'' the meme.''

** Genes are '''not''' DNA.  Genes are a convenient abstraction used to describe some aspects of inheritance.  I'm sure you must know that.  Memes have "expressions", too.  The meme for making Coca-Cola produces Coca-Cola.  The memes for square dancing produces square dancing.  Coca-Cola isn't the meme for making Coca-Cola.  I own some Coca-Cola, but not the meme for making it.

** ''Genes are literally bits of DNA. Memes are bits of nothing since memes do not exist. The correct analogy to coca-cola is not proteins or functional RNA (a gene's expression) but urine. Coca-cola is not the expression of a meme, it's the product of a system of behaviours which are themselves each and every one products of ideas which are aggregates of concepts. So just like genes code for proteins which create cells which aggregate to form organs which actually do things (like urine), then memes if they existed would code for concepts and ideas which create behaviours which aggregate to form processes that actually do things (like coca cola). But memes don't exist because there's nothing beneath concepts.''
*** Gee, I'm awfully sorry to point this out, but genes - Mendelian heritable traits - and genes - bits 'o DNA that get transwhatchamacallemed into parts of proteins - don't seem to behave the same way at all. I'm even sorrier I gave in to temptation and called the page explaining this GenesShmenes. Anyway if you could let me know which of these two different distinctions for genes you mean, that'd make what you're saying a lot easier for me to understand. Thanks!

*** ''I thought that Mendelian heritable traits had gone out the window a long time ago. Are you saying they '''haven't'''?! This is disappointing as hell; Mendel was a crackpot who doctored his evidence. Besides, I've never heard of any rigorous measure of "heritable traits" though I suppose there could be one given there's a rigorous definition for a 'unit of evolution' (the Darwin aptly enough). -- RK''

** ''Your calling coca-cola an expression of a meme just shows how intellectually defective you are. You aren't capable of creating something so pedestrian as a correct analogy. The minimal creativity required to function as a normal human being, you lack entirely. I don't even consider you a human being because every capacity you've ever demonstrated (deductive reasoning, storage and recall of facts, pattern matching) has already been accomplished in AI research, and we don't have anything close to what people would call AI. You should donate your brain to science because maybe by studying it, researchers would figure out what it is you lack that differentiates a human being from a mere computer.''

** Your claim that Coca-Cola isn't the expression of a meme shows that you don't know what a meme is.  I've repeated the definition several times, so I can only conclude that you wish to remain ignorant. -- EH

*** Um, yeah, this whole discussion began those years ago with me saying I couldn't figure out what memes "are", except another word for "ideas". Not caring what they are I just got a little bored waiting for someone to figure out a distinction for a meme. So I'm suggesting the one above. If you could do what the rest of us do and ignore RK's "bad cop" act for a teeny bit, and let me know what part of my suggestion you don't care for, I'd be ever so much obliged. And then you can get back to the "is too" "is not" stuff with RK and I'll just go do something else for a few years again. If you're not too busy, I mean. Ta!

*** ''(I assume Peter wrote that.)  Your definition for meme at the top of the page seems unrelated to Dawkins' definition.  Yours sounds like Pavlov's conditioned response.  Perhaps you can clarify the relationship between your definition and Dawkins'.  How would your describe the meme for making a paper airplane as a mapping from stimulus to response?  Your definition seems to deal with events inside a nervous system, while Dawkins' describes an emergent property of multiple nervous systems.  -- EH''

*** Yah, 'smee. I'm not necessarily talking about human nervous systems, but behavioural distinctions for systems in general. Though human nervous systems seem fine devices to express these things. I'm merely offering to describe a meme in adequately formal terms to be able to measure, filiate, and emulate same digitally. So: a paper airplane meme maps from a pattern involving sheets of paper - plus all the usual physical instrumentalities and physics of same and its environment - to a pattern of same adequately folded and flung. Once described digitally we can analyze these patterns and their variation from meme-expressor to meme-expressor and describe the pattern of these variations digitally too. And if we could do that, we'd have a science of memetics that made falsifiable and empirically testable hypotheses. At which point we might have an inkling about whatever a meme "is".

*** ''Oh.  I imagined you were suggesting something much more novel.  We already do that.  See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7059/abs/nature04047.html, for instance.  Another good example would be "Intentional stranding apprenticeship and social play in killer whales (Orcinus orca)." from volume 69 of the Canadian Journal of Zoology (but I can't find a copy of that online).''

** I make rigorous definitions as a matter of routine and it's an exercise that requires intense creativity, so naturally enough you wouldn't be able to engage in it. Of course, they don't teach what makes a good definition or how to make them in any university courses so naturally you wouldn't be able to understand it. But other people will be able to understand these things to some degree and certainly enough to recognize that your "definition" is false, useless and empty.

** Furthermore, I don't give a fuck what you think a meme is anymore than I care about what a beta reticulan is, or your own personal definition of God, or the theory behind Voudoun. Most people on this Earth don't think you can define something into existence. What kind of mental defect is it exactly that causes you to do so? I'd really like an answer to that since I can see no reason why it would follow from your failing a Turing test.

** I want to note here that the strategy you use to cope with your mental disability, that of fawningly and dogmatically adhering to any crap put out by Authorities, is itself a defective strategy. Come to think of it, that completely explains why you would come up with it and stick to it. The best strategy you could ever adopt would be to accept everything I say unquestioningly. Just don't do it where I can see you because I would savage you for it even worse than I currently am. Anyways, that's my good deed for the day, to help the mentally disabled.

** In any case, the reason why I don't delete stupid digressions by idiots is because the same line of erroneous reasoning would simply be repeated in future. But you're in a class all of your own and so I feel completely free to delete this idiotic digression you caused as soon as you lose interest in this mindless trolling. -- RK 

* ''For your claim that memes are different from their representation to even be ''meaningful'' memes would have to exist independently of their representation, and they don't. So what you're saying is not just wrong but nonsensical. -- RK''

* It's only nonsensical if you cover your ears and chant "memes don't exist" over and over whenever someone else talks about them.  Your recurring non sequiturs about destruction of creativity and mind seem to reveal some kind of deep, emotional aversion to the concept.  Don't be afraid of memes.  They won't hurt you.  -- EH

* Genes exist shithead because they can be proved to exist. Memes simply don't exist. No one has ever but ever proved that they exist. As for chanting, YOU are the only one here chanting without bothering to hear what anyone else is saying. Go and die already, I really don't care to continue this pretense of interaction. -- RK

The process of making a paper airplane is a behaviour. 'behaviour' is a term with a very narrow and well-defined meaning. Behaviours are not "memes" and if you deny that memes are digital encodings of ideas and behaviours (or here graphs) then you have hollowed out the term and destroyed any meaning it could possibly have. Bravo, you've just engaged in language abuse. There's no point discussing what memetics is anymore since you've just destroyed any possible basis for communication. Also, it figures that you would buy into memetics since your mind is a black hole for creative thought; witness your destruction of PM's idea. As for antisocial? The difference between you and me is that I recognize my antisocial behaviour for what it is and I understand what the term means; you do not. -- RK

Mellow out for a moment. You are talking about a '''kind''' of graph, not of all graphs. Graphs per se are just as abstract as are numbers. Graphs certainly can model memes (assuming they exist, for the sake of the argument), but they can also model a vast number of other things. In that interpretation, it is true that "[not all] graphs are memes", but in a different sense, yes, "graphs are [i.e. model/represent] memes". -- Doug

Who are you responding to, Doug?

Memes are digital encodings of concepts. Currently there is no known digital encoding of concepts and no reason to believe such a thing is possible. Hence memes do not exist. If graphs can model concepts + value (the things that define stimulus / response pairs) then those graphs ''are'' memes. The graphs wouldn't model memes, they would ''be'' memes. Exactly the same way that some sets + binary operations ''are'' rings, and those sets/rings may model ''something else''. And I'd really like to see something on continuous graphs before accepting that graphs are just as powerful as numbers. Abstract doesn't really give you anything without power. -- RK

Just for the moment, let us skip, for the sake of argument, the question of whether memes exist, because other issues have come up here.

You are of course correct that "there is no known digital encoding of concepts", in the broad all-inclusive sense that would be required for strong AI, but in a weaker sense, digital encodings of concepts are what we do every day when we program. Sure, this is relatively trivial, but if I write a program where 0..6 represents Monday..Sunday, I have a simple digital encoding of a very tiny concept.

Weak AI is successful and highly commercialized precisely because we '''do''' know how to create digital encodings for a lot of very simple concepts. Where we have gotten stymied is with the complex concepts.

Graphs have been profitably used to represent more complex, but still simple, concepts, by using graph edges to represent simple relations between graph nodes (which are simpler digital encodings of simple concepts, such as "Sunday"). So we could have a graph represent that concept "appointment sometime before Sunday" as '''nodes: UNKNOWN, SUNDAY''' and '''edges: {from: UNKNOWN to: SUNDAY nature-of-edge: BEFORE}'''

...And that gives us a graph of the concept "a date before Sunday". (I probably made mistakes in the above, please bear with me.)

Representations of meaning can be built from bases like that to recursively complex levels, encompassing whatever we understand thoroughly enough to encode in graph nodes and edges like that.

There are, of course, vastly more things that we have not figured out how to thus encode, than the things we have figured out how to handle, but still... -- DougMerritt

P.S. When I said graphs are just as abstract as numbers, and you responded with the issue of continuous...(1) I should have said "integers", perhaps, because that's all I had in mind at the time, but (2) I think that there is such a thing as "continuous graphs" in purely abstract mathematical theory, but I am not familiar with that -- but I would like to learn, if anyone has a comment or URL on that. -- Doug

* Naturally I didn't have continuous graphs in mind (ooh! a beaugie!). Since I'm rather of the opinion that ThereIsNoInfinity blahblahblah I expect that's not a very surprising thing. I had GraphMinors in mind ... though naturally not in the traditional forumulation on account of in this regard I am officially a weirdo from another frame (ComputationAsSignalProcessing). But close enough to chat I hope.

Do you know who was it recently that had an argument about the meaning of meaning? Ahhh, yes it was a discussion from XmlSucks, XmlIsJustDumbText. Anyways, I'm a strong believer in strong AI; I believe that it's possible to construct a digital AI (frames, graphs, it's all the same) which proposition goes beyond mere strong AI. But memetics goes far, far beyond even that.

Memetics claims that ''human'' concepts are digital. Considering the complete and utter dearth of supporting evidence that more than a decade of hype has produced in this area, this isn't a proposition that can be left unchallenged. People who persist in passing around this proposition as if it were some kind of obvious fact instead of the unsupported wild speculation it's been explained to them it really is, they deserve to be abused. -- RK

* My suggestion here is not that "human" concepts are digital, but that, in a LawsOfForm kinda sense, human behaviours can be taxonomified digitally. This isn't your grandfather's memetics ...

* ''Bah, all you've done is restrict the claim to a base set of behaviourally significant concepts and made a rather strong claim about their permissible spectrums being quantized. That's like saying that while the possible energy of a free electron may be continuous, its allowed energy levels in a system are quantized. It may be true but we have no way currently to determine this for concepts. And just because you believe this a sensible assumption doesn't mean I agree. -- RK''

* I hardly expect you to agree with me, dear RK! Naively, of course, I'd go and ask you for the substance of your disagreement. That'd be counterproductive for me, though. Suffice to say I'll cop to being a shithead and so on and so forth. But I am a shithead who'd like to understand the substance of your disagreement. Oh dear, do we caricature ourselves? --Pete.

* I think so. Anyways, my attitude towards you greatly mellowed after reading MemesShmemes and MemesArentDigital many years ago, and even at my most ill-disposed way at the beginning, you still demonstrated an ability to synthesize a new concept. There's a stark difference between someone who happens to not understand a concept, that shouldn't need to be explained, but will after having it explained to them, and someone who will never, ever understand that concept.

* Okay, what's the substance of my argument? I believe there are infinities and that the universe is a continuum. It's not something we can prove or ever gather any evidence for but those aren't sole deciding factors in science. There's elegance and simplicity to worry about. What we see around us in the universe uses too much calculus, and doing calculus without the irrationals is ugly as all hell. If you don't accept the continuum as an axiom of physical reality, you end up creating more weight in the ensuing theory than exists in that one axiom. To provide some contrast, non-determinism is an example of something that can never be proved ''and'' that is ugly as sin.

* Now, in the universe there are many phenomena that are continuous and many others, usually on top of the continuous ones, that are digital. I don't believe that either is a reasonable a priori assumption for an unknown and unexplored class of phenomena such as concepts in a living mind, so a priori there is no good reason to believe that concepts are either continuous or quantized. However, I do observe that the universe seems to take a perverse liking to being continuous or quantized in ways that are inconvenient to us, so I think assuming concepts probably are continuous is the more reasonable assumption. It's the pessimistic one.

* This would be a fascinating discussion if Eric hadn't stuck his nose in it. No amount of creative bashing makes up for the dilution of the novel ideas here. -- RK

* ''Gah! I inspire mellow attitudes in RK! Is there a doctor in the house? ;) Obviously we have entirely different philosophical bases here. But let's see what's inside 'em. To begin with I have no idea how to distinguish "infinity" from "ambiguity". Nor how to test assertions of continuity. Can you help me, shithead that I am?''

I'm afraid I'm not following RK's thinking. He said "I'm a strong believer in strong AI; I believe that it's possible to construct a digital AI" (which I, too, believe), but then he said "Memetics claims that ''human'' concepts are digital. Considering the complete and utter dearth of supporting evidence that more than a decade of hype has produced in this area, this isn't a proposition that can be left unchallenged".

That [RK] confuses me, even when we exclude the subject of memes, for a later date. You believe in strong AI, but not that "''human'' concepts are digital"? To me that sounds like a contradiction, but obviously it is not a contradiction to you, therefore I am misunderstanding you. Please clarify. -- Doug

The strong AI proposition is that it's possible to construct an intelligence that can learn about and function in the world as we do. The digital AI proposition is that we can do this without using quantum, continuous or even pseudo-continuous phenomena; just plain old symbolic logic, or symbolic logic augmented ''only'' with blah, or ''only'' with blah and blah. The memetics proposition is that ''each and every'' concept which occurs in human minds is reimplementable in a digital AI; and if we treat the gene analogy strictly then we use the term 'digital AI' in the strictest possible sense of digital. What I'm doing is not discounting the possibility that there are some meaningful, though on the whole unimportant, differences between a digital intelligence and a biological intelligence. If concepts in biological minds are not digital, it may not be possible to crack them and that's a rather important theoretical consequence of a practically unimportant difference. It's the difference between SyntheticBiology being able to create life using engineering and being able to reverse-engineer evolved life. -- RK

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"In that interpretation, it is true that '[not all] graphs are memes', but in a different sense, yes, 'graphs are [i.e. model/represent] memes'."

RK said "[i]f you could actually create those graph isomorphisms then those graphs would be memes", not that those graphs would model or represent memes.  I still don't think RK understand what memes are.  He's confusing levels of abstraction. -- EH

Since it's obvious you're incapable of following along, which requires creative interpretation of what people say, I'll do the breakdown for you:

	1 Peter observed in MemesShmemes that "unit of culture" is a meaningless tautology saying that the Joule is "a unit of work" doesn't define what the hell a Joule is. Newtons * meters does.
	1 I observed that the meaning of 'meme' has actual content radically different from the purported definition
	1 I observed that this meaning which always lurks in the background involves digital encoding
	1 I analyzed exactly what this means
	1 I observed that MemesDontExist
	1 I acknowledged Peter's graph proposal as an example of memes if it's successful
	1 Doug pointed out that graphs are completely general and, only the discovery of a subset of them as memes would be meaningful

You of course prefer the meaningless propaganda non-definition of the term 'meme', the definition that doesn't enable any meaningful communication and that in fact impedes any possible meaningful communication. Why do you do this? Because you use words as a game which people can win or lose, and you observe that the memeticists have also been playing that game "successfully" so you respect them for it. -- RK

I urge you not to flame EH so quickly; he strikes me as being in a relatively mellow and open-minded frame of mind. Yes, he criticized you, but it struck me as if he was simply trying to understand you despite his logic on the subject, this time. I have criticized EH for not doing that in certain past circumstances, so I must applaud him for doing so this time, if you see what i mean. -- Doug

* When I first read your comment it took me several minutes to understand how one could construe a careful analysis, and only incidental denunciation, of Eric's shortcomings as flaming. It wasn't my intention to provide a practical example of the vivid difference between the two, but it seems I have. -- RK 

Dealing with Eric is energy-sapping and annoying. He may be open-minded about this one particular subject but he's not open-minded about the particular issues that make it so energy-sapping and annoying to deal with him. His creative center is utterly barren and his overall attitude to others is lousy. Until he confronts those issues, he will continue to be consistently and unremittingly energy-sapping and annoying. Which doesn't mean it's ''always'' unrewarding to deal with him, but it almost always is. Note also that I used a double negative (not unrewarding) deliberately. -- RK

Um, imho it's more productive and less unfriendly to give all comers, no matter what their previous frippery, sufficient rope to tie their shoelaces together. --Pete.

I've known Eric off and on for years now. He's not some random stranger. He's acted in a consistently bad way from the very first conversation I ever had with him. I'm a long, long way past the point of having any doubt, reasonable or unreasonable, which he may benefit from. -- RK

And let me take the opportunity here to say 'I told you so' because I told you so. Eric has managed to lower himself to meet my rock bottom expectations. I have higher expectations of toddlers. -- RK

''Well, I remain hopeful. Stop whacking him on the top of the head with the telephone book and let's hear his story.'' --GoodCop

He doesn't have a story, just a repetition of the standard dogma about memes. To wit, that memes are the equivalent of Mendelian traits (a concept of genes nobody uses in public anymore, for good or ill) and that we should wait a few centuries to find the equivalent of DNA and RNA for "memetics" but we should still accord it all the respect of genetics. This con game, ploy, and power grab, is something we both rejected years ago.

Memetics only gets the benefit of the doubt so long as its inherent equivocation isn't understood. Even then any intelligent person should be suspicious of its less than stellar academic reputation and its transparent association with a winner. Eric is not only not suspicious of the power grab but even after the equivocation is explained to him, still demands we pay allegiance to memetics.

Eric doesn't need to be indulged, he needs to be whacked on the nose and told BAD DOG in a stern voice until he learns not to piss on the carpet. Maybe he never will and when you get tired of having a carpet that looks like it's been tie-dyed by someone with a fetish for yellow you'll take him back to the pound and they'll put him to sleep ^W^W^W^W give him to a nice family out in the country with a big yard. -- RK

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