Is video game violence memetic?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by RevBob

Exactly. Ideas are memes, not building blocks. (Although, as noted, simple memes can be building blocks for complex ones.) Just like I keep saying.

I didn't say that ideas are building blocks. I said that memes are what ideas are made from.

No. "Ideas are building blocks, not memes" and the whole "codons, proteins, amino acids" overextension of that are your babies.

That they are the discrete replicators of cultural imitation, as genes are for biological heredity, isn't mine.

I agree with Dawkins' analogy. I disagree with yours, because you've warped it into an overextended and incomprehensible mess.

I'm sorry.

EDIT: When I said "Memes aren't ideas. They are the building blocks of ideas." I meant "Memes aren't just ideas, they are the smallest possible elements of cultural expression that can independently replicated." Does that help?

I apologize for my lack of clarity.

[RevBob]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I didn't say that ideas are building blocks. I said that memes are what ideas are made from.

And that's backwards. Memes are made of ideas, not vice versa. An American flag pin is a meme that carries several messages based on patriotism and loyalty. A lolcat image is a meme that depends on the interaction between the photo and the caption to convey a concept.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

EDIT: When I said "Memes aren't ideas. They are the building blocks of ideas." I meant "Memes aren't just ideas, they are the smallest possible elements of cultural expression that can independently replicated." Does that help?

It clarifies your statement greatly, but I take issue with your "smallest possible" requirement. That goes against everything I know of the subject. Memes are what every ad campaign, every marketer, every campaign manager is striving to create. They are, as I said at the outset, ideas wrapped in marketing - although "marketing" conveys an exclusively commercial sense that is inaccurate.

Christianity is a meme. Capitalism is a meme. A photo of a bunny with a pancake on its head is a meme. The Star Wars logo is a meme. A book cover that depicts a rear view, usually from the neck down, of an athletic woman in tight pants who is holding a weapon at night* is a meme. "Attack them over there so they won't attack us over here" is a meme.

"Smallest possible" is an invalid part of your definition.

* This is basically the standard "urban fantasy novel with female main character" cover template.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by RevBob

And that's backwards. Memes are made of ideas, not vice versa. An American flag pin is a meme that carries several messages based on patriotism and loyalty. A lolcat image is a meme that depends on the interaction between the photo and the caption to convey a concept.

That's maybe what the slang meaning means now but it is not what Dawkins meant.

"We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation."

It clarifies your statement greatly, but I take issue with your "smallest possible" requirement.

That's what that whole discrete replicator thing is about, just as genes are the smallest replicable unit of biological heredity.

That goes against everything I know of the subject. Memes are what every ad campaign, every marketer, every campaign manager is striving to create. They are, as I said at the outset, ideas wrapped in marketing - although "marketing" conveys an exclusively commercial sense that is inaccurate.

Memes aren't just marketing, they'd be the carriers of all cultural imitable cultural information just as genes are the carriers of all heritable biological expression.

"Smallest possible" is an invalid part of your definition.

It's inherent in the idea of a meme being a unit of transmission just like a gene is.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It's inherent in the idea of a meme being a unit of transmission just like a gene is.

Not so much. Dawkins is a poor mathematician, and he doesn't use "unit" as nicely as I'd like. I recall (but can't immediately find) a passage of his in which he is discussing the question "what is a gene" and makes it clear that he doesn't mean "base pair" nor even anything as strict as "codon", but any stretch of DNA that is reproduced reliably enough to be significantly subject to selective pressures (and, implicitly, to approach equilibrium).

[RevBob]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Not so much. Dawkins is a poor mathematician, and he doesn't use "unit" as nicely as I'd like. I recall (but can't immediately find) a passage of his in which he is discussing the question "what is a gene" and makes it clear that he doesn't mean "base pair" nor even anything as strict as "codon", but any stretch of DNA that is reproduced reliably enough to be significantly subject to selective pressures (and, implicitly, to approach equilibrium).

Plus, "meme = gene" is an analogy, and an imperfect one. If you're discussing memes and get to the "genes don't work like that" level, you've gone too far with the analogy and it's time to back away. Once the analogy interferes with understanding rather than aiding it, it is no longer doing its job and should be discarded.

Personally, if I were making the analogy in biological terms, I'd liken memes to viruses, not individual genes or even strands of DNA. They get transmitted from person to person, where they either replicate (sometimes mutating in the process) or get rejected (ie. destroyed by antibodies). They carry "genetic payloads" of various sizes - the message(s) - and some are more "contagious" than others.

[Flyndaran]

And many are impossible to replicate in given hosts. I can't get Dutch elm disease or religion.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by RevBob

Personally, if I were making the analogy in biological terms, I'd liken memes to viruses, not individual genes or even strands of DNA. They get transmitted from person to person, where they either replicate (sometimes mutating in the process) or get rejected (ie. destroyed by antibodies). They carry "genetic payloads" of various sizes - the message(s) - and some are more "contagious" than others.

That's partly a failure to distinguish between two different uses of the word memetics. The transmission package is the part people are most interested in from the standpoint of game rules (and most real world applications), but is not actually the part that fits the concept of meme as initially defined. It probably should have gotten another name.

[RevBob]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's partly a failure to distinguish between two different uses of the word memetics. The transmission package is the part people are most interested in from the standpoint of game rules (and most real world applications), but is not actually the part that fits the concept of meme as initially defined. It probably should have gotten another name.

Probably so, but since we're discussing the game concept... <shrug>

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Not so much. Dawkins is a poor mathematician, and he doesn't use "unit" as nicely as I'd like. I recall (but can't immediately find) a passage of his in which he is discussing the question "what is a gene" and makes it clear that he doesn't mean "base pair" nor even anything as strict as "codon", but any stretch of DNA that is reproduced reliably enough to be significantly subject to selective pressures (and, implicitly, to approach equilibrium).

What "gene" means in biology (and what Dawkins seems to be consistent with) is the information needed to transcribe a single functional polypeptide protein or RNA strand. It is stored as DNA, and for polypetide instructions consists of a series of three-base pair groups (called codons) which correspond to either an amino acid or serve as the start or stop instructions for transcription. A gene is a discrete unit in the sense that it's the smallest part of the instructions that can build a functional structure.

Here is where the analogy has to hold for memetics to be valid. As genes are to biological heredity memes must be to cultural imitation.

Originally Posted by RevBob

Plus, "meme = gene" is an analogy, and an imperfect one. If you're discussing memes and get to the "genes don't work like that" level, you've gone too far with the analogy and it's time to back away

The analogy has to hold somewhat for memetics to be valid. Specifically the following must be true:

• Memes are discrete replicators.
• Memes are the only way that cultural information is imitable. Therefore all imitable culture is memetic.

If you have a model of socio-cultural evolution in which these aren't true, then you don't have memetics. You have some different competing model (of which there are now several that have been proposed as alternatives).

Personally, if I were making the analogy in biological terms, I'd liken memes to viruses, not individual genes or even strands of DNA.

Yes, the Laurie Anderson metaphor.

They get transmitted from person to person, where they either replicate (sometimes mutating in the process) or get rejected (ie. destroyed by antibodies). They carry "genetic payloads" of various sizes - the message(s) - and some are more "contagious" than others.

That can be valid, and the rest be too.

Originally Posted by RevBob

Probably so, but since we're discussing the game concept... <shrug>

What LOGOS discovers in 2078 isn't apparently just a model of socio-cultural evolution, or a model of persuasion and marketing. It apparently proves memetics as the theoretical model for socio-cultural imitation and evolution. It didn't prove some other different model, and it didn't just give some sort of mere phenomenological study of marketing, it developed a "revolutionary", "profound" theory of "the way that ideas propagated through individuals and society".

Originally Posted by TS14

2078: The sapient artificial intelligence LOGOS publishes its revolutionary study of memetic theory, The Propagation of Human Ideas.

Originally Posted by TS22

A new, profound understanding of the way that ideas propagated through individuals and society – memetic theory –

Originally Posted by TS86

In 2100, memetics is a subfield of psychology, focusing on the semantic content of ideas and the means by which they can be most efficiently spread through human populations. Memetics is related to such early disciplines as advertising, education, and religious proselytism, but made rigorous by a thorough understanding of how the human brain stores and handles information.

Originally Posted by TS87

In 2100, memetics is to psychology and sociology as genetics is to biology and ecology.

Originally Posted by TS204

meme: The cultural analog of a gene. An idea, behavior, story, advertisement, or other concept that propagates from one person to another.