Intracranial memetics

A transcript of the above talk

The Darwinian invasion of the social sciences began with the idea that the human mind was an adaptation, and this was actually a deep and fundamental principle that affected everything.

However, while existing social scientists were adapting to that revolution there were then other invasions by the Darwin enthusiasts.

Perhaps low-level brain structures were doing something akin to Darwinian evolution in a form of somatic selection - with axons competing for connection sites, neurons competing with other neurons during development - and so on.

Perhaps there was also something akin to natural selection going on between ideas as well - with new ideas arising as mutations of old ones, and then survival of the fittest taking place between the variants inside individual minds.

That brings us to a reductionistic approach to memetics - which involves considering the fate of memes when they are inside skulls separately from their fate when they are in the outside world.

On one hand there is inter-cranial memetics - which considers the brain to be a black box, and considers the epidemology of ideas when they exist outside brains.

On the other there is intra-cranial memetics - which considers the external world to be a black box, and considers the fate of ideas within brains.

Here's fellow YouTuber Lord Immolation on the issue:

[footage of Lord Immolation]

To illustrate with an example, consider the propagation of Islam and Christianity. Intercranial memetics might consider the routes these ideas take into brains - holy books, evangelism, marriage, and so on. By contrast, intracranial memetics might consider the fates of these ideas once they were inside a brain. Is a Christian considering marriage to a Muslim going to convert, in order to appease their mate? For an idea, making its way into a brain is often not enough - it then often has to battle its way to dominance with the existing inhabitants.

Intercranial memetics treads on turf traditionally occupied by sociologists - whereas intracranial memetics treads on turf traditionally occupied by psychologists.

Intercranial memetics is Darwinian - in that it exhibits reproduction, variation and selection - provided you are prepared to accept that reproduction takes place as a result of dynamics hidden in the black box representing brains.

Intracranial memetics itself can also be seen as being Darwinian in character - inside brains there is variation, selection and at least a bit of reproduction operating on ideas.

Many ideas enter a crainium from the environment, and then compete for space with the existing occupants. However, there are also ideas that arise from within - and some of those may never leave an individual's cranium.

It seems pretty obvious that ideas may mutate, and compete for limited mental resources with other ideas. As Linus Pauling once quipped: "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away". However, the question of whether ideas reproduce very much is not so clear. First, here's Daniel Dennett on the issue:

[footage of Daniel Dennett]

Daniel's point is made amusingly - but it is hard to take it very seriously. I mean: every time? What if you repeat something 10 times? 100 times? It is reasonable to think that your short-term verbal memory can hold a dozen items or so, including some duplicate copies, but if there is very much repetition the brain probably only stores the repeated information once, and simply counts the repetitions. This raises the issue of whether the brain makes multiple copies at all.

Among computer programmers there's a proverb, which goes: replace repeated code with calls to a common function. There's also advice about when to apply this proverb, which goes: Tolerate duplication, refactor triplication. Could the brain work something like that?

Possibly - but if you think about how the brain works at a neural level, there's probably a strong tendency to reuse concepts. However, pragmatically it's probably possible to regard copying as taking place, even if the underlying concepts are being reused.

Imagine you form a plan to shop for a present for your mother. Anticipating a positive outcome, you also plan to shop for a present for your father. The second plan can be usefully said to be largely a copy of the first plan. Elements of the plan have been copied - even though there may be reuse of the underlying neural structures representing the concepts of shop and present.

So, with variation, reproduction and selection, the contents of a single mind can be viewed as operating with Darwinian dynamics. Probably, the next issue that arises is whether the mutation rate is low enough to prevent a genetic meltdown. Some childhood memories can last a lifetime - so there is at least a basic level of resistance to noise. However, this video is an introductory one - and such issues can be addressed at a later date.

Enjoy,