 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
An Introduction to Memetic Theory
Introduction One if the difficulties with casual projects is that they have a tendency to be born out of ignorance. In this age of computers, there are lot of empowered people who have to potential for doing serious academic research. What used to require the facilities of large research laboratory can now be done at home. As such, people like myself have the freedom to take and idea and run with it. As you become familiar with this project it will likely become apparent that this is a project of convienence. It doesn't try to aligned with the professional posturing of memetic AI, or the social science position of viral simulation. It is my own project that I happen to have publically exposed. So please take everything with a grain of salt. It's just fifteen thousand lines of code and an inummerable amount of documentation written mostly by one person... How I See Memes The definition of a meme is something that represents a learned behavior or activity that may potentially by imitated. It is a process that may consist of small simple actions or even other memes.
Memes themselves have a lifecycle: as an idea, they can be created, acted upon, suspended, or discarded. More importantly, dormant memes are perfectly common; they can be traded, unknowingly carried or imposed on others. They are generated based on the simulated environment and the passing of time. In my interpretation of a memetic simulation system, creatures can only do one thing at a time. Thus creatures can only have one "active meme". In the background, many other memes compete to get an opportunity to expose themselves. These are known as latent, dormant or potential memetic behaviors. Basically, I started down a path thinking about modelling complex behavior in this manner. Bear in mind, the meme metaphore didn't really solve any problems, per se, but it got me thinking - and thinking is good. In particular, if you look online or do some research, you'll see there are all sorts of people talking about memes and memetics, the study of memes. The nice part about this is that they've all made their own jargon to solve their own problems. And by thinking about thier problems, jargon, and solutions, we can better understand our simulation needs. The Origin of Memes memes first appeared in book about genetics, the selfish gene genes do not sufficiently explain the evolution of all creatures creatures adapt and grow based on their environment the term meme was coined to represent a behavior the occurs in a society people have attempted to extrapolate much from the parallel from meme and gene genes change from generation to generation within a species memes change from moment to moment within a single creature if a creature's fixed behavior pattern is based on its memes... a change in its behavior pattern comes from a changing environment... and memetic mutation memetic mutation is likened to a virus this is where social scientists have tried to bridge a gap social scientists want to have models like biological scientists
The Science of Memes memetic algorithms / genetic algorithms / knowledge engineering expert systems, ontological research genetic algorithms memetic algorithms teleo-reactive systems social pattern engineering The Social Science of Memes just as a biologist studies the movement of virus where a viral susceptability is ultimately described by genes... anthropologists study social patterns and the evolution of behavior where a viral suspeptability may be described by memes...? the stumbling around with the meme metaphore has supportive bits language aids knowledge transfer and active creation of memes observation and imitation encourages passive transfer of memes some scientific models have tried to show ideas spread at a mathematical model others try to match this model to biological models to The Science Fiction of Memes isaaic asimov's foundation series formulated that social behavior was modelable memetic theorists, found on newsgroups, etc. are taken with similar ideas chaos theorists extoll the complexity of social patterns memetic theory dovetails scientists, authors, and hucksters ultimately they are proposing a grand unification of reality modelling while i don't fit into this category, i do like to |
I use the word to simplify how we talk about creature behavior. Of course, memes are only one part of a larger system. They are a process that lives within a creature, which in turn, lives within a simulation. This simulation, the stimuli of the creature and the concept of time, all play a part, but are separate from memes.
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
