1. Evaluation

  2. Experiment choice

  3. Theory of memes

Evaluation

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In following 10-15 minutes please describe:


  1. POSITIVES :: What do You like about this course ? Did You learn something useful ?

  2. NEGATIVES :: What do You NOT like about this course ? Do You find something confusing / chaotic / difficult to understand ?

  3. CONSTRUCTIVES :: What are Your wishes for the rest of the semester ? Is there some specific topic related to cognition and/or digital technologies You would like to discuss ?

Experiment choice

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Please go to https://kastalia.medienhaus.udk-berlin.de/4406/, click on the title of experiment which interests You the most and assign it by bookmarking it (Actions->bookmark).

The turning point

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It is not plain "humans VERB machines/devices" anymore.

It starts to be more "machines/devices are PAST_PARTICIPLE(VERB) by humans"

VERB can be something like "use/used by; carry/carried by; create/created by"

The meme

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The term meme was coined in Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene, but Dawkins later distanced himself from the resulting field of study. Analogous to a gene, the meme was conceived as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.) which is "hosted" in the minds of one or more individuals, and which can reproduce itself in the sense of jumping from the mind of one person to the mind of another. Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen as an idea-replicator reproducing itself in a new host.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics )

Internalists and externalists

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Internalists define memes as informatic structures located in the brain.

Externalities define memes in terms of their observable expressions (cultural artifacts, behaviors etc.)

What is common to both camps is that they both attribute memes their own "urge to reproduce themselves", which is independent (and sometimes even contradictory) to needs of the "host" organism.


examples: language, rituals, songs, taking selfies, internet memes, chain letters, fashions and styles, WC prose, earworms, what else ?
 

Replicators of the second kind

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Blackmore (2000) defines "Meme is a replicator which replicates from brain to brain by means of imitation" . These replicators are somehow represented in the host brain as some kind of «cognitive structure» and if ever externalised by the host organism – no matter whether in form a word, song, behavioral schema or an artefact – they can get copied into other host organism endowed with the device to integrate such structures.

(Prolegomena Paedagogica, pp. 37-38)

Kinds of replicators

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  1. genes

  2. memes

  3. ... ???

  4. ... ???

Replicator dissonance

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"In order to reproduce, replicators consume energy." (Prolegomena, pp.6)

Given that the amount of available energy is always finite within an individual host, different replicators can get into conflict within individual hosts.

Take, as an example conflict between the memetic complex called "catholic doctrine" and gene-determined organic nature of an average Jesuit missionary.

Or a fanatic which willing to kill himself (and/or other people) just for the purpose of getting his lethal meme into media.

Or a conflict between conservative / liberal, left / right, carnivore / vegetarian memplexes etc.


Take home lesson

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There's a lot of activity going on in our mindbrain and some thoughts / behaviours / needs acting in our brain have their "own" interests!
 
Freud's iceberg model of unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious levels  
P.S. and it may be the case that machines, "they themselves", have also their "own" replicatory interests