The Chain Letter PDF

Culture The Chain Letter The physicist Charles Bennet and colleagues collected 33 versions of a chain letter – They quickly found that some were “parents” of other, slightly different versions – With a little work, they were able to arrange the letters in a family tree This was able to show how the...

Culture The Chain Letter The physicist Charles Bennet and colleagues collected 33 versions of a chain letter – They quickly found that some were “parents” of other, slightly different versions – With a little work, they were able to arrange the letters in a family tree This was able to show how the letters changed and mutated over time The Chain Letter Different lineages – Bigger prizes might have caused readers to send out more copies The RAF Officer won $470,000 or $70,000 Gene Welch received $1,755 before his wife’s death – In an offspring version, he received $50,000 from his wife’s lottery winnings before her death – Some messages might have resulted in more copies in some circles, but not others In some lineages, it began with “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and he will light the way.” The Chain Letter The physicist Charles Bennet and colleagues collected 33 versions of a chain letter – They quickly found that some were “parents” of other, slightly different versions – With a little work, they were able to arrange the letters in a family tree This was able to show how the letters changed and mutated over time The Chain Letter The parallels with biological evolution are clear… The Chain Letter Bennet, Li, and Ma (2003) – These letters have passed from host to host, mutating and evolving. Like a gene, their average length is about 2,000 characters. Like a potent virus, the letter threatens to kill you and induces you to pass it on to your “friends and associates” – some variation of this letter has probably reached millions of people. Like an inheritable trait, it promises benefits for you and the people you pass it on to. Like genomes, chain letters undergo natural selection and sometimes parts even get transferred between coexisting “species.” The Chain Letter Chain letters might be subject to natural selection – Natural selection creates entities that Look like they were designed Have functions What’s the function of a chain letter? – Their sole function is to pass themselves on – Just like a gene or a virus, this is what they’re designed to do – Why? Well, partly because that’s what the people who wrote or modified the letters were aiming for But, also because any letters that failed to get themselves copied and passed on were eliminated from the chain letter population – And, as a corollary… The Chain Letter Any chain letters that were particularly persuasive, even if their authors had no idea why, multiplied at a faster rate – The letters were shaped, in part, by blind and mindless selection Successful chain letters weren’t selected because – They were good for the individual sending or receiving them – They were good for society as a whole Successful chain letter were selected because they were good for themselves – This is in the simple sense that they got themselves copied at a faster rate than less appealing variants Another Example Chain letters aren’t the only example… – Hoax computer virus warnings “If you receive an attachment titled Budweiser Frogs Screensaver, do not open it! If you do, it will steal your credit card details, wipe your hard drive, and blow up your computer. Forward this email to all your friends!” There is no computer virus Ironically, the only virus is the warning itself These are “selfish” cultural elements The whole reason for their existence is to pass themselves on Cultural Artifacts We might assume that these selfish cultural artifacts are different from most of human culture – Most cultural products are more useful to us than chain letters or hoax emails – Most help us survive, make us happy, or benefit the groups which we belong Is it possible that the same forces that shape chain letters and hoax emails also shape culture in general? Is it possible that the ultimate function of any cultural entity or institution is to replicate itself? – Whether it benefits us or not? Memetics Based on the concept of the “meme”, which Richard Dawkins coined in his The Selfish Gene (1976) The core idea of memetics – Memes, like genes, are subject to natural selection – Selection favors “selfish” memes Memes that, through accident or design, are good at getting themselves replicated and keeping themselves in circulation in the culture Memetics When people give examples of memes, they tend to fixate on quirky pieces of contagious culture – Examples are jokes, recipes, writing “clean me” in the dirt of a dirty car, catchphrases, catchy tunes, ways of tying a knot, viral internet images, etc. The concept of memes embraces anything and everything that can be passed on via social learning Just as genetics is the science of genes, memetics is the science of memes Other approaches to culture focus on how cultural products benefit the individual, group, or both Memetics focuses on how cultural products benefit the cultural products themselves Intelligent Design Certain things look like they were intelligently designed – Nearly all of them are either human artifacts or biological structures Beer bottles and cactus stems look like they were designed to hold liquid Human brains and computers look like they were designed to process information Intelligent Design Where does the design come from? – Opinions differ… Creationists say – The design we see in biology comes from God or an Intelligent Designer – The design we see in our artifacts comes from us (i.e., humans) Darwinians – The design we see in biology comes from the mindless process of natural selection – The design we see in our artifacts comes from us (i.e., humans) – Some caveats to this, though… There is a smidgeon of intelligent design in the biological world – This doesn’t come from a deity, but from human beings selectively breeding things » i.e., new kinds of dogs, sweeter fruits, brighter flowers, fatter cows, etc. The artifacts are not all purely of intelligent design – Intelligent design is just one source of design – Blind selection plays a critical role Breton Boats Fishing boats used by Breton fisherman in the Ile de Groix – If anything is the product of intelligent design, it’s a boat, right? – The French philosopher Emile-Auguste Chartier (aka Alain) took a Darwinian approach… Breton Boats Chartier (1908) – “Every boat is copied from another boat … Let’s reason as follows in the manner of Darwin. It is clear that a very badly made boat will end up at the bottom after one or two voyages, and thus never be copied … One could then say, with complete rigor, that it is the sea herself who fashions the boats, choosing those which function and destroying the others.” Breton Boats Chartier’s logic – If a boat returns, the boat makers may copy it – If a boat doesn’t return, boat makers won’t copy it – Therefore, the boats that are most likely to be copied are those that survive the longest No intelligence is required – No one needs to know why these particular boats survive To make a good boat, you don’t need to understand what makes a boat good – You only need to be able to copy another boat How do you know you’re copying a good boat? – Well, you don’t need to know because the sea automatically culls the not-so-good boats from the population – Additionally, especially good boats get copied at a faster rate Over time, this process of culling and copying fashions more and more seaworthy boats Conditioned Behavior According to B. F. Skinner, most of our behavior is learned… – … and learning is literally an evolutionary process Here, Skinner means learning by operant conditioning – If your dog brings you your slippers and you give it some beef jerky, the dog will be more likely to bring you your slippers in the future The dog has been reinforced – If your dog chews your favorite slipper and you shout at it, the dog will be less likely to chew your slipper The dog has been punished Conditioned Behavior Skinner (1953) discussed the parallels between operant conditioning and Darwinian evolution – “In certain respects, operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.” Conditioned Behavior Biological evolution – Involves selection by death or failure to reproduce Operant conditioning – Involves selection by behavioral consequences Behavior that has positive consequences is selected – It increases in frequency within the organisms “population” of behaviors Behavior that has negative consequences is selected against – It decreases in frequency and may ultimately go extinct – Through reinforcement and punishment Random behavioral “mutations” are slowly sculpted into complex patterns of adaptive behavior – The slow accretion of imperceptibly small modifications produces both: Large scale evolutionary changes Voluntary behavior Conditioned Behavior This can produce the illusion of intelligent design – If your two friends, Jack and Jill, have different senses of humor You may end up cracking different kinds of jokes with Jack than with Jill To an outside observer, this may look like you're deliberately tailoring your jokes – You could be, or… – You joke-telling habits may have been slowly sculpted by Jack and Jill’s reactions without your awareness » In this case, your behavior is the result of blind natural selection, rather than intelligent design Natural selection set up a learning system that itself works according to the principle of natural selection – … neat! Language An observer might think that language is the result of an intelligent designer… – With only a handful of exceptions (e.g., Esperanto, Klingon, etc.), languages have no authors Languages are the products of an evolutionary process – The inevitable result is that languages evolve to be more learnable and useful over time Language Darwin (1871) – “Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues… Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together. We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Muller has well remarked: – “A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue.” To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.” Language In biology, a single species divided into isolated populations can evolve – First into distinct breeds or subspecies – Ultimately into entirely new species The same is true of languages – A single language spoken by two isolated populations can evolve First into distinct dialects (the linguistic equivalent of breeds or subspecies) Ultimately into new languages (the linguistic equivalent of species) The analogy between biological evolution and language evolution is surprisingly close Teddy Bears The capitalist marketplace is rife for cultural evolution… there are so many examples – Species compete for limited food, resources, and space – Products compete for limited space on supermarket shelves and bestseller lists This competition fosters the evolution of products exquisitely designed to suck money out of people’s pockets and bank accounts Importantly… – Business people don’t necessarily need to know why some products sell better than others – They only need to copy the ones that do To the extent that this happens, the design we see in products is more the result of natural selection than of intelligent design Teddy Bears The cultural evolution of the teddy bear… – The first teddy bears went on sale in the early 1900’s They had long snouts and long, thin limbs – They were ugly Teddy Bears Teddy bears got progressively cuter as the century wore on – Their snouts receded, giving them a cute, flat face – Their foreheads grew larger – Their limbs grew shorter and chubbier They became more neotenous (i.e., baby-like) Teddy Bears How can one explain the evolution of Teddy Bears? – Successful teddy bear makers were sensitive to market trends and copied the designs that sold best the previous season – Little by little, teddy bears drifted towards neoteny – Did successful bear makers know that increasing neoteny was the secret of their success? I doubt it… because if they knew, they could have just jumped straight to the most neotenous models – They probably only noticed it after the fact Any time you or anyone else buys anything, you’re guiding the evolution of culture Science Karl Popper (1972) – The growth of scientific knowledge is literally an evolutionary process within the realm of ideas – Science involves two key ingredients of Darwinian evolution: variation and selection Scientists propose competing theories about the nature of the universe (variation) Scientists cull those theories that don’t match what they see int eh world and in the lab (selection) – An earlier scientific theory is displaced by a newer theory that matches our observations more closely e.g., Einsteinian relativity replacing Newtonian physics The end result is that our theories evolve, step by step towards greater and greater accuracy Universal Darwinism Natural selection is one of the greatest ideas in all of science – But, how far does it extend? Universal gravitation – Applies to all matter everywhere in the universe Plate tectonics – Applies only to the Earth’s outer crust What about natural selection? – Richard Dawkins outlined a view called universal Darwinism Universal Darwinism – The core idea is that natural selection operates not just on genes, but on any replicator Memes A replicator is anything that gets itself copied – As long as the copying process is less than perfect, errors inevitably will creep in This will give rise to new variants – By pure chance, some of those variants will have properties that cause them to be copied at a faster rate than others Barring some disaster, these variants will come to dominate the replicator population For most of the last 4 billion years, genes have been the only replicators on the planet Within the relatively recent past, a new replicator has emerged sitting right under (behind?) our noses – Memes Memes Memes are units of cultural transmission – e.g., ideas, beliefs, practices, and anything else that can be passed on via social learning Memes – Jump from mind to mind – Are subject to natural selection in much the same way that genes are Example – – – – – The concept of the meme itself I got the concept from Dawkins. If you like it, you may pass it on to someone else (positive selection) If you don’t like it, you won’t pass it on to someone else (negative selection) Thus far, the meme meme has done well in the competition for survival in the marketplace of ideas (or meme pool) Boyd and Richerson proposed an alternative label for the units of culture and called them “cultural variants”… but this never really took off Wilson and Lumsden proposed the term “culturgen,” which didn’t take off either The meme meme has done so well that it’s in the Oxford English Dictionary Memes What made the meme meme so successful? – If Dawkins had intended the term to simply refer to a building block of culture, it may not have stuck – The central and distinguishing claim: Just as natural selection in the biological realm favors selfish genes… … so too natural selection in the realm of culture favors selfish memes – Selfish memes are memes that act as if their goal in life is to survive and propagate themselves in the culture » This is done through their effects on the people who hold them The ultimate criterion which determines whether a meme will spread is – Whether the meme benefits the meme itself – Not whether it benefits us or our groups Memes: Ice Cream and Apple Pie The apple-pie-and-ice-cream meme has prospered in human societies because it powerfully activates the brain’s pleasure centers – More powerfully than anything in our natural environment Eating too much isn’t good for us, … but that’s irrelevant – The meme proliferates, not because it’s good for us, but purely because it’s good for itself… it’s good at proliferating Memes: Ice Cream and Apple Pie The apple-pie-and-ice-cream meme – It doesn’t want to proliferate – It doesn’t know what’s good for it Not any more than genes know what’s good for them If we want to understand which memes come to predominate in a culture – We need to look at how they affect their own chances of getting passed on – Not how memes affect our fitness or the fitness of our groups Memes: Language Most words in any given language are useful – That’s why use them – That’s why they survive in the culture Not every word is useful, though. Some survive despite being entirely useless to us – They survive simply because they are good at surviving – These words are the linguistic equivalent of junk DNA – One of the secrets of their success is that we often don’t even know that they’re there Memes: Language Dan Dennett once outlined this idea to a student, and the student asked for an example Dennett replied: – “Well, like, there might be, like, a catchphrase or, like, a verbal tic that was, like, a bad but infectious habit that could, like, spread through a subpopulation and, like, even go to fixation without, like, providing any communicative benefit at all.” Memes Memes are not selected because they’re adaptive – In the technical sense (i.e., because they enhance gene transmission) or – In the everyday sense used by civilians (i.e., because they promote happiness or wellbeing) Memes are not selected because they are good for us – The smoking-tobacco meme is successful despite the fact that it kills its bearers Memes are not selected because we like them – Earworms are successful despite the fact that they’re often as irritating as a fly buzzing ‘round your head Memes are not selected because they are true – Freud’s memes were successful despite the fact that most of his bestknown claims are almost certainly false Memes Memes are selected for one reason and one reason only: – Because they have properties that keep them in circulation in the meme pool This has some profound implications… Memes Through cultural competition, memes get better and better at surviving and spreading – – – – Food gets more appetizing Music gets catchier Stories become more appealing As Paul Graham put it, the world gets more addictive Given enough time, memes start falling into mutually supportive clusters (i.e., memeplexes) Memeplexes include everything from calculus to political ideologies Like genes in a genome, memes of a memeplex may coevolve and coordinate with one another – The belief that “You should die for your religion” may coevolve with the belief that “Life continues after death” Each reinforces the other Memes Just as selection in biology creates an illusion of intelligent design, so too may selection in culture – Of course, some memes are intelligently designed for one purpose or another – But blind, mindless selection may create hidden layers of design within our institutions and belief systems A Life of Meme-ing Susan Blackmore (2000) – “Imagine a world full of hosts for memes (e.g., brains) and far more memes than can possibly find homes. Now ask – which memes are more likely to find a safe home and get passed on again?” Some of it is luck – We might call this memetic drift, analogous to genetic drift – For example, maybe some cause or conspiracy theory happens to find its way in the head of a celebrity that can spread it like wildfire But, two main things increase a meme’s “market share”… A Life of Meme-ing Criterion 1: A meme must find its way into people’s minds – This creates a cultural selection pressure for memes that grab our attention and which we can’t stop thinking about Criterion 2: Memes must influence our behavior in ways that cause them to spread – This creates a cultural selection pressure for memes that motivate us to Talk about them Pass them on Impose them on other people A Life of Meme-ing Earworms tick both boxes… – Criterion 1: once you’ve got one, it’s hard to get it out of your head – Criterion 2: you often end up humming or whistling it, thereby passing it on to your neighbor, who now hates you A Life of Meme-ing How might a meme better spread itself? – Increase its bearer’s longevity e.g., any food preparation technique that eliminates toxins stands a good chance – If for no other reason than that it has more time to get copied by others The flipside is that any meme that shortens its bearer’s life simultaneously curtails its chances of spreading – People don’t generally copy the dead » Example: a number of indigenous groups came to the view that, if they had faith, the Europeans’ bullets couldn’t harm them » Needless to say, these meme had disastrous consequences A Life of Meme-ing How might a meme better spread itself? – Boosting its owner’s reproductive success Any meme that encourages its bearers to have lots of children inevitably upgrades its chances of spreading – Children tend to inherit the belief systems of their parents and the parents’ community – These is most clearly seen in religious groups » Members of conservative religious denominations typically have more offspring than moderates or the non-religious This enhances genetic fitness of conservative religious parents and… Enhances the memetic fitness of conservative religious memes A Life of Meme-ing Religion – One reason for the success of Christianity is that its teachings include instructions to convert other people to the faith – Matthew 28:19 Jesus exhorts the faithful to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” – Religions that proselytize have many more adherents than religions that don’t (e.g., Jainism or Judaism) This is not coincidence – Proselytizing doesn’t immediately benefit either the proselytizers or the proselytizees It benefits the religion that mandates it in a clear and obvious way – Sex evolved to spread genes – Proselytizing evolved to spread memes The God Meme Why does the belief in a divine being come so naturally to us? – It’s a bit odd, when you think about it… No one has trouble shaking their belief in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy – The God meme is almost impossible to dislodge from some minds, regardless of evidence or arguments – It’s like an earworm, but most believers are fond of the God meme and are more worried about losing their belief than keeping it – It doesn’t seem to be an adaptation… There are many who don’t believe in God Many who do believe in God vary so much in their beliefs that they’ll fight over them The God Meme The meme’s-eye view suggests a solution that flips the adaptationist explanation on its head Rather than the human brain evolving for God, God evolved for the human brain – The God meme is compelling Because it’s the grizzled survivor of many hundreds of generations of cultural competition for our attention and allegiance Not because we evolved to find it so The God Meme The God meme wins our allegiance in a number of ways – Dawkins: “The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next.” – It plays on some very natural human fears The fear of death, misfortune, everlasting torment should we fail to believe, etc.