Episode 33: Memes – More Than Just Funny Images

Written by Phil in Uncategorized

Phil introduces the academic concept of memes – technically living noncorporeal hive symbiotes/parasites that live in our heads. The definition of “life” that applies to genes can also be equally applied to memes, since they are “replicators” that manifest “survival machines” to help promote their adaptability and survival.

References

  • Memes (Mimeme)
  • Nature-Nurture – A largely settled debate about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: environment (nurture) and genetics (nature). It is an interplay of both, not either/or.
  • The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
  • The 80/20 Principle and 92 Other Powerful Laws of Nature: The Science of Success by Richard Koch
  • Genes/Memes (“Replicators” according to Dawkins) do the following:
    • Replicate
    • Vary
    • Adapt
    • Incorporate themselves in robust vehicles, aka “survival machines”
    • They create ever more complex entities (memes and genes)
    • They flow through time; not necessarily geographic space 
    • Meme’s environments are other technologies in the region where it is competing and have to prove their right to survive with other idea-level resources, similar to genes in a genetic pool with other organisms.
    • If it’s physical or tangible, it’s generally regarded as a vehicle for the genes/memes, not the replicator themselves.
  • Ecological Niches: the match of a species to a specific environmental condition.
  • NK Humphrey Quote: “Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically, but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitise my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking. The meme for, say, belief in life after death is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous system of individual people the world over.”
  • Nomological Network: A fancy way of saying “idea network”
  • Peppered Moth Evolution: The moth’s Phil references to do with rapid evolution in insects.
  • Deliberate Practice: how expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practises than with merely performing a skill a large number of times. An expert breaks down the skills that are required to be expert and focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate coaching feedback.
  • “For ideas, age is beauty” –Nassim Taleb
  • Episode 5: Emergence (Or Emergent Properties)
  • The Corporation (Documentary; The update/sequel is “The New Corporation”): The documentary shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to affect specific public functions to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person.
  • Good to Great / Built to Last by Jim Collins: Two of Phil’s now-favorite business books.
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): an empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies along with commitment and behavior-change strategies to increase psychological flexibility.
  • Six Pillars of ACT: Acceptance, Cognitive Defusion, Being Present, Self as Context, Values, Committed Action
  • Epistemology: the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues.
  • Cowpox of Doubt – Slate Star Codex
  • Rationalism: the epistemological view that “regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge” or “any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification”.
  • Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) – Canada’s FBI
  • The CSIS report Phil mentioned – Titled “Who Said What? The Security Challenges of Modern Disinformation”
    • For real, look at this quote from the report: “Russia’s adhocracy, the shifting elite around President Vladimir Putin, directs an extensive network of Internet trolls and bot networks which generate and spread material across the web. Their activities are intensified by the support of diplomats, state-controlled media outlets such as RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik, as well as de facto alliances with organizations such as WikiLeaks;”
  • Disinformation: a subset of propaganda and is false information that is spread deliberately to deceive. It is also known as black propaganda. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.
  • Cambridge Analytica Scandal: The app harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook profiles, then used the data to provide analytical assistance to the 2016 presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
  • Useful Idiots: a derogatory term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause’s goals, and who is cynically used by the cause’s leaders.
  • Priming (Psychology): a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.
  • Merck & Co.: an American multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Kenilworth, New Jersey.
  • “One who has a ‘why’ to live for can endure almost any ‘how’.” – Nietzsche / Victor Frankl
  • Blue Ocean Strategy (Book): the authors draw the attention of their readers towards the correlation of success stories across industries and the formulation of strategies that provide a solid base to create unconventional success – a strategy termed as “blue ocean strategy”. Unlike the “red ocean strategy”, the conventional approach to business of beating competition derived from the military organization, the “blue ocean strategy” tries to align innovation with utility, price and cost positions. The book mocks the phenomena of conventional choice between product/service differentiation and lower cost, but rather suggests that both differentiation and lower costs are achievable simultaneously.
  • Yellow Tail (Wine): an Australian brand of wine produced by Casella Family Brands.
  • The Enlightenment: an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects.

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