Hence the title of one of his books "Selfish gene".

Expanding it to memes, it goes on to claim that memes care about being spread, and nothing else.

I will have to add it to my amazon wishlist.

And now for my own speculation: in meemtical sense, a lot of things start to make sense.

Or, culture is more relevant than genetics.

Selfish-gene hypothesis actually explains suicide bombers as valid survival strategy.

Or Japanese Kamikazes. They aren't protecting themselves, their genes, that's not what they care about. Am I right?

Because siblings, or people from same ethnic group have similar genes. Thus, from perspective of genes, few hosts dying to progress the case, are sacrifice worth taking.

Yes. From gene centric view, it's worth dying, if that will let your sister have more children.

From meme centric point too.

I see.

But in this case, it doesn't have to be your sister. Neighbour is enough.

Because you are thinking in survival of... memes? Not genes.

Adding a bit of information theory, we can see some interesting things in memes.

Yep.

I like considering religion as meme. Because it has some amazing properties.

Conversions are attempt to spread.

Any rulings against converting to another, are intended to block losing hosts.

Jewish religion has rules on kosher food.

What's remarkable, is that food made this way is easier to store.

It takes a bit longer to go bad, which was very important in times before refrigeration.

Rules on holy days prevent overworking.

If prayers rhyme it's a built in error correction.

rhyme is like parity bit check then.

From strictly memetic point, religions have built in error correction, rules intended to prolong life of followers, regulation of society (thou shallt not kill), limit infestation by hostile memes, and mandate spreading.

It is however important that this quasi-agency is not real.

It looks like meme intends for hosts to live longer, have more children and teach others of the meme.

But it is so, because those memes which don't have such properties, are eliminated.

Hostile memes are those that may corrupt what you have so far, isn't it? I mean, in ancient times, sometimes religions took ideas from other religions and cultures, but only certain people can promote those ideas without being labeled as traitors. It was like an intellectual monopoly, they didn't want average Joe to try new things.

Perhaps carriers die. Perhaps they become superseded by more aggressive memes.

Resistance is mostly trait of monotheistic religions. Polytheistic religions were perfectly happy to welcome another god, if they didn't have domain covered.

But in this case by "hostile meme" I meant any meme which is against that particular meme.

Mathematics and language vaguely coexist.

Got it. A meme that can delete another meme, is hostile to that meme.

Yep. Or as you said, corrupt.

For example, Anti-vaxxer movement is a corruption of knowledge of microbiology.

In this way, you were correct to use word "evolution".

Memes DO evolve.

Well, I can understand it. When you want to make a big change into a system, you risk to break something somewhere. Expansions that respect what is already built are somewhat safe, but changes to the base structures are dangerous, and expensive. You don't want to have to do it. But with computers you always can have backups, in real life you have to be more careful. Exploration of new territories is a need, but you may not return.

While adult creature can not evolve the way pokemons do, because genetic makeup is already set during conception, memetic evolution in exiting populace is possible.

You could say that. Unless meme somehow has change built in, it won't be welcome to too large changes.

Heck. Even science has this problem.

Einstein was a staunch enemy of quantum mechanics. And his own relativity took a while to take holdd.

Science which is supposed to be welcoming to change, if supported by evidence, still shows resistance.

Much lower than any other memplex, but still not devoid of it.

Scientists fear corruption too.

Anyway. This is rough outline of "memetics".

Thank you. I had a lot of fun actually. I like the theory.

Just don't attribute full agency to memes. Neither genes nor memes actually have will. simply if they don't spread,t they die out, which promotes traits that make spreading easier.

I guess we covered all I wanted to add to that WB question you posted. And more.

Don't worry, I understand they don't have will.

Yeah.

Is there anything you would like to ask me about what we discussed?

Memetic reasoning can help building a decision chain to add believability to most fictional settings. I think it's enough for today. I'm abusing your time to much.

Thank you.

No problem. I'll let the room stay for few days. If you need anything, we can easily talk here.

OK. I will have to start using this chat system more often. It's actually very useful. So far I spam the comment section a bit too much. I hope nobody is too angry about it.