The Meme Machine (Popular Science) [Paperback]

 

 

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Human bodies evolved by natural selection, just as other animals. But still we are different. According to Susan Blackmore thats because we are capable of imitation. We can thereby copy ideas, habits, inventions, songs and stories. I.e. memes. And now memes are as powerful, if not more powerful, than the good old genes, in directing human evolution. I find the idea intriguing, and certainly Susan Blackmore argue well for the idea. The (evolutionary) pressure for imitation skills requires big brains. So we evolve big brains, as people mate with the ones with the most memes. Language is invented in order to spread memes. Film stars, journalists, writers, singers, politicians and artists become the most attractive, as they are the ones who spread the most memes. Things that are hard to explain in a genetic context (such as adoption, birth control, celibacy) are easy to explain in a meme context (the memes are happy with it, as it help spread more memes). Science becomes a process to distinguish true memes from false memes. Fax-machines, telephones, etc. are created (by the memes) in order to spread more memes. Writing is a battleground in the head between memes wanting to be spread etc.

It all rings true to me. Except Susan Blackmores claim that the self is a complex meme. Certainly it is puzzling that blind people are reported thinking that Their "I" is located at their fingertips, when they read Braille. Still there are other explanations to what a human "I" is than memes. Personally, I prefer Antonio Damasios, as he explain edit in the book "the feeling of what happens". Nevertheless, Susan Blackmores book is a very exciting read, with lots of clever thoughts. Or should I say memes?

-Simon

Ever since Dawkins wrote his chapter on memes in The Selfish Gene, people have become captivated by the meme meme. Several people have attempted to wrap their minds around the concept, and present it in a useful and comprehensive way. While Blackmore's attempt is, I think, the best yet, it tries to do too much, and ends up collapsing under its own weight. Some of the assertions, such as the development of large brains in humans being a function of memes' imperative, while possibly correct in part, lose the force of their argument by their overstatement. Humans are thinking machines, not copying machines, and brains evolved to think. Memes ride along, for better or worse, on the waves created by the constant motion of our thoughts. Not the other way around. I believe memetics will someday prove to be a valuable tool for understanding some cultural and behavioural aspects of humans. But right now, they still more resemble Gould's "meaningless metaphor" description.

Generally, I avoid reviewing books which I haven't read all the way through, as I want to give the authors as much benefit of doubt as possible. This book, though, is so bad that I just can't help writing about it.

The book is about memes aka mind viruses - the phenomenon that sometimes a certain way of acting compels other people to start acting the same way, so that a behavioural pattern spreads through the population, "infecting" new people like a virus.

Apart from a brief mention of memes in the fabulous "The Selfish Gene", I had read "Virus of the Mind" which I didn't like at all, mostly because the author so aggressively pushed his own ideological preferences on the reader. He appeared to be thinking that his personal opinions were the objective truth and differing opinions were mind viruses.

I really wanted to learn more about memes, so I bought this book, as it was the only one I could find.

I have rarely been so disappointed.

Before getting to her actual topic - memes - Ms. Blackmore quite unnecessarily spends some pages meditating about the question what makes humans human, that is, what is the essential factor that distinguishes humans from animals.
Could it be intelligence? Ms. Blackmore dismisses that on the grounds that computers can already beat humans at chess. Soon they will, in all likelihood, be more intelligent than us, but that doesn't make them human, does it? So what makes humans human has to be something else.
That something else, Ms. Blackmore suggests, is the ability to imitate.

That idea is so blatantly, strikingly stupid that I almost closed the book right then and there. But I read on for a while anyway. Then I really couldn't take it anymore.

Ms. Blackmore is making one small mistake, one bigger mistake and one really big mistake.

Her small mistake is that she apparently has a completely wrong idea of what intelligence is. (Read the book "On Intelligence" to learn more about why the ability to play chess is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence.)

The bigger mistake is the way how Ms. Blackmore blatantly contradicts herself, by bringing an example of animals imitating each other (a cat teaching another cat how to flush a toilet). She says casually that that's not imitating, without bothering to explain what makes her think so. In my opinion, that is most definitely imitating, and, as such imitation is abundant in animal kingdom, Ms. Blackmore has herself provided a crystal-clear rebuttal of her own hypothesis.

Ms. Blackmore's worst mistake is her ignorance of computer science. The reason why she dismisses intelligence as the defining characteristic of humans is that computers can play chess. Obviously, it would make little sense to say that something distinguishes humans from everything else, if that something can be taught to computers.
However, by suggesting that it's the ability to imitate that makes us human, Ms. Blackmore ignores the fact that it's very easy to make a computer imitate. People who have written computer programs should be familiar with the "tit for tat" strategy, and it's rather obvious that it's very easy to program.
Ms. Blackmore seems to think that we can't make a robot, for instance, smile whenever it sees a smiling person. That's ridiculous. The reason why we don't have smiling robots is because we don't have produced robot faces that are physically capable of making facial movements a human being could make. If we had such a robot face, we could, of course, write the software that makes the robot face imitate the facial expressions of a human. It would be really hard to make the robot recognise what is called a smile and what isn't (that would have something to do with intelligence), but to imitate whatever facial expression it sees - that's really a piece of cake.

Now, I am not suggesting that the answer to the question "what makes us human?" IS intelligence, but the ability to imitate is definitely not the answer either. The point of my harsh citicism is that if an author says something as absurd as that, I don't think she can be trusted to say anything intelligent about anything, which is why I don't think this book would be worth reading.

If anybody knows a good book on memes, please let me know. I'm really keen to learn more about them - preferably, from an intelligent book.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A very intriguing look at how ideas shape us.
Dawkins briefly introduced the term 'meme' in "The Selfish Gene" in 1976, principally to show that the process of natural selection was not dependent on a particular underlying... Read more

Published 19 days ago by Jason Mills

4.0 out of 5 stars A Call to Action (or maybe not)?
Susan Blackmore's book can be a little frustrating at times. What seems at first to be a relatively straightforward premise - that we are perhaps not as in control as we think we... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Gardenque

4.0 out of 5 stars Dawkins' Meme Infects Blackmore
Ever since Dawkins introduced the meme, almost tangentially, in "The Selfish Gene", it had lain waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it. Read more

Published 5 months ago by RR Waller

4.0 out of 5 stars The Evolution of Knowledge
At the start of the book Blackmore quotes Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene", saying, "All life evolves from the differential survival of replicating entities. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Baraniecki Mark Stuart

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and Convincing
A great read, and extremely convincing. Leave all your pre-conceptions of what makes "you" who and what you think you are, and begin. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Mark Ware

1.0 out of 5 stars yada yada yada
Reading this book confirms my suspicion that Susan Blackmore is an intellectual light weight catching a ride on the coat tails of Dawkins and Dennett. Read more

Published 12 months ago by graham_525

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic and I'm only a quarter of the way through!
A brilliantly written and well researched piece of literature. Since I'm currently beginning a study on the meme this book has helped me understand and come up with new methods to... Read more

Published on 16 Dec 2009 by Mr. Adam D. Grant

3.0 out of 5 stars Very valuable ideas in parts too much speculation in others
I feel quite ambivalent about the book. In parts I was introduced or reminded of some great concepts and ideas. In other it felt like there was too much speculation. Read more

Published on 2 July 2009 by Roberto

1.0 out of 5 stars a metaphor run mad
The whole of meme theory just needs deleting from human discourse and this book proves it. It is the ultimate example of a metaphor run mad, of fetishism in the Marxist sense. Read more

Published on 8 Jun 2009 by F. Roberts

2.0 out of 5 stars Simply Amazing!
It is simply amazing to me that someone could make a career out of peddling such pseudo-scientific guff as this. Read more

Published on 2 April 2009 by Mr Swallow

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