(2022-08-27) Brander Complex Ideas Procreate Through Citation

Gordon Brander: Complex ideas procreate through citation. A provocation from Richard Dawkins: ideas are alive!

I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet […] already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.

Also, we know evolution happens in any system with mutation, heredity, selection, so we can say memes evolve!

Memes are the unit of selection here, so the funny thing is… People don't have ideas. Ideas have people. (Carl Jung)

Memetic epidemics

So, social media favors viral outbreaks over complex multicellular organisms. Do these tiny, contagious memes have carrying capacity for complex thought? Can we coordinate a society through cat gifs?

Perhaps! But these r-selected memes seem better suited to negative-sum arbitrage, like many other viruses.

Complex evolution through composition

It must be possible, because we see multicellular thought all around us. Culture, art, religious tradition, the scientific body of knowledge, math, philosophy, law, cinematic universes

*What kind of conditions might cause this kind of multicellular meme to evolve? And by what mechanism?

Well, what if ideas could have sex?*

Technologies are invented, then become modularized and commoditized as they become better understood.

Technology evolves through composition, a kind of sexual heredity that allows new technologies

Complex ideas procreate through citation

Ideas also compose. We call it citation

These multicellular k-selected memes move slower, and are often less contagious than their r-selected cousins. Yet their longer lifespan and slower evolutionary loop make them capable of coordinating human behavior over long time periods.

Higher carrying capacity for information means big memes can also convey adaptive traits. Getting infected by a k-selected meme can make you smarter.

Evolving bigger memes

Are big memes always beneficial memes? No. But the ability to evolve big memes seems necessary, if not sufficient, for cultivating a beneficial meme microbiome.

Can the internet evolve multicellular memes? This seems like an important question for a civilization that is building on top of the internet.

Posit: for a medium to be capable of evolving complex memes, it must have a mechanism for citation.

So, is there a mechanism for citation?

For the web it is links.

Next, we want to consider evolutionary feedback loops that reward composition.

On the web, it could be PageRank

The early web actually had a pretty strong evolutionary feedback loop toward multicellular memes: links + PageRank.

In what ways might we learn from this early web loop, even improve upon it? One improvement might be reliable citation

They die all the time

Links also change all the time. (linkrot)

The Internet Archive helps. What if we could do something like this at the protocol level?

Noosphere opens up a few new possibilities