3 posts tagged “memes”
Not much point reviewing this on Amazon - there are dozens of reviews up there, and anyway most of what I want to say refers to stuff that I've already posted (or will post) here on Vox.
It's another SF book voted as one of the best ever by New Scientist readers, and I would go along with that. Given that it was written in the early 90's it was remarkably prescient - not only about the matrix-type stuff, but also about the links between Pentacostalism. a US administration and an invasion of Iraq. On the other hand Stephenson's frequent references to video-tape show that he missed one technological revoltion that he should have seen coming, However, I'm trying to avoid writing a SPOILER here, so what I'm going to say now will only make much sense to people who have read the book.
I'm fascinated by the links to the pieces I wrote about memes and diseaes, and about Babylomian mythology (see my tags: "ishtar" and "memes"), long before I read the book, but also significantly after it appeared. It was clearly very influential among the hacking community of the 1990's and I'm sure if I had read it in say 1994, it would have shaped more directly the development of my own ideas (I suppose it could have shaped them a bit memetically!). I may never have written the pieces, or I may have written them very differently. There are also links to bits about gnosis in the soon-to-be-finished "The Smuggist Christian" - the follow up to "The Whole Truth v0" (tag: "smug") - which I will be putting up shortly.
Published in Chemtech September 1998 (slightly edited & under the title: "Why Thinking gives you a Headache")
I’m now convinced that I have been infected with a virulent psycho-active virus for a couple of years, and that regular readers of this column may also be sufferers. I have felt for some time that pathogens are responsible for most of our mood swings. I now fear that things are much worse, and that the little beggars are even messing around with our stray thoughts, our bright ideas and our dreams.
It all started when I first heard of the concept of “memes”. Somebody proposed these to explain how ideas transmit themselves through a population. Look them up if you want to know more, but basically a meme is a sort of software virus for the brain. If you have never heard of them, and the theory is correct, then I am infecting you as you read. The fact that I can’t remember who thought of them first is significant, since the theory suggests that once an idea hits a susceptible group of people it will spread epidemically, and nobody will know where it came from.
Although “good” ideas will last longer than others, conferring upon the recipient some evolutionary or social advantage, “bad” ideas can spread too. And I think the meme concept is itself a poor idea.
My problem is that memes, unlike genes or even strings of machine code, have no physical existence until they are spoken or written by a human. Apparently they beam down from Plato’s World of Forms straight into the brain of an Archimedes or an Einstein. So I started wondering: What if ideas can originate in unwitting biological agents?
According to this model, our brain cells are crawling with organisms analogous to our gut flora. Each would modify how the infected cell would fire, giving rise to repeated thoughts, false memories, obsessions, phobias and irrational prejudice. They are all muttering away quietly most of the time, so that we are barely aware of them. Occasionally, however one or other strain will bloom, and you find that you can’t get some thought out of your mind, or you find yourself having recurring dreams. As with the gut flora, our immune systems tolerate the normal culture as a defense against nastier strains taking root. Indeed, I suggest that some strongly beneficial symbionts, could copy themselves into our genotype. I have even christened one such bug, that responsible for the idea of language, as the “Chomsky virus”.
One the other hand, an incoming virus would have to struggle to establish itself. Some, like those carrying the full theme of “Kubla Khan” or the one page proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, never quite make it.
This theory could explain why the old tend to be less receptive to new ideas than the young - their immune responses are better equipped to deal with them. Conversely, people are often described as “intelligent” when they are particularly open to new concepts. In fact, they just don’t have the antibodies.
Where do they come from, these psychoviruses? I imagine, like influenza, they evolve in other animals, and only occasionally cross between species. Or possibly they are swimming around in places like the Sargasso Sea, and are dispersed in aerosols during stormy weather. If so, then there may be ducks and pigs in China who have a grasp on the Theory of Everything, clumps of seaweed that could decipher the call of the whale, if only they could communicate with us.
How to test this idea? Well, if the meme theory is correct, you are probably becoming bothered already. If simply reading this has no effect, but I find that the same thought has already struck my close associates, then I rest my case. We could check if new scientific ideas spread more rapidly though conferences than through papers and the Internet. I suspect that they do. If I’m right, what could we do about it? We would need some sort of virus checker for the brain. And if the drug companies were to come out with a powerful, broad-spectrum anti-viral, then it would be interesting to see if a side-effect is that it renders the patient unimaginative.
In the mean time I’m hanging around all the most creative people I can find, hoping that they will sneeze at me.
& this one in CHEMTECH January 1997
I was reading recently about work that drew a link between clinical depression with infection with a particular virus, and it set me thinking. If it turns out there are such things as mood-altering viruses, the implications are astonishing. Psychiatry and psychology would be revolutionised. It could herald the end of the world as we know it, or at least affect the result of the next election.
My first question on reading the piece was: "What’s in it for the bug?" What evolutionary advantage does the virus gain by making its victim miserable? Is it particularly fond of alcohol, or nicotine, or chocolate? More probably, acute depression could lower the body’s immune response, making the virus’s life easier. Do immuno-suppressed people get depressed more easily than the rest of the population? I suspect that they do. Of course the symptom could merely be an unfortunate side-effect of the infection, conferring no benefit to the pathogen.
Does the virus tend to spread more in winter, like influenza, offering an alternative explanation for S.A.D? Depression is more prevalent in some countries than in others. Does this imply that some populations have a natural resistance to the disease?
Whatever, imagine what a biological warfare establishment could do with such a beastie. Virulent infectious or contagious strains could be released into enemy nations, to sweep through the populace, damaging economic output and reducing the will to fight. In response, security forces would have to mount a special look-out at the airports for sad people trying to enter the country. On the other hand the bugs could be targeted at political leaders - watch out for those hand-shakes at summit meetings.
If the depression is only a side-effect, if perhaps the brain’s reaction to certain antigens involves the production of a depressant, or if the virus just happens to excrete a psycho-active chemical, then many other possibilities arise. Could other moods be influenced by infections? Violent anger, perhaps. Are the world’s trouble spots plagued by endemic psychoviruses? All sorts of obsessive or deviant behaviours could be candidates.
Obviously if there are such infectious diseases about we would need to find treatments for them. But interesting public health questions then come to mind. Should we consider attempting to eradicate these viruses, by compulsory medication? There would certainly be pressure to stamp out what society sees as "bad" moods. A Brave New World wouldn’t seem too far off if we were all forced into being nice and happy for the public good.
There could even be infections with positive side-effects, such as increased self-confidence or euphoria. . You can imagine people deliberately contracting such "diseases", associating with known "victims". Perhaps that’s why highly self-assured types tend to attract hordes of admirers. Capsules containing the bugs would be sold illicitly at street corners or pushed in pubs. Maybe national mood-swings could simply be the results of competing epidemics of "positive" and "negative" psychoviruses.
If a "happiness bug" doesn’t exist, could we engineer one? Governments could release it just before general elections. Maybe they’ve been doing it for years. That could explain how they keep on getting back in. OK, that sounds like paranoia, but who’s to say that paranoia’s not caused by yet another pathogen?
