Memes as complex systems

1
Memes as complex systems

• Report on interaction task
• Roger Bradbury

2
The history of the interaction task

• July 2003 - Initial discussions at CABM meeting
  in Melbourne
• August 2003 - Further discussion at CSS
  conference in Sydney, and proposal developed
• August 2004 - Mini-workshop at CSS conference in
  Coffs Harbour
• August 2004 - Major international workshop in
  Canberra, 13 - 17 August

3
Workshop objectives

• Expose the complex systems researchers to the
  ideas of meme scientists (and vice versa)
• Examine possible research questions (particularly
  in the areas of using complex systems tools to
  model memetic phenomena and the interaction
  between meme worlds and the human social worlds)
• Propose a research agenda in the form of a Grand
  Challenge manifesto.

4
Who we were

• Memeticists and modellers
• Social and natural scientists
• Theoreticians and practitioners
• All with a Darwinian bias

5
The team

• Dave Batten
• Sue Blackmore
• Fabio Boschetti
• Roger Bradbury
• Shawn Callahan
• Ian Enting
• John Finnigan
• Anne-Marie Grisogono

• Steve Hatfield Dodds
• Nicky Grigg
• David Newth
• Andrew Rixon
• Rob Seymour
• Angela Wardell-Johnson
• Rachel Williams

6
What we did

• A series of discussions on memes and complexity -
  from each side - led by different experts
• A series of case studies
• Some experimental modelling
• A drafting exercise for a Policy Forum paper in
  Science

7
The discussions

• Memes conceptual issues and theory (Sue
  Blackmore)
• Memes as real, Darwinian entities (Roger
  Bradbury)
• Complex systems the state of the art (John
  Finnigan)
• Memes and emergence (Fabio Boschetti)
• Modelling strategies for complex systems (Ian
  Enting)
• Modelling memes as complex systems (David Newth
  and Nicky Grigg)

8
The discussions (cont.)

• Modelling evolutionary dynamics (Rob Seymour)
• Ecological principles and memes (Andrew Rixon)
• Policy development problems and memes (Steve
  Hatfield Dodds)
• Memes and agents (Dave Batten)
• Memes and organizations (Rachel Williams and
  Shawn Callahan)
• Memes and complexity the view from sociology
  (Angela Wardell-Johnson)

9
The case studies

• Brainstormed 10, winnowed to 3
• Focus on public policy issues as memes
• Development aid
• War on terror
• War on drugs

10
The modelling

• From genes to memes
• What would memespace look like?
• How might memeplexes behave?
• Memes as a network
• Are simple memes strong attractors?

11
The paper

• Public policy, memes and complex systems
• Policies are built from ideas, but ideas are
  memes that, like genes, interact in complex ways
  with humans and their culture
• Policy is constructed by and for often
  short-lived, often simple memes, each with their
  own selfish interests, within a complex framework
  of culture built by relatively longer-lived
  genes.

12
What changed?

• Memes are real
• As real as genes, information
• Memes are different
• Different labile dynamics to genes
• Memeplexes, simplicity
• We can handle them with CSS
• Networks surprisingly promising cf ABM
• We can make strong new predictions
• More powerful than socio-biological explanations

13
Development aid

• Memes encourage naïve intervention
• Regardless of the truth value of the meme
• Aid continues and will continue to fail while
  aid meme is satisfied

14
War on terror

• Terrorism emerges from a new memeplex associating
  simple killing memes with powerful religion
  memes
• The memeplex spreads from brain to brain in new
  ways internet
• Can be disrupted by selective pressure
• Independently of reforms such as
  democratisation or market reforms

15
War on drugs

• Drug policy creates harm out of all proportion to
  its cost
• Because simple drugs are bad meme reproduces
  well in all players
• Change wont come until we can encourage new
  memeplexes
• There are some in memespace but far away