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. 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 The team

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 won’t come until we can encourage new memeplexes • There are some in memespace but far away