Thought Contagion

Very insightful book, superbly done. The language and structure is compelling, and the book stimulated me to expand my already abundant curiosity into both new realms and better integrations of this new knowledge. I wish my/more college professors could teach not only this material, but at this level. It was wonderful to be caused to think at a higher level!

Have you ever thought about where the ideas that you hold dearly in your mind? All of them must be examined for validity.

The book is very disappointing. I would not recommend it to anyone. Anyone with an ounce of imagination and a glass of beer could create the types of analysis presented here. Indeed it reads more like an undergraduate beer session discussion that an account of a field of scholarship. It is difficult even to review since there is no wholeness to the ideas as they are presented in the book.The first chapter of `Thought Contagion' supplies some useful information about the modes by which memes of ideas may propagate through humanity. Unfortunately the author does not build upon this to provide a model of meme propagation. The rest of the book is a collection of `just-so' stories bout various ideas and how they can spread, work in synergy or conflict etc. These accounts are not deep but are comprised of only shallow arm-waving analysis. The author continually hints at deeper ideas of meta-memes, synergistic assemblies of memes creating self-sustaining groups, antagonistic sets of memes resulting in oscillations in the numbers of adherents etc. Even in some of the `just-so' stories, the author refers to these ideas but never explicitly demonstrates them. The reader is left with chapter after chapter of what appears to be shallow conjecture.The author implies that he has a mathematical model that confirms some of his analysis. I assume that he does but he never presents even a hint of it. The book would be much better if he had expressed some of his examples in a mathemaical strcture to show the commonality among his models that he continually hints at. The reader can easily see that most of the examples conform to a few simple patterns. If the author had shown these patterns and fitted examples ot them, he would have better explained his ideas.

The idea of beliefs helping to spread themselves is introduced well here, as a partial explanation of "thought contagion." It is a compelling view, at least superficially, but not a deeply satisfying explanation for the spread of human belief.This seems to be the best introduction to the concept. The limitations of this book are more limitations of the meme concept than of Lynch's exposition. Lynch makes clear, in a way that others often do not, what memetic science is expected to accomplish and what it is not expected to accomplish.Lynch briefly mentions the medical metaphor of "contagion," which like Richard Brodie's "Mind Virus," has clear and unambiguous negative connotations that serve distinct rhetorical purposes. Perhaps the best known example is the comparison of religious faith to a viral infection popularized originally by Richard Dawkins ("The Selfish Gene").The main problem with this is that it leaves us to wonder what the host might have been composed of prior to the "infection !" What does an "uninfected" mind look like ? We know what an uninfected finger looks like, and it is very different from an infected one. In spite of this, we find the compulsory paragraph by Lynch that these are "neutral" terms. Perhaps in their intention, but not in the effect they have on discussion and thinking, even among memeticists themselves. And the choice of _which_ beliefs are part of the host and which are infestations is probably arbitrary. All beliefs are infestations in some sense in the neutral view.Since scientific thinking came historically after medieval religion in the West, for example, it was scientific memes that were the original infestation on religious faith memes, not the reverse. And clearly the two are still in conflict in some ways, seen in bold relief in Kansas.The basic idea behind all this is not just a rhetorical combat of ideas however. It is much more notable and interesting than that. The idea is that beliefs influence behavior, in a way that can cause us to further spread and accept those very beliefs. So memetic transmission is effectively a model of a feedback loop where a belief is spread from one person to another, then that belief influences the receiver to further spread the belief. Lynch further makes the idea more accessible by showing distinct "modes" (plausible mechanisms) by which beliefs may be said to propagate themselves. But it is in the details of the transmission modes that I find it hard to believe that memetic theories can stand independently of individual psychology.For example, A taboo against masturbation, Lynch suggests, might lead us to reproduce more, thus leading to more offspring, who presumably would inherit the taboo from their parents, thus spreading it. This is an example of Lynch's "parental quantity" mode. The modes, he admits, are not distinct; they interact and overlap with each other, complicating the study of how beliefs are transmitted. Thus, the question of why an adult should retain the taboo against masturbation imposed on them as children and pass it on in turn to their children.The role played by a belief over the lifespan of an individual is de-emphasized in memetic analysis, as are the qualities of individuals which lead them to either accept or reject the "memes" that others attempt to infect them with.One of the best examples of this is given by Lynch in a brief passage about political philosophy spread as thought contagion. He notes that poverty seems to influence people to accept memes that promise to raise them out of poverty (socialism, communism). He also notes that memes of capitalism tend to propgate themselves partly because the bring wealth to the holders. Finally, he points out that memes that don't make promises they can't keep (Islam, for example, makes not claim to enrich material wealth) have some additional stability because people are less likely to become disenchanted with them when they don't seem to bring what was promised. So unfalsifiability becomes a positive factor in the longevity of meme, but at the same time, believable promises also help the spread of memes.The underlying assumption of this reasoning though complicates the meme concept, because it means that memes are not just spread due to their own characteristics, but also because of the way they are interpreted and evaluated by individuals. And that process is known to be heavily influenced by social context, not just by the content of the belief in question. Social scientists seem to find all sorts of things like authority, group identity, birth order, the historical era we grow up in, gender, and our past experience, that heavily influence whether we accept an idea.While the meme itself may plausibly influence its own spread by causing "spread me" behavior in its host, it probably has less success in influencing "accept me" behavior in new potential hosts. That's the part, at the boundaries, that memetics becomes difficult to separate from other behavioral sciences, and seems to need to consider the individual characteristics of hosts. A consideration that muddles the concept and its pristine focus on the characteristics of beliefs which influence their own spread. Lynch, as other memetics proponents, addresses this important aspect, but only in passing. A future text that makes these boundary conditions at least as clear as Lynch makes the various modes of transmission will be a particularly welcome contribution to the fundamental memetics idea.

Meme theory is an interesting concept, as exemplified by its analysis of the spread of Christianity. Likewise, Lynch has created a usable outline of the means through which memes spread, for example proselytization vs. procreation. However Lynch's lack of humility is insufferable and damaging. This manifests itself most obviously in his incessant hyperbolic sales pitch that memetics is a revolutionary "new science" or a paradigm shift comparable to the discovery that the Earth is round. Less immediately noticeable, but ultimately more damaging to his case is his refusal to seriously consider existing theory. This is most evident in the "missing link" chapter -- allegedly an overview of memetic's unifying place among the social and behavioral sciences -- which really shows the missing link in Lynch's theory is an understanding of the disciplines he expects to conquer. For instance, the well-established social psychology theory of cognitive dissonance deals with the evolution and interaction of ideas and the propensity of an individual to adopt and disseminate an idea, exactly the topics of Lynch's book, yet he does not integrate, confront, or even mention it. Ironically for a theory that originated in biology, Lynch even tends to ignore the importance of old-fashioned genetics -- for instance in his assertion that straight men look at women's breasts because it serves to advertise their heterosexuality. I think that meme theory may be a promising perspective for the social sciences, but it will only fulfill this promise when a more talented theorist becomes "infected" with the meme theory meme.