On adapting the Lamarckian theory of evolution to the adaptation and propagation of ideas

Although the Lamarckian theory came first, the more famous theory of evolution is Darwin's theory. Darwin's theory* assumes the following:

1. Certain traits are only changed by random mutations. *Darwin himself did not suggest how variation arises, but he did establish that variations in traits occur entirely by chance. Mutation is well ahead of his time.*
2. These traits are passed down to the offspring.
3. There are more offspring than the environment can support.
4. Only the offspring more suited to survive and propagate their traits would have their traits carried by their offspring. The rest would not be able to propagate their traits.
5. Eventually, only the traits that are helpful to the survival and propagation of the species would be passed on.

Darwin's theory only differs from Lamarck's theory in its first point. While Darwin suggests random uncontrolled mutations, Lamarck's theory states that the hereditary traits are modifed by use and disuse, i.e., more utilised organs or systems becomes larger and develops complexity, while less utilised ones would shrink, deform, and eventually disappear. For example, he suggested that giraffes have long necks because generations of giraffes have been stretching their necks to reach higher leaves. While this theory is conceptually valid (and in some aspects more attractive than Darwin's theory), experimental results do not agree with it. Being a scientific theory, this signifies that Lamarck's theory is to be cast aside, in favour of Darwin's theory, which experimental results agree with.

However, Lamarck's theory is only inaccurate for the origin and evolution of species; its main concepts can be "recycled" and adapted to describe other systems. There has been a great deal of work done on adapting Darwin's theory of evolution to the adaptation and propagation of ideas, a more established one being the "meme" theory by Richard Dawkins, as expressed in his book "The Selfish Gene(1976)".

In his "meme" theory, a "meme" is a replicator of cultural information that one mind transmits (verbally or by demonstration) to another mind.(<-taken from wikipedia) A meme can be a skill, idea, belief or theory. He suggested that memes propagate in ways analagous to genes. From here on, I shall use the word "meme" instead of "idea", since the former is more specific.

In adapting a theory that is meant to describe a particular system to describe another system, the fundamental assumptions, or at least their respective analogues, must still remain reasonable. In the following paragraph, we shall examine Darwin's fundamental assumptions in the context of the adaptation and propagation of memes. The way that I adapt his theory to a different context is contestable, but I shall attempt to retain the original meaning.

1. Memes are only changed by random mutations.
2. Memes are passed on from one mind to another.
3. There are more memes than minds can hold.
4. Only the memes more suited to stay in the mind and be successfully propagated will reach another mind. The rest would be lost.
5. Eventually, there would only be memes that are well suited to be retained in the mind and be propagated.

Assumption 2 cannot be challenged, since it is part of the definition of a "meme". Assumption 3 seems reasonable; most people don't remember everything we see or hear, thus it would be inevitable that some memes are lost as they are forgotten by the individual. Assumption 4 is an implication of assumption 3, and assumption 5 is an implication of assumptions 2, 3 and 4. Thus, assumptions 2, 3, 4 and 5 are still reasonable even when they are adapted to the context of memes.

Assumption 1 is problematic. In fact, it was already problematic before it was adapted to the context of memes. In the context of species, Darwin did not have any evidence or arguments to back this assumption up. This assumption was only shown to be valid after the mechanisms for replication of DNA and RNA were established. In the context of memes, however, the mechanisms for how memes change in the mind are not well established. Thus, assumption 1 is not neccessarily valid. In the light of this, we can explore other theories of evolution to attempt to describe memes, and perhaps find one superior to the adapted version of Darwin's theory.

Hence we turn to Lamarck's theory of evolution, the next most famous theory of evolution after divine intervention. Assumptions 2, 3, 4 and 5 remain intact; assumption 1 is different. In the context of species, variation arises from use and disuse; in the context of memes, I would interpret it in a way to mean that:

Within the mind of an individual, parts of the meme that are more often used would be more emphasized; parts of the meme that are less often used would be neglected and eventually forgotten.

Again, this interpretation is contestable.

An implication of this assumption would be that even within the mind, memes would progressively "mutate" in such a way that they become a form more often used by the mind. Like assumption 1 of Darwin's theory, this assumption is also not backed up by any evidence. However, by changing this assumption in such a way that it becomes more similar to Lamarck's theory, this theory would be capable of producing testable predictions without prior knowledge of what causes the memes to change in a person's mind. In this aspect, it would be easier to falsify this model than the model based on Darwin's theory. If it is not falsified, then it would prove to be a more useful theory than that modified from Darwin's theory, because it can successfully predict more phenomena, i.e, it would enable us to find out more specifically how memes would adapt and propagate.

One experiment that can be done to check this assumption:

3 groups of volunteers in groups A, B and C listen to a long paragraph describing a scene.

After listening to the scene, group A volunteers are singled out and asked a certain number of questions about certain parts of the scene, but the experimentors who ask the questions would not tell them if the answers are correct.

Group B volunteers are singled out and asked the same number of questions about other parts of the scene that are not asked to group A volunteers. Similarly, they are not told if their answers are correct or not.

Group C volunteers are singled out and asked the same number of questions about the entire scene. Likewise, they are not told if their answers are correct or not.

Three days later, all the volunteers are asked to write down a paragraph about the scene. Group A, B and C are then assigned to different colours, and only one experimentor would know which group corresponds to which colour. The volunteers then write down the colour and hand in their paper. (This serves to eliminate confirmation bias)

The papers are then sorted by their colour, and the researchers check to see if there are indeed two groups that writes more about different parts, and one group that does not emphasize any part in particular. If the group that writes more about certain parts are indeed the group that has been asked questions about that part, then we can suggest that the adapted Lamarck's model might be more useful in this aspect. This is because the adapted Darwin's model would not predict thus.

However, the above experiment assumes the following:

1. Asking questions about certain parts of the scene prompts the volunteers to "use" those parts of the meme more often.
2. The volunteers do not "use" the paragraph scene meme at all when they are not asked questions.

Assumption 1 might be valid. However, assumption 2 is a problem. For example, if a part of the scene contains of a joke that the volunteer finds funny, he might try harder to remember it so that he can tell it to someone else. In that case, the volunteer would be using this particular part of the scene meme when he is not being asked questions. Thus, this experiment would not be able to adequately test if this theory is an accurate model.

If this model is shown to be able to adequately predict phenomena regarding the adaptation and propagation of ideas, then we can better appreciate that all the information that has been passed to us are essentially memes that are useful in the context of the people who transmitted it to us. Even though there may be certain pieces of information somewhere in the world that might be useful to a particular person, if that piece of information is not useful to anyone other than those two people, this information might never be transmitted to the person who can use it. Even if a certain piece of information is useful to many people, it may not be useful to some people, and thus the high likelyhood of this piece of information and not another piece of information that could be more useful to those people can be undesirable. This is because information that is useful to most people in the society are more likely to be transmitted than information that is only useful to some people.

An implication of the possible success of this model in describing phenomema regarding the transmission of information would be that most of the information that we receive are likely to be useful to us as well, because being in the same society would suggest that the context of the information would be similar, and hence that piece of information would still be applicable. For example, the fact that calculus is taught in schools indicates that calculus is useful to the people who have learnt it, and since the teachers and the students live in the same society, it is likely that the students would find the information useful as well.

However, the situation where both the teacher and student would find the information useful may be just a coincidence. For example, Newton-Ralphson approximation may be more useful to a student 5 years ago, because he would not have a graphic calculator with him in the examination hall to find the root of a complicated function. Being useful to the student five years ago who is now a teacher, it is likely that he would teach this technique to his students. Now, students are allowed to use the graphic calculator during examinations, so this information is no longer so useful to the students, so it is likely that the students would forget this part of calculus. Hence, the amount of effort spent on teaching the newer students Newton-Ralphson approximation may be better spent on teaching the students something else that is more useful to the students. This would mean that curriculum planning is essential, because if allowed to follow the natural cause of action, students would not be spending their learning time in an efficient manner, as they would be likely to learn things that are not applicable to them.

Thus, it is likely that most of the information that we receive and retain are not those that are closest to the "objective truth", but those that are most useful to us, those that are more easily transmitted, or those that are most useful to the people who transmitted that information to us. If the model of adaptation and propagation of ideas based on the Lamarckian theory is accurate, we should be skeptical of the information we receive, because information that reach us would tend to be useful rather than truthful.

We must also be open to the suggestion that the model adapted from the Lamarckian theory of evolution is not an accurate description of the adaptation and propagation of ideas. This could arise due to the following:

1. Transmission of information follow a much less strict selection criteria than the transmission of genetic information. Thus, while useless memetic information is likely to be much more widespread than useless genetic information.
2. Change in genetic information occurs much more slowly than change in memetic information. Thus, genetic
3. Similar to the problem encountered in Lamarck's theory of evolution on species, the word "useful" is not properly defined, and is open to interpretation.
4. Speciation occurs in nature in the case of species, such that certain genetic information are not able be freely hybridised with others. For example, the pollen grains of one specie of plant cannot fertilise the ovules in the flower of another plant, and this results in the genetic information of different species of plants not being able to hybridise with each other. No obvious analogy applies in memetics.
5. Sexual reproduction occurs in nature where genetic information can only be transmitted after being hybridised with the genetic information of another member of the some species. No obvious analogy applies in memetics as well.

In such a case, we would temporarily fall back on the model based on Darwin's theory of evolution, or come up with another one that would be more accurate. We would also have learnt that using analogy to find explanation for phenomena is not as simple as it seems on the surface. There are a lot of hidden assumptions in the mechanism behind the system that need to be justified in order for the application of the mechanism of one system to another system to be logically valid and sound.