On Selfish Memes: culture as complex adaptive system

Hokky Situngkir ()

Computational Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We present the formal definition of meme in the sense of the equivalence between memetics and the theory of cultural evolution. From the formal definition we find that culture can be seen analytically and persuade that memetic gives important role in the exploration of sociological theory, especially in the cultural studies. We show that we are not allowed to assume meme as smallest information unit in cultural evolution in general, but it is the smallest information we use on explaining cultural evolution. We construct a computational model and do simulation in advance presenting the selfish meme powerlaw distributed. The simulation result shows that the contagion of meme as well as cultural evolution is a complex adaptive system. Memetics is the system and art of importing genetics to social sciences.

Keywords: meme; memetics; memeplex; cultural evolution; cultural unit; complex system. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2004-05-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-evo and nep-hpe
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 14
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpco:0405001

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