Memetic Selection Criteria
These are the criteria that determine the overall fitness
of a meme, i.e. whether it will maintain within an individual's memory and
spread to other individuals, or be eliminated (Heylighen, 1992, 1993). As meme
spreading depends on different objective, subjective and intersubjective
mechanisms, the criteria are sometimes contradictory. See also the general selection
criteria for knowledge.
* Contribution to individual fitness
A fit meme should help its carrier to survive and reproduce. That means the meme
should not induce behaviors that are useless (wasting resources) or dangerous.
* Reliability of Predictions
Useful behaviors imply correct anticipations of the effect of actions. Memes
producing predictions that turn out to be wrong will tend to be eliminated.
* Learnability
A meme should be easily assimilated to the cognitive system. This implies that
it should not be too complex, and should not too directly contradict already
established rules (coherency), which may be genetic or memetic of origin. In
particular it means that rules that are consonant with genetic injunctions will
be much easier to learn.
* Ease of communication
Memes that are easily transmitted to another individual, either because they
lead to a salient behavior that is easy to imitate, or can be clearly expressed
in language or other media, will have a higher fitness.
* Tendency to be transmitted
Memes that induce their carriers to actively "convert" or
"teach" other individuals, thus stimulating their transmission, will
be more fit.
* Conformity pressure = "Meme selfishness"
As memory space is limited and cognitive dissonance tends to be avoided, it is
difficult for inconsistent memes to have the same carriers. Cognitively
dissonant memes are in a similar relation of competition as alleles: genes that
compete for the same location in the genome. Memes that induce behavior in their
carriers that tends to eliminate rival memes will be more fit, since they will
have more resources for themselves. The concrete result is that a group of
carriers with different memes will tend towards homogeneity, resulting from the
imposition of the majority meme and elimination of all non-conforming memes
(Boyd & Richerson, 1985).
* Contribution to collective fitness
Memes that increase the fitness of the group or social system formed by their
carriers are more likely to get more carriers, because successful groups expand
or are imitated. Collective fitness is sometimes in contradiction with
individual fitness because of the problem
of sub optimization: what is best for an individual is not always best for
the group.