Meme and Variations: A Computer Model of Cultural Evolution
Abstract
Holland's (1975) genetic algorithm is a minimal computer model of natural selection that made it possible to investigate the effect of manipulating specific parameters on the evolutionary process. If culture is, like biology, a form of evolution, it should be possible to similarly abstract the underlying skeleton of the process and develop a minimal model of it. Meme and Variations, or MAV, is a computational model, inspired by the genetic algorithm, of how ideas evolve in a society of interacting individuals (Gabora 1995). The name is a pun on the classical music form 'theme and variations', because it is based on the premise that novel ideas are variations of old ones; they result from tweaking or combining existing ideas in new ways (Holland et al. 1981). MAV explores the impact of biological phenomena such as over-dominance and epistasis as well as cognitive and social phenomena such as the ability to learn generalizations or imitate others on the fitness and diversity of cultural transmissible actions.
- Publication:
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arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- September 2013
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.1309.7524
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1309.7524
- Bibcode:
- 2013arXiv1309.7524G
- Keywords:
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- Computer Science - Multiagent Systems;
- Computer Science - Neural and Evolutionary Computing
- E-Print:
- 14 pages