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Kaj_Sotala comments on A Taxonomy of Bias: Mindware Problems - Less Wrong
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For the purposes of this discussion, pretty much the same thing. I added a note to the post clarifying this.
To be super-specific: memes are a kind of mindware. Though they're practically synonymous, a piece of mindware that you cannot or do not replicate is not a meme. A secret belief that you actually keep secret, say, would be mindware but not a meme.
That said, the whole point of memetics is that ideas survive to the extent that they replicate well; so we should expect non-memetic mindware to be rare.
Doesn't that seem like a weakness in the definition of memes? After all, a gene that does not replicate (eg arising through mutation and causing the organism to be non-viable) is still a gene.
It is more a question of the emphasis of analysis. If you speak of a meme, you are thinking of its replicative power; if you speak of mindware, you are thinking about its effect on the possessor's thoughts; but either way it is the same concept. To draw the analogy with genes, it is as though the word 'protein-builder' had been coined for the purpose of speaking of a gene's effect on the body, and we retained the word 'gene' for use when discussing allele frequencies.