He talks about a range of things. Mainly how the art of problem solving is distinct from the skill of pattern matching, and how to cultivate the former.

He identifies the following types of problem solving approaches (as some):

1. Reducing to already solved cases
2. Look for simple/extreme cases to look for pattern
3. guessing
4. symmetry
5. be lazy
6. use good representations (e.g. drawings), and
7. analogy

And in terms of teaching them he recommends the following:

1. Name the types of approach (so you can recognise what you
2. Diversity of examples to use the technique in (and not the same problem rephrased)
3. Ask yourself Wheeler’s Question: “What one or two sentences could you tell your earlier self (the self that hadn’t solved the problem yet) that would make the solution really easy?”. This is essentially a shorter version of Gladwell’s Outlier idea. It is deliberative practice rather than just practice per se, and makes sure you are actually learning from the right kind of practice.

[hat tip to julian]

The “Copernican revolution” – that we exist to help memes/culture evolve rather than the other way around – is provocative, and certainly stops and makes you think. I like the metaphor – it’s catchy – and I like the idea of trying to use the evolutionary models for cultural progress. But it’s all so vague.

Harrumph.

1. Meme definition
- Susan Blackmore defines a meme as “that which can be imitated”
- One problem with this is the definition’s looseness.
- Dan Dennet defines a meme as “a packet of cultural information”
- In this definition, memes spread like symbionts, invading the cultural host.
- Still doesn’t allow clear meme identification

- Both definitions perhaps capture too much – memes can be 4 note jingles, pop songs or albums.
- NB. Darwin developed theory of evolution without a clear idea of what a gene was.

2. Is Memetics a science?
- For Memetics to be a science it has to be able to generate empirically testable hypotheses
- Blackmore and Dennet’s definitions too broad to be able to do this usefully.

3. Are memes unique to humans?
- Both Dennett and Blackmore want to say yes
- Parrot Problem, i.e. how can a parrot copy what you say if memes are unique to humans?

4. How do memes replicate?
- Needs to be a distinction between the unit of replication (e.g. the song) and the machinery of replication (e.g. the mp3 burner etc)
- This is blurred in both Dennett and Blackmore’s accounts
- Blackmore posits that “memes are (perhaps blindly) responsible for the creation of everything from the
stylus to the scroll to the satellite”.

5. Memetics and the evolution
- Any precision in memetics comes from the evolutionary algorithm
- Memetics, though, hinges on artificial selection
- By doing this it loses much of its explanatory power.

Links:
MIT Notes (PDF): http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/lecture.pdf
Susan Blackmore: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/

Link:
MIT Cognitive Science Lecture Notes [PDF] – http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/lecture.pdf