Evolution of music by public choice.

[trekkiedane]

Introduction to the concept:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAenkGs1GBg[/yt]​

Interested? -then go to DarwinTunes!

Well?

It's not really my kind of music but I see what they're doing there and I'd prefer this (coupled with the red-button technology) to the European Song Contest-way of doing music... any day.

If you listen to the audio-snapshots on the site -in chronological order- you actually get a feel of the evolutionary process. Plus it sounds a bit like the kind of loops you might be playing around with yourself on your computer (the jump from the 1900'th to the 2000'th generation is a favourite of mine; it's one of those quantum leaps I suppose ).

What do you think?

 

[thestrangequark]

This is really fucking cool. Thanks for sharing! I really need to read more on memetics.

 

[trekkiedane]

^Found it via BBC: Music evolution: Is this the end of the composer?.

 

[thestrangequark]

^Funny, I glanced at that headline this morning and was completely uninterested. I should have read the article!

 

[trekkiedane]

^It's a video -I normally hate watching videos when going through the headlines but once in a blue moon I don't mind too much... and sometimes something like this happens

 

[thestrangequark]

^I can't wait to play with it...I'm on a work computer right now, but when I get home I'm sure I'll become quite addicted. What a fun experiment! It's be really interesting to see a how different populations would affect the evolution of the music: say have one "species" for which only people over the age of 50 are allowed to vote, another species for those under 15...regional, ethnic, or native language groups too. I wonder how different/similar their music would be!

 

[trekkiedane]

^Apparently students were the primary voters for some of this -no wonder it sounds like something you'd run (as one one of them states) or dance to.

Would definitely sound different after a few generations if ol' fogies like myself were the primary voters

 

[horatio83]

Darwin, cultural evolution and public choice have little to do with each other. Cultural evolution is far more complex than biological evolution and public choice is basically just a method of political economics, a research area of fairly limited value.

 

[thestrangequark]

Darwin, cultural evolution and public choice have little to do with each other. Cultural evolution is far more complex than biological evolution and public choice is basically just a method of political economics, a research area of fairly limited value.

Wow, you're, like, totally smarter than all these scientists, aren't you!

Actually, memetics is a very interesting field of research with wide implications, including hypotheses concerning the creation and development of religion and other supernatural beliefs, insight into psychology, and practical applications, such as the study of trends, which can provide useful insight not only in the market realm, but also in education and public services.

The idea here that you've completely missed is that ideas, or pieces of ideas, exist in culture as units (memes), which are transmitted, mutated, and disappear much in the same way as genes. In memetics, though, popular choice plays the part that natural selection does in biological evolution.

 

[trekkiedane]

^Indeed

Music evolves as composers, performers, and consumers favor some musical variants over others. To investigate the role of consumer selection, we constructed a Darwinian music engine consisting of a population of short audio loops that sexually reproduce and mutate. This population evolved for 2,513 generations under the selective influence of 6,931 consumers who rated the loops’ aesthetic qualities. We found that the loops quickly evolved into music attributable, in part, to the evolution of aesthetically pleasing chords and rhythms. Later, however, evolution slowed. Applying the Price equation, a general description of evolutionary processes, we found that this stasis was mostly attributable to a decrease in the fidelity of transmission. Our experiment shows how cultural dynamics can be explained in terms of competing evolutionary forces.

(My emphasis).​

Just imagine if you could harness this power

 

[thestrangequark]

^Lady Gaga, Madonna before her, Bowie before her. Maybe that's what lasting pop-success is.

 

[horatio83]

Darwin, cultural evolution and public choice have little to do with each other. Cultural evolution is far more complex than biological evolution and public choice is basically just a method of political economics, a research area of fairly limited value.

Wow, you're, like, totally smarter than all these scientists, aren't you!

Actually, memetics is a very interesting field of research with wide implications, including hypotheses concerning the creation and development of religion and other supernatural beliefs, insight into psychology, and practical applications, such as the study of trends, which can provide useful insight not only in the market realm, but also in education and public services.

The idea here that you've completely missed is that ideas, or pieces of ideas, exist in culture as units (memes), which are transmitted, mutated, and disappear much in the same way as genes. In memetics, though, popular choice plays the part that natural selection does in biological evolution.

Analyzing human society with the very same tools that we use to analyze genes is at worst bordering pseudoscience and at best just another pathetic attempt to give social sciences a hard scientific touch. I prefer to embrace that evidence is rarely unambiguous in psychology, sociology, economics, political science or anthropology which makes these disciplines more theoretical, more old-school scholar like than their natural scientific brothers.

Important human concepts like religion, democracy and so on are not voted for or selected by people according to their preferences. This is an misapplication of economic logic in non-economic areas and as I am an economist I have the audacity to point out the limits of my discipline.
I rather stick with continental philosophy if I wanna gain actual insights into e.g. the evolution of religion. When we made the step from pagan to monotheistic religions God became a signifier for the law or the absolute and stopped to be a signifier for fertility, weather, war or whatever.
Impossible to come up with this insight if you play public choice games, not to mention that a simple "people have preferences and influence cultural outcomes of culture via them" ignores a) that human societies have never had a flat power structure and b) all the insights into cooperation problems we got from game theory.

But of course I could be wrong and this memetic stuff is great shit. Perhaps you can point out an example of a significant discovery made by this discipline?

 

[trekkiedane]

^Lady Gaga, Madonna before her, Bowie before her. Maybe that's what lasting pop-success is.

There's bound to be a bit more to it, but I'll accept that some humans possess an uncanny ability to do quantum leaps (mutation) while 'just' making a new 'generation' of pop-music (selection) where others merely reiterate (regurgitate?) already known tunes.

 

[thestrangequark]

Analyzing human society with the very same tools that we use to analyze genes is just another pathetic attempt to make social sciences hard scienes. Obviously there are not, evidence is rarely unambiguous in psychology, sociology, economics, political science or anthropology.

Are they using the "very same tools"? Because I don't see any microscopes or petri dishes involved in this experiment...

Important human concepts like religion, democracy and so on are not voted for or selected by people according to their preferences.

Of course, it's not as simple as that, but you're kinda missing the point again. No one here is saying that this is how memetics works in the real world. This is a model, a simulation, much like evolutionary biologists create computer simulations of biological evolution. However, in this case, as a computer cannot make a taste judgement, they need people to vote. In the real world memetics are driven by much more complicated processes, including subconscious motivation, interaction of individuals and groups with their environments and each other, etc.

This is an misapplication of economic logic in non-economic areas and as I am an economist I have the audacity to point out the limits of my discipline.
I rather stick with continental philosophy if I wanna gain actual insights into e.g. the evolution of religion. When we made the step from pagan to monotheistic religions God became a signifier for the law or the absolute and stopped to be a signifier for fertility, weather, war or whatever.
Impossible to come up with this insight if you play public choice games, not to mention that a simple "people have preferences and influence cultural outcomes of culture via them" ignores a) that human societies have never had a flat power structure and b) all the inisghts into cooperation problems we got from game theory.

Again, you're oversimplifying. Just because you can't comprehend it doesn't mean it's not valid or good science.

But of course I could be wrong and this memetic stuff is great shit. Perhaps you can point out an example of a great discovery made by this discipline?

For some insight into how memetics relates to the development of religious beliefs, see Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene. For a more general overview of memetics you can look at the writings of Susan Blackmore, punch "memetics" into the amazon search bar, read the Wikipedia page on memetics (which is balanced, including criticism of the science), or you can google it. These are all very effective ways of educating yourself. Good luck!

Memetics is a very controversial branch of science, and may in the future come to little fruition, but that doesn't mean it should be dismissed out of hand. Every great science was new at some point, some took off, and others crashed into nothingness. But, as is the way with science, each failure taught as much, if not more, than each success.

Dismissing a whole field of research out of hand is foolish: sure these scientists may be wrong, and sure, being a scientist doesn't mean your a genius. But thinking one knows better than a whole group of scientists is a pretty sure sign of idiocy.

 

[thestrangequark]

^Lady Gaga, Madonna before her, Bowie before her. Maybe that's what lasting pop-success is.

There's bound to be a bit more to it, but I'll accept that some humans possess an uncanny ability to do quantum leaps (mutation) while 'just' making a new 'generation' of pop-music (selection) where others merely reiterate (regurgitate?) already known tunes.

Yeah, I was being a little tongue-in-cheek there, but also a little serious. There was a study done a few years ago of the fashion industry which relates to this idea. They basically looked at whether fashion trends were driven from the "top down" -- ie designers and big fashion business directing trends, or from the "bottom up" -- the public direct the trends and the industry responds. Although at first it seems that fashion must be a top down industry, the researchers actually found that it was profoundly bottom up. This fits in well with the theory of memetics, and, while anecdotal evidence doesn't count in the realm of science, it does fit in well with my own experiences. I remember about ten years ago, just before leggings took off in trendiness again, thinking how I wished I could find a pair of leggings to wear under a minidress...and what do you know, the very next season leggings reappeared on the runway. I've had this experience several times with fashion...thinking how much I'd like to revisit a particular trend, and then finding that just a year or two later, the trend reappears.

 

[horatio83]

Analyzing human society with the very same tools that we use to analyze genes is just another pathetic attempt to make social sciences hard scienes. Obviously there are not, evidence is rarely unambiguous in psychology, sociology, economics, political science or anthropology.

Are they using the "very same tools"? Because I don't see any microscopes or petri dishes involved in this experiment...

Important human concepts like religion, democracy and so on are not voted for or selected by people according to their preferences.

Of course, it's not as simple as that, but you're kinda missing the point again. No one here is saying that this is how memetics works in the real world. This is a model, a simulation, much like evolutionary biologists create computer simulations of biological evolution. However, in this case, as a computer cannot make a taste judgement, they need people to vote. In the real world memetics are driven by much more complicated processes, including subconscious motivation, interaction of individuals and groups with their environments and each other, etc.

This is an misapplication of economic logic in non-economic areas and as I am an economist I have the audacity to point out the limits of my discipline.
I rather stick with continental philosophy if I wanna gain actual insights into e.g. the evolution of religion. When we made the step from pagan to monotheistic religions God became a signifier for the law or the absolute and stopped to be a signifier for fertility, weather, war or whatever.
Impossible to come up with this insight if you play public choice games, not to mention that a simple "people have preferences and influence cultural outcomes of culture via them" ignores a) that human societies have never had a flat power structure and b) all the inisghts into cooperation problems we got from game theory.

Again, you're oversimplifying. Just because you can't comprehend it doesn't mean it's not valid or good science.

But of course I could be wrong and this memetic stuff is great shit. Perhaps you can point out an example of a great discovery made by this discipline?

For some insight into how memetics relates to the development of religious beliefs, see Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene. For a more general overview of memetics you can look at the writings of Susan Blackmore, punch "memetics" into the amazon search bar, read the Wikipedia page on memetics (which is balanced, including criticism of the science), or you can google it. These are all very effective ways of educating yourself. Good luck!

Memetics is a very controversial branch of science, and may in the future come to little fruition, but that doesn't mean it should be dismissed out of hand. Every great science was new at some point, some took off, and others crashed into nothingness. But, as is the way with science, each failure taught as much, if not more, than each success.

Dismissing a whole field of research out of hand is foolish: sure these scientists may be wrong, and sure, being a scientist doesn't mean your a genius. But thinking one knows better than a whole group of scientists is a pretty sure sign of idiocy.

Thanks for calling me an idiot because I dare to criticize the methodology of memetics. Thanks for the reading tips but I am still waiting for the example. Perhaps you should not recommend books but actually read them such that you are able to actually talk about the subject which you claim to know, unlike stupid morons like myself, so incredibly well?
Probably pointless to discuss with somebody who is so full of himself but I will try one last time.

Let me use another example which illustrates my point. The most convincing argument for the incest taboo is Levi-Strauss' idea that marrying outside of the immediate family enlargened the clan and thus gave it more power.
Nowadays the incest taboo is deeply ingrained into us, it basically exists in what you could call the collective unconsciousness. Nobody votes for it, it is a cultural axiom yet it is also totally contingent. A public choice approach could not even deal with this. Whenever you encounter something slightly Freudian you have to throw any utility approach (which is highly useful in economics proper) out of the window.

 

[thestrangequark]

^Well, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

You are still missing the point. This is a model. A simulation. No one is saying that in the real world memetics is based on a vote. Read about the subject before you try to debate it. You're only making yourself sound silly.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

That was an interesting series of videos and articles - thanks for sharing them. It's certainly a different and fascinating spin on how I always imagined music (well, Western music anyway) had developed over the years - development of memes representing genetic shifts, the gradual development of variations representing genetic drift, and the reaction of cultural mores representing the ever-changing selection pressures and immunities - with (to continue the virus analogy) a highly successful musical meme creating a pandemic of global superstardom.

It's probably an over-simplified representation of what's happening, and I might need to read up more on it, but it's given me a new appreciation of not just music, but medical genetics too.

 

[thestrangequark]

^Love the new Av, Zion!

 

[horatio83]

^Well, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

You are still missing the point. This is a model. A simulation. No one is saying that in the real world memetics is based on a vote. Read about the subject before you try to debate it. You're only making yourself sound silly.

Yep, I am totally silly, that's why I am talking about the subject while you are just throwing around insults and not able to just point out one example of a great insight provided by memetics .

Of course it is just a model. But a model based on a standard economic approach: people have preferences and vote for cultural outcomes, the game is dynamic such that the cultural outcomes change and then people vote again and so on. This is dubious because, as I tried to illustrate via my incest taboo example, many cultural outcomes do not fit this model.