Can the spread of religion(s) be well-described by memetics?

What implications would this have?

And if the answer is yes, how much research on this can I find and where can I find it?Is it possible that this works in tandem with natural evolution?

I think it’s worth recalling the context and purpose of Dawkins’s invention of memes and memetics in the first place: Not as an actual theory for explaining anything, but as an analogy for evolution by mutation and natural selection, to demonstrate that ‘Darwinian’ evolution is actually a very general theory; that this sort of thing can happen in media very different from the chemical medium of DNA, RNA, and proteins that instantiates it in our case.

Some people have taken it much further than that, but I think that’s a bit problematic, because in the case of memes, unlike genes, ‘intelligent design’ is very much a reality. How do you realistically disentangle the effects of evolutionary effects from the deliberate invention of ideas?

Personally, I think that thinking about religions as memeplexes can be a productive way to generate ideas, perhaps even to develop hypotheses that can be tested by exploring them through more traditional tools of psychology, sociology, and so forth.

My favourite example here is the concept of Hell and the fact that it’s present in both the world’s two largest religions. Now, this may simply be an artifact of history; but let’s consider it from the point of view of regarding Hell as a meme. It seems to me that it would be a very potent meme: it aids spread by inducing fear, causing people to adopt the memeplex that offers a release from that fear. A fortiori, it makes the memeplex resilient. It’s an observed fact that many people whose religious faith is wavering are hesitant to give up on the whole thing because they are afraid of Hell (and some people still have nightmares decades later). Thus, the memetic view suggests that regardless of how the idea first arose, the Hell meme will be prone to sticking around.¹ I would further conjecture that it might suggest that we should expect Hell to develop to become more potent; as indeed we find much more explicit, vivid, and cruel descriptions in the Quran than the rather vague allusions of the Bible.

But, again, this all comes from the starting assumption that regarding it in terms of memes is a good idea; and I would not feel comfortable insisting upon that. Rather, it helps generate a hypothesis that I think is interesting to think about, but I don’t think it’s sufficient to perform any kind of “study”.

¹ Which among other things obviates the need for conspiracy-tinged notions like “Hell was invented as a tool to scare the masses and keep them in line.”

No.

Above all, I do not believe anything. Belief comes from imagination and gullibility layered on ignorance. Not a very practical way to see the world.

I trust quite a few peer reviewed scientific models, and I trust my own experience. I use a combination of both to navigate reality. But I do not superimpose belief onto what my senses tell me.

Then, “collective intelligence” can be one of two things: either a high level view of the result of the expression of myriad human actions that require, or should have required intelligence, or the fanciful idea that, somehow beyond scientific understanding and any sort of evidence, there exists a super-mind, a Gaya-like entity that represents what a few mushroom-smoking superannuated hippies believe should be the ethos of mankind.

Please discard the latter: it is just bullshit.

The former suffers from the same malign reputation as “capitalism” - being a contrived representation of phenomena, used as a bugbear by ideologues.

Reality is definitely not an overarching entity. It is what we perceive and attempt to classify of a zillion independent events, which we see as connected. But each event is independent of all others happening at the same time. Each event is a consequence of a chain of previous events, but it does not influence, and is not influenced by anything that happens at the same time, or may happen in the future. Any and all factors in any event must have happened in its past.

Even if we go into quantum mechanics, the indeterminacy, the synchronicity and the entanglement we may perceive only translate into macro events, or into thought patterns - and therefore into intelligence - as a result of our interpretation of massive sets of individual events, which we can only describe statistically.

There is great danger in the belief of a “collective intelligence,” as it implies some form of “collective responsibility.” Which is highly immoral. Each individual human acts in function of a particular series of past events, experiences, genetic heritage, environment, health and emotional status past and present… long list. Our cultural concepts of blame and punishment hinge on individual responsibility, with no moral grounds for collective punishment. As we move away from those obsolete concepts of blame and punishment, toward the far more realistic and practical ideas of restorative justice and social standing, it is essential to forget the atavism of collective blame.

Many years ago in our EIES research at NJIT for the purpose of performing controlled experiments we defined collective intelligence (CI) as the degree a group solution to a problem was better than the best individual solution. Flemming Funch's answer to How could we define collective intelligence? describes it well.

Today I am striving to help develop collective intelligence in decentralized groups in DivvyDAO.org DAO Toolkit for Interoperable Humans. This requires going beyond the simple definition of CI to defining the properties of groups exhibiting CI. Unstructured groups of five or more tend to have low CI. The exception to this is where the average answer to a problem reflects crowd wisdom of a large population. However crowd wisdom does not innovate better solutions to problems.

EIES research suggested structure and leadership with equal participation, norms, feedback on group sentiment, and anonymity improved collective intelligence. Lager groups tend to have lower CI without effective norms. In one small study the greatest collective intelligence was achieved by starting with individual solutions, then having pairs of people present their joint solutions to another pair of participants who then presents a joint solution to a larger group. Other research suggest 4.5 is the ideal group size or that groups over 10 become unwieldy so starting with smaller groups is suggested for maximum CI of a larger community.

I am led to define CI as the emergence of a group mind like a hive of bees or pod of whales cooperating as a collective being. Cooperation involves individual acting in an expected manner following commun norms or habits in there interaction with an effective division of labor and consensus mechanisms.

This is somewhat analogous to the fifth voice in a barbershop quartet. “The precise synchrony of the waveforms of the four voices simultaneously creates the perception of a "fifth voice" while at the same time melding the four voices into a unified sound.”

In our DivvyDAO.org collaboration of communities we are aiming to devlope best practices and support for facilitating the emergnce of collective intelligence.

In truth, no one really knows how this occurs, or to be more precise, there is not a set formula for distinguishing when a group separates and gains it’s own identity. The likely truth is that many things lead to the creation of an ethnic group.

Distance from the homeland is one such way. Though all cultures inevitably change, having distance between groups from the same ethnicity will eventually lead to another ethnic group. Ideas, habits and customs, though similar will eventually get different over time. We can see this in modern day Angalo-Saxons from the US and Australia and how they differ from England. Though these 3 groups maintain similar cultures, they are sufficiently varied to be considered different ethnic groups.

Religion is another way that ethnic groups can come into being. Think of how different pagan Europeans were as opposed to Christianized Europeans. Though some of the customs, habits and beliefs survived Christianity (and became Christian), many of them went to the way side as Europeans converted to Christianity. There is a stark difference between the habits, beliefs and customs of a pagan Scandinavian and a Christian one, so much so that calling them the same ethnic group is a bit of a stretch.

Separatism either by force or desire can also lead to separate ethnic groups forming. Think of the Jewish people, African Americans, Cajuns etc… These people for one reason or another were separated from the main population and developed their own habits and beliefs that though similar to the dominant group differ enough to be considered separate.

Technically an ethnic group can also form from a split in the common beliefs from the majority. If we consider an ethnic group has having a common cultural tradition, values and beliefs then we could also state that the US is biforcated not on political lines, but cultural ones.

The left and the right could be by some definitions two different cultures or at least sub cultures. This split being ideological often driven by either socioeconomic status, education and even environmental upbringing. If we look at how these two groups in the US vote and what they believe one could make that argument that the US is being driven by ethnic infighting. Of course, that would be the broadest definition of ethnicity.

This is not an exhaustive list of what can and does cause ethnogenesis, I don’t wish to write an encyclopedia on the subject, which one if given the desire nearly could.

A lot of nonsense on Quora. I see some of it thrown your way. Just ignore it. At least you haven’t received any metaphysical new age mumbo jumbo answers yet.

I’m just a science enthusiast so I won’t presume to give you a long answer to your interesting question here. But I might be able to offer some clues in your search.

First of all, consider there are many serious minds steeped in quantum physics, philosophy and neuro-science who are pondering this question or questions like it. Seek them out. If you are not already educated in the fine details of logical argument and the scientific method please do so in order the tell the difference between solid science, reasonably speculative science, highly speculative science or even pseudo-science because there’s a lot of silly business that out there in this area.

Also consider as a broad concept that biological evolution emerges out of a pre-existing context of cosmological evolution and feeds upon the self-organizing properties of matter that cosmological evolution has created. Likewise, consider that cultural evolution - more like the collective intelligence you refer to - then emerges out of biological evolution. Personally, I see cosmological, biological and cultural evolution as entwined. The created matter of the universe appears to produce self-aware consciousness quite naturally when conditions are right - as here on earth.

For an accessible layman’s rendering on the self-organizing nature of matter I recommend Paul Davis’ “The Mind of God.” Despite the sound of the title, the book is about science, not religion and refers to a quote by Stephen Hawking.

Finally, you should check out a recent article entitled, “Could Consciousness Come Down to the Way Things Vibrate?” It deals with a new theory of consciousness being rooted in the vibrational energy of atoms and molecules themselves and speaks to the whole relationship between matter and mind. The implication is that consciousness is natural property of all matter and lies dormant in all matter until it reaches a certain level of self-organized complexity.

If, however, by collective intelligence you’re referring to some God-like form of supernatural all knowing awareness, I’m afraid that’s outside the scope of my own interest and probably of science itself.

What about Ukrainian people?

All started with the Slavs. Proto-Slavic people lived in the area of Upper Vistula and Dnieper rivers (ancient Romans mentioned the tribe of Veneti, between German and Sarmatian tribes). Around 6th century, they started to migrate all over - some went to South, becoming the Yugo(Southern)-Slavs; some went West to become Croats, Slovene, Slovak, Czechs and Polish; and some went North to become Russians.

Those who stayed in the center of the original territory became Ukrainians, Ruthene/Rusyn and Belorussian.

The first Slavic state in 7th century was done by a Frankish merchant that supported Slavs against Avars (these fighting wars against Francs/Charlemagne).

The main Middle Age state of Slavs was Kievan Rus’, seemingly created by Swedish Vikings on their way on Volga and Black Sea to Constantinople. However, it split in many kniezates, and was conquered by the Mongols. Since the Mongol destruction of Kievan Rus’ a part of it became a principality (Galicia-Volhynia/Ruthenia), after a while conquered by Catholic Poland.

So between Mongol destruction of Kievan Rus’ and the split of Poland between Austro-Hungary, Germany and Russia there is a period of ethnogenesis of two peoples - Ukrainians and Belorussians: 1199–1349 independent, 1349–1772. So we have a very long period during which these Slavic populations were integrated in a very different culture from the future Russians - almost 800 years. During this period, future Ukraine and Belarus were part of: medieval Ruthenia/Galicia-Volhynia, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Austro-Hungarian and Prussian states.

During this period also the languages evolved differently. Ukrainian, Belarussian and Russian, while very close, are still different languages (for example, I learned Russian for a while during elementary school and when I encountered an Ukrainian calendar, I was very surprised to see the name of the months being different from the Russian ones).

So we have Slavic populations that evolved for almost 800 years in a Western area, developing a different culture and languages, so it is not surprising that they are different peoples, despite political claims made by Putin.

The fact that they are different is proved by what happened after the collapse of the Czarist Russian empire. Ukraine tried to gain independence, only to be invaded and defeated by Soviet Red Army, a fate that Poland would have had as well, if not successfully defeating the Red Army after bloody fights. No doubt that if Poland would have been defeated then and split from USSR as Ukraine did, the claims made by Putin over Ukraine would have been extended on Poland too.

In fact there was an Ukrainian independent polity: Cossack Hetmanate - Wikipedia

It existed only between 1648 and 1764 (although its administrative-judicial system persisted until 1782). But its persistence shows that Ukrainians were perceived as different from Russians at the beginnings of annexation to Russian empire.

There are very precise answers to this question, given that we agree on certain core provisions.

We may restrict our definition of a society to being a network of individuals. The question is then about how to improve the intelligence of this network.

The two major branches of action, which may not be so isolated, are ways to maximize the connectivity of the network, and to enhance the intelligence factor of each member of the network.

We must acknowledge that the world a supersociety, is a network of networks. And while a single society may benefit from infinite advancement in some regard, a society within a supernetwork cannot advance at the expense of others, if we must maximize the factors for the larger system and, in fact, for the participant society.

Given the circumstances above, we must consider factors so essential that they optimize societies as well as the supersociety without unwittingly introducing effects that ultimately stifle the goal. Such factors include:

• Education: This refers to the basic offerings of schooling where the most important features are literacy and social adaptation. Not only can an illiterate not have access to the vast ocean of written information, they barely have any useful intellectual system to apply relevant ideas to even if they were explained to them orally.
• Information: We need to improve the rate at which quality information is generated and stored.
• Communication: Innovations like the Internet and telecommunication should be accessible to all.
• Knowledge: selecting common and individual goals that generate advance knowledge, and developing a more skillful talent pool.
• Awareness: Encouraging discourse on and inquisitions into introspective matters such as the identity of societies, cultural influence, and the foundations of ethics and justice.
• Wellness: Improvements in health and nutrition to alleviate physical suffering and to enhance all-round performance.
• Ambition: Through visionary leadership, instilling a sense of purpose and ambitious ought-to-be-ness. This could be tied to technology-driven missions or economic objectives. The society organizes itself on the provision of the above listed factors to attain its ambition, and this further strengthens those features and ultimately advances the collective intelligence of the society.

While this may seem as a generic list of typical ‘good’ stuff, the items are actually carefully selected to suit the initial requirements. Extreme measures such as eugenics, for instance, are left out, as their outcomes may be too dramatic.

We may push the thinking further to narrow this down to the top 3 important factors, and I think those would be:

• Education - for enlightenment.
• Communication - for cooperation.
• Ambition - for purpose.

It is possible that at a deeper level of analysis, a more fundamental list can be developed. But I expect that they correspond to or support these ones ultimately.

On a related note, I offer perspective on the purpose of humanity in this answer:

Shalom Dickson's answer to How can we discern what technologies will help humanity from those that will be detrimental?

Collective intelligence refers to the ability of a group of individuals to collectively solve problems, make decisions, or generate new ideas and knowledge. It is a phenomenon that results from the combination and integration of the skills, knowledge, and experiences of a group of people. Collective intelligence is distinct from individual intelligence in that it is a dynamic and collaborative process that leverages the strengths of individuals to achieve a common goal.

Collective intelligence is important for society, individuals, and organizations in the modern world for several reasons:

1. Problem-solving: Collective intelligence can help to solve complex problems that individuals might not be able to solve alone. It provides an opportunity for people with diverse skills, experiences, and perspectives to collaborate and find innovative solutions to complex problems.
2. Decision-making: Collective intelligence can enhance decision-making by providing a wider range of perspectives and viewpoints, leading to better informed and more effective decisions. It can also lead to more robust and sustainable decisions, as the group can consider a greater range of potential consequences and outcomes.
3. Innovation: Collective intelligence can drive innovation by fostering a culture of collaboration and creativity. It provides opportunities for individuals to share their ideas and experiences, leading to the development of new and innovative solutions.
4. Knowledge sharing: Collective intelligence facilitates the sharing of knowledge and information between individuals, leading to the development of new ideas and insights. It can also help to identify and overcome knowledge gaps, leading to improved decision-making and problem-solving.
5. Social cohesion: Collective intelligence can foster social cohesion by promoting collaboration and mutual understanding between individuals and groups. It can also help to break down barriers and increase communication between people with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
6. Organizational effectiveness: Collective intelligence is important for organizations in the modern world, as it can help to increase efficiency, productivity, and innovation. By leveraging the skills, knowledge, and experiences of employees, organizations can achieve better results and stay ahead of the competition.

In conclusion, collective intelligence is a critical concept in the modern world, as it has the potential to improve decision-making, drive innovation, foster social cohesion, and increase organizational effectiveness. By promoting collaboration and the sharing of knowledge, collective intelligence can help individuals, organizations, and society to achieve their goals and solve complex problems.

There are (likely) many ways in which tweets allow for collective intelligence. I will offer one example of how this works.

Tweets are made up of text, with an invisible cachet of metadata -- I say invisible but that's not true at all. Geolocation, the source of a Tweet (i.e. the application that is the means of the tweet), the tweet that may have been the source of a tweet-as-response -- these are all viewable depending on the manner in which you view a particular tweet.

One study that was conducted by MIT focused on the semantic density on Twitter as medium of "highly emotional words." They looked at the appearance of words that indicated extreme emotions randomly selected through the main Twitter stream. What the researchers at MIT found was that there was evidence indicating a correlation between the increase of highly emotional words on Twitter and a dip (never, apparently, rise despite the emotions arguably conveyed) a few days later in the DowJones Index.

Read here for more details on this particular study: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25900/

What this study did not do, however, is perform a diffusion analysis of words that eminate from "influencers" on Twitter. Twitter users are networked together, and clearly looking only at re-tweets as one crude example of behavior that demonstrates influence could be analyzed for the appearance, in the same problem space as what MIT studied, for the source of highly emotional words and how such messages are amplified. This isn't necessarily a great study -- but it would be an interesting one that examined networked behavior with regards to collective intelligence.

I personally feel there are more interesting studies to be performed with tweets than as an arguable indicator of the DowJones (human migration patterns using census data, time between joblessness and new employment, goal attenuation and networked behavior, how many popular ideas originate when people are tweeting from their bathroom -- just to name a few). However, the MIT study is certainly a documented example that supports that tweets do allow for collective intelligence, simply by the fact that there is text that represents an idea that is shared, thus potentially influencing others.

Collective Intelligence (CI) is the degree to which a group of people become smarter together than if they were apart. It is a synergy, where the parts come together to become something more than just the sum of the parts.

It could be positive or negative, but we usually prefer calling it Collective Intelligence mainly when the effect is positive. Most groups become stupid, sometimes even stupider than one individual member. Adding more people often makes them stupider. So, Collective Intelligence is the search for the opposite, where something dynamically good comes out of banding together.

It is unfortunately a fuzzy term. We don’t know very well what it is or how to bring it about or how to measure it.

You can somewhat recognize Collective Intelligence by noticing whether a particular group or organization seems to hinder you and slow you down or whether it seems to amplify your skills and make things move faster. The side-effects and unexpected things that happen, are they mostly good or bad?

In a low/negative CI group, things are forgotten or go wrong or take lots of effort. Think about a big bureaucratic company or government, for example. The rules are complicated, many people are just running on idle, trying to look like they’re working, or spending hours in meetings that don’t accomplish anything. Deciding or changing anything is an uphill battle. The group might still do something good, but far from the sum of the good that all those people could do if they were free from the group.

In a high CI group, there’s some kind of state of flow. If you have a problem, you’re likely to run into somebody who can fix it for you. Your productive efforts get amplified by the efforts of others. The average value of a member is more than what could have been expected if they worked alone. People are motivated. It feels rewarding to contribute. The collective effort seems to have a certain spirit to it that others will recognize.

I recommend you checkout Pierre Levy's 'networks of collective intelligence' approach, which integrates 6 main components of collective intelligence.

See http://pierrelevy.posterous.com/the-networks-of-collective-intelligence

I have collated various materials on the topic at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Intelligence and http://delicious.com/mbauwens/Collective-Intelligence

Here are three more interpretative schemes:

Dave Snowden has proposed the Cynefin framework for identifying the
best match between knowledge styles and reality:

"It has five domains, characterised by the relationship between
cause and effect. The first four domains are:

• Simple, in which the relationship between cause and
  effect is obvious to all, the approach is to Sense - Categorise -
  Respond and we can apply best practice.

• Complicated, in which the relationship between cause
  and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation
  and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense -
  Analyze - Respond and we can apply good practice.

• Complex, in which the relationship between cause and
  effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the
  approach is to Probe - Sense - Respond and we can sense emergent
  practice.

• Chaotic, in which there is no relationship between
  cause and effect at systems level, the approach is to Act - Sense
  - Respond and we can discover novel practice.

The fifth domain is Disorder, which is the state of not
knowing what type of causality exists, in which state people will
revert to the comfort zone in making a decision."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin)

See the video: Shawn Callahan on the
Cynefin Framework

2.

Framework from George Dyson in Darwin
Among The Machines, summarized by Kevin Kelly [4]:

• One species, many minds: The official future. We
  interbreed among our genetic improvements and keep our individuality
  distinct, and our species identity intact.

• One species, one mind: Through electronic mediation, we
  join together to create a superorganism. A suprahuman.

• Many species, many minds: Ultimate diversity. Humans
  fork in their evolution to create new breeds. Some may even join
  machines in cyborgian partnerships.

• Many species, one mind: We fork in biology but unite in
  the noosphere. Millions of species share the same mind.

3.

Henry Jenkins:

"We can argue that there are a range of different models of
collective intelligence shaping the digital realm at the present time.
We might distinguish broadly between three different models:

1) An aggregative model which assumes that we can collect data
based on the autonomous and anonymous decisions of “the crowd” and
use it to gain insights into their collective behavior. This is the
model which shapes Digg and to some degree, YouTube.

2) a curatorial model where grassroots intermediaries seek to
represent their various constituencies and bring together information
that they think is valuable. This is the model which shapes the
blogosphere.

3) a deliberative model where many different voices come
together, define problems, vet information, and find solutions which
would be impossible for any individual to achieve. This is the model
shaping Wikipedia or even more powerfully alternate universe games. Of
the three, the deliberative model offers the most democratic potentials,
especially when it is tempered by ethical and political commitments to
diversity. This is the model which Pierre Levy describes in his book,
Collective Intelligence. Levy’s account stresses the affirmative value
placed on diversity in such a culture. The more diverse the community,
the broader range of possible information and insights can inform the
deliberative process."
(http://henryjenkins.org/2009/11/reflections_on_cultural_politi_1.html)

Although we can find a huge amount of references on “collective intelligence” in the Web — even Wikipedia has an article dedicated to it — I personally believe that there is no such a thing! Intelligence is a personal thing. We can see this in Wikipedia itself in its definition of intelligence: “the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving.”

Assuming that the word “collective” refers to a group of people, can such a group have its own logic, understanding, etc. of the above features? Can a group have self-awareness? It doesn’t make sense, does it? Can a group take an IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test as a group? Certainly not. And, certainly, we can’t say that a group’s IQ is the sum of the IQs of all its members! This will be ridiculous! But we can say that a group’s IQ is the average of the IQs of all its members. This makes sense. So, we can see e.g. statistics on the IQs of each country or scientific, technological, etc. progress of each country related to its people’s level of intelligence, knowledge, abilities, skill, etc.

There is certainly team/group work, team/group performance, team/group spirit etc. which is the result of the combined work of the members of the team/group.

But also certainly, there’s no such a thing as “collective intelligence”!

Humans are intelligent, that is our survival means. Being social and communicating is our basic evolutionary niche. It is what marine foraging is to the sea mammals, what flight is to the birds, thought is what keeps us alive. To be intelligent enough to speak and even to understand abstractions are awesome traits, without which we never would have lived to see today.

But our civilization is collective intelligence. The most intelligent individual on earth could not have originated the concept of a published book any more that designed any part of the Hubble from scratch.

All of our great achievements are the result of centuries of travel, exploration, trade, and exchanges of good books and disposing of the many more bad books.

At this point we are all interconnected and the potential is for the organic people to act in huge groups to vote by ‘likes’ or what not, on any issue or problem, instantly. Organic neurons are not self aware, and only have limited abilities to fire weakly/strongly.

But the neurons specialize and form local networks, and these connect with other networks, and they have specialized programs. Guided by DNA, our neurons unite by the billions to fill a single cranium with forty different communities, all of which hears itself called ‘Betty” or ‘Bob” and and slowly adopts a language and ultimately imagines a narrative identity for “Bob” or “Betty”. The individual neurons have no clue that they are Bob or Betty.

At some point this ad hoc identity called “Bob’ or “Betty” is the essence of the collective intelligence of the billions of neurons of the united but disparate parts of the brain.

The identity reflects on its emotions and thoughts as if they are those of “Bob” or “Betty”. Now, by the miracle of an imagined ego which tells itself it experiences the by products of its billions of synapses, there is an individual intelligence comprised of billions of specialized neurons, none of which have any idea that they are Bob or Betty.

Would the world wide network of cell phones fire in coordinated ways that ultimately select for a group identity, in reality imagined by us all collectively, all of our millions of likes and scrolls as comprising an identity which it collectively imagines itself to be? Not likely without the pressure of a billion years of natural selection.

But wouldn’t that collective intelligence be someone to be.

Perhaps corporations are the easiest "human group organisms" to evaluate. The Price-to-Earnings ratio or the Price-to-Book ratio could be used as a metric for intelligence.

Earnings and Book value are fairly directly related to the corporation's current value - sales and investments. A share price of 8-times earnings is fairly common and might be said to represent the 'excess' intelligence of the group above and beyond what a random group could do with the same resources.

Companies that are perceived as being smarter (e.g., likely to grow, develop great new products, make lots more money) have higher P/E ratios. I just checked and found that Amazon has a P/E = 532 right now. Of course, such market evaluations of corporate intelligence are sometimes wrong. Prior to 2000, lots of dot-com companies were believed to be much smarter than they really were. So maybe you need to look at long term running averages to get a better evaluation.

-----------------

Here's a much more speculative notion that I've been thinking about for a while. Perhaps Technology is a super set of humanity. It looks like Technology wants to spread and wants to develop new capabilities, much as people do. But such a super set might have a very different sort of awareness than we have. We can't chop off an arm, ingest it, and use the nutrients to grow wings. But Technology does that all the time. Could we understand or evaluate such super sets any better than our kidneys understand us?

Memetics is just the spread of ideas.

My understanding is memetics is an attempt to either historically to account for idea spread.

I think it potentially leaves out:

• Individual psychology
• Various constraints and contexts—real or perceived (alternative causes)
• Cultural/historical contexts

Basically it’s a very macro level tool that is reductive. There are other tools which can also help.

Plus each denomination has unique practices, which probably reflect why its peoples ended up growing and thriving on the one hand or stalling and stagnating on the other.

I think you lose a lot on the cutting room floor to be honest (that’s the nature of reductive tools). For instance, the same could be said of the study of the spread of evolution as a belief. It’s also a question of sub-communities’ beliefs, experiences, histories, characters, identities, interactions, environments, contexts, values, and goals. That’s a whole lot of nuance to give up on—if memetics is your only approach for evaluating and/or slicing and dicing the data. Its framework provides a unique grid which has unique limits. And it’s important to take that into account.

A levels of analysis or different perspectives provided by different disciplines, approaches, methodologies, and perspectives is worth taking into account.

Here are two short pieces I did on reductivism:

• What are the flaws of scientific reductionism?
• What is the disadvantage of reductivism in science?

I say yes, because collective memory exists. Colassal events that have a major effect on society remain in the collective memory for thousands of years, as in the case of the worldwide flood that Noah and seven others survived. All over the world different cultures have the same legend with a few variations, but all say the entire planet was flooded. The Chinese word for boat and for eight the number of survivors are the same word. Halloween is even a residual memory of that event, in that it is an observation lamenting the loss of those who perished in the flood. Not a good thing to commemorate, since that was a judgment, and a kmowing choice made by those who did mot get on the arc.

I think that collective intelligence operates to tell us that if a similar disaster is upon us, get on the arc!

How intelligence a person is depends very much on his/her abilities to survive in any challenging environments.

Collective intelligence of any social networks/societies/races/nationals/earthlings/ET's can be measured/defined by the following categories:

1. Communication abilities - sign languages/verbal languages/written languages and/or/maybe spiritual/mental/ESP communications;
2. Self defense abilities - physical, using of external tools, manufacture of tools;
3. Self Survival abilities - cultivation of foods, rearing of poultry animals/fishes or organism for foods, manufacture and storage of foods;
4. Environmental self protection abilities - self adaptations for protections, manual change of environment, use of external tools for protections, manufacture of tools for protections;
5. Reproduction abilities - conceive rate, reproductive duration, healthy birth rate, length of life
6. Collective family defense abilities - family bonds, length of care for offspring, upbringing effectiveness for young members, resources needed to look after the aged and sicks;
7. Collective defense abilities - degree of willingness for each member to cooperate with other members, ability to mobilize everyone to guard against foreign threats, effectiveness in using external tools together to have self defense, ability and effectiveness in producing defense tools. Rich and Poor gaps among the members;
8. Cultural development abilities - the ability to entertain themselves and others, how important intangible benefits are viewed by the members;
9. Knowledge accumulation (in earthling's standards) - proportions of people with intelligence in each category in years - 5 years, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 years;
10. Spiritual development abilities - not too sure if this is needed.

Yes, in many forms.

We are awash in overlapping distributed swarm intelligences, some of which are emergent from our conscious and/or subconscious minds, and most which are emergent from other life forms. Such swarm intelligences can form between any group of two or more life forms.

Just to give a quick example, a collective intelligence around the blue team at a football game would exist. Another collective intelligence would exist around the red team at that football game. Another collective intelligence would exist around the whole game. Another collective intelligence would exist around a family at that football game. Etc.

Some such swarm minds can form quickly and dissipate quickly. Others can form and last for years, decades, centuries, millennia, etc. The Human Species Wide RNA/DNA Swarm mind (which we barely know anything about) traces it’s beginning back over 4 billion years ago.

I believe that any and all information, in its purest (data) and un-biased, un-assuaged of purpose state or form, has existed from the start of what is commonly recognized to be existence or reality.

Data is the building blocks of information. It is a process of organization of the chaotic form (data) into organized form as information; if the information is tested and is found yield purity in its resolve (the “aha!”), it can be considered knowledge or a state of application which produces desired effect(s).

Knowledge, gets a personal-bias as it pertains to its use or origin as ‘understanding’ or ‘reason’ and then (based upon its worth for repetition or overall usefulness in its resolution), takes on a more solid state in ‘wisdom’ which is passed on or communicated via more and more refined and simpler definition or demonstration between two or more of the same cognitive and mental prowess (+/-).

Intelligence, in the collective form would be, in my opinion, an individual-trait that relies not only on mental-prowess but the whole spectrum of possibilities in how the mind is wired for each unique individual. That is to say, the data is raw and abundant, the info is the organization of data (if one is able to do so), the application is knowledge and the understanding of its outcome or answer(s) is wisdom. Intelligence would be one’s own ability to integrate this process at any given step and end up with the “aha! I get it!”

As I understand it, “collective intelligence” is an amalgamation of many areas of expertise to arrive at a commonly acceptable understanding, or consensus.

The principle and its parts are not a new concept. Each individual, or group, contributes to achieve a commonly accepted result. And, in order to do that, individual and group talent is diverse in the sense that each is an increment needed to arrive at the needed result of the overall effort. No single part can stand alone because all the various individual proficiencies, including machines, are needed to comprise the essence of success.

In Buddhist philosophy, there is a concept known as Indra’s net. It is a metaphor to represent both “emptiness” and how all individuals come together for the common good of all despite multidimensional levels to arrive at that result. Each is needed to make up the whole. No one part of the net can stand alone because each is part of a greater whole.

In H.G.Wells book “World Brain,” written around 1936, Wells envisioned a “World Encyclopedia” that would enable all the world’s people to use toward understanding and using the tools to achieve a world of complete peace. A common good. A consensus of individuals coming together to achieve a result: a “World Brain.”

Better know has hive minded, this allows individuals who cannot attack a large predator or take on a large physical or mental task and have an effect as and individual to combine into a group and become much stronger and effective as larger team unit based on numbers , experiences and intelligence,and actually is the best way for intelligence animals like us to move great physical requirements or to solve large issues or problems, such as economics,pollution, religion , racism to name a few . Can one human take on a couple of bee’s with out protection yes , but can we take on hive with no protection ,no . As one can see it applies in both the physical and mental spectra .

The tremendous growth in the use of Social Media has led to radical paradigm shifts in the ways we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create information. Our focus in this special issue is on the reciprocal interplay of Social Media and Collective Intelligence. We therefore discuss constituting attributes of Social Media and Collective Intelligence, and we structure the rapidly growing body of literature including adjacent research streams such as social network analysis, Web Science, and computational social science. We conclude by making propositions for future research where in particular the disciplines of artificial intelligence, computer science, and information systems can substantially contribute to the interdisciplinary academic discourse

Culture, or maybe sub-culture. Companies often think about silos as organizational boundaries, but they area really cultural and organizational. Organizational culture is often characterized as homogeneous, but it's more like group of separate cultures that are working together. A company with a manufacturing/management/logistics culture like Nokia is going to find it hard to out maneuver competitors that have design and innovation cultures. It's not that Nokia isn't smart, some of the smartest people in the world are there and have been there, but it is hard for design and innovation subcultures at Nokia to interface with the management culture. They talk about this in the scripts papers as biases and what I'm describing is cultural bias which tends to be tacit.