An Open Mind is Not an Empty Mind: Experiments in the Meta-Noosphere

Using the "meme" conception (Dawkins 1976) of cultural transmission and computer simulations, an exploration is made of the relationship between agents, their beliefs about their environment, communication of those beliefs, and the global behaviours that emerge in a simple artificial society. This paper builds on previous work using the Minimeme model (Bura 1994). The model is extended to incorporate open-mindedness meta-memes (memes about memes). In the scenarios presented such meta-memes have dramatic effects, increasing the optimality of population distribution and the accuracy of existing beliefs. It is argued that artifical society experimentation offers a potentially fruitful response to the inherent problems of building new meme theory.