Strands of Genius: What Does It All Meme, Mind The AI Gap, Instant Hit

Guest curated by Eaon Pritchard, CSO at Bray&Co

Jun 06, 2024

:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, EAON PRITCHARD ::

LOCATION: Australia

Hello fellow Strands readers. I'm Eaon, not the world's most grumpy planner but I'm probably in the top 3. I am Scottish so it's probably genetic. After unsuccessful attempts at neo-expressionist painting, pop stardom and, later, Balearic/acid DJ superstardom (although I did achieve one global techno-house hit in the mid-90s), I finally turned to advertising as a last-gasp creative outlet. It worked out ok, I suppose. I'm interested in applied memetics and evolutionary psychology alongside marketing science in my work. I've also written a few books 'Where Did It All Go Wrong?’ from 2018 and 'Shot By Both Sides’ from 2020. and ‘If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go’ came out in 2023. Faris and Rosie have a few to give away, just drop them a mail and ask for one. The only rule is that if you get one then post a pic to LinkedIn or something, and thank the Strands crew.

Editor’s Note (Faris): I have known Eaon from the blogging the days so about twenty years or so. He has always stimulated and challenged my thinking, which is the most one can ask for really. He has some lovely books - Amazon author page link here - and we do indeed have 9 books to give away! (I am keeping one). Please do share Strands on Linkedin in general and tag me and that (makes it easier) if you like strands and think people you like might like it too.

He’s a lovely man for a genetically grumpy planner and we’re delighted he did this edition for us! Thank you mate. As he said - just reply to this email and some of you will get books. I will send 5 anywhere in the USA and then 4 globally (this is a huge pain you have to fill out customs forms and it’s a whole thing but hey we love you all, equally). I love Dennett and his Intuition pumps, get in there.

:: THE LINKS ::

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEME?

Daniel Dennett sadly passed away the other week. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, it’s hard to overstate what a massive figure in philosophy and cognitive science he was. His ideas dug out seriously profound insights into understanding human behaviour—something everyone in advertising should be interested in.

Among those ideas are the Intentional Stance, the Design Stance and the Multiple Drafts Model of Consciousness. I’ll let you investigate those for yourself. But it’s his thinking on memes in Consciousness Explained from 1991 that hooked me in to the rest of his ouvre. In that book Dennett expanded the idea of memes, originally proposed by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, elaborating on how units of cultural information replicate and evolve similarly to biological genes. As Dennett concurred, memes encompass a wide array of cultural phenomena, good ideas, and many bad ideas, which propagate and influence societal norms and individual behaviours. But Dennett’s crucial new insight was that memes are ‘interested’ in only their own survival and replication. Our brains are merely their vehicles, they don't care much about any benefit to their hosts.

Since that first exposure maybe around 2012, the way I think about the spread of ideas and cultural evolution was massively influenced. Cultural ideas are not just static knowledge passed down or shared but are almost independent living entities competing for survival and dominance within human minds. Dennett’s work also has lessons that extend beyond the philosophical and into the very practical. In the video I’ve linked to here, Dennett talks about ‘intuition pumps’. These 'memes' are his selected 'tools' for thinking - mental devices for knowledge and challenging ideas. If there’s anything we desperately need these days it's a bit more critical thinking, scepticism and deeper inquiry. (YouTube - Intelligence Squared)

MIND THE AI GAP

Continuing on the scepticism theme, in a world of noise, hype , over-claims and fear mongering around AI it can be hard to find who or what we should be listening to. One voice of reason is Gary Marcus, a Psychology professor by trade and a harsh critic of modern artificial intelligence methods. Marcus is known for his sceptical views on the current state of AI, particularly deep learning. He argues that while deep learning has driven a lot of the recent progress in AI, it has some pretty big shortcomings that prevent it from achieving the kind of general intelligence being mooted by the AI lobby. Either way big tech cannot be trusted to act in our interests.

In a nutshell, Marcus advocates for a more hybrid approach to AI that combines the statistical learning strengths of modern AI with rule-based systems that can provide the kind of structured reasoning humans often use – a cross-disciplinary thinking in AI development, which is another reason why he might be less than popular in Silicon Valley.

Marcus has written all over about AI and cognitive science, Put his book Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust, co-authored with Ernest Davis, on your Amazon wish list. And in the meantime his Substack is largely free to access so subscribe, absorb and instantly become the voice of reason and scepicism on AI, in your workplace. (Substack - Gary Marcus)

INSTANT HIT

‘Banging and shouting…completely unhindered by any discernible musical ability.' That was the verdict radio producer John Walters, upon encountering an early line-up of The Slits and their chaotic mix of scratchy guitar, dub bass and clattering drums at the 100 Club in London circa 1977 and immediately whisking them down to the BBC studios at Maida Vale to record an ‘in session’ for the John Peel show. The Slits were pretty impressive when they were terrible and even more so when they were great. Within two years their debut album, Cut, landed and it’s a record that remains as startlingly original and contemporary today, 45 years later.

To say there was nothing like the Slits before, and there’s been nothing like them since is not an overclaim. Musically, Cut is totally in a genre of its own, mashing up of punk, dub and reggae via nonsensical shifts in tempo and time. If it came out tomorrow it would sound like the way forward. As a thirteen-year-old punk rocker I totally loved the Slits. They were intelligent, sexy, terrifying and exciting. And not much older than me. I think singer Ari Up was fourteen or something. Around that time I went to Saturday morning drawing class at the local Art School, all the real art student girls seemed to look like they were in the Slits so that sealed it, I was enrolling there as soon as I could get out of school.

Even after 45 years, Cut sounds neither dated nor nostalgic, it still sounds like it comes from the future. Bonus avertising factoid, Slits bass player Tessa's dad was Account Planning pioneer Stanley Pollitt. (Spotify)

Looking for more from Eaon? Coming Friday, look for an interview from him in your inbox!

:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::

:: Game :: Three card brag

:: City :: Rome

:: Book :: Whatever I'm currently reading, today it’s Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli, it’s the story of how the young Heisenberg came up with the theory of quantum mechanics

:: Podcast :: The Rest Is History

:: Song :: Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan

:: HELL BOOKS ::

Thanks for reading. If you want to check out any of my stuff, links to my books etc are all at eaonpritchard.com

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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.

Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.

Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)

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