Reddit mentions of Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition

Meme theory, while it has gained considerable attention in recent years, may not be the best way to describe what goes on with communicable cognitive content and our minds. There are more rigiorous, specific and detailed theories out there dealing with these issues, but it is possible to 'reconstruct' memetic theory in a more rigorous way (as an extension of more realistic models of social learning).

The research-programs that go into specific detail with the required rigor are: Social learning (example article), cultural niche-construction (example article) and gene-culture coevolution theory (example article) [EDIT: MORE TOPICAL EXAMPLE PAPER:Cultural Transmission and the Evolution of Cooperative Behavior].

Meme-theory on its own has always remained rather superficial, and is plagued by the same conceptual problems as the "gene-centric" view of inheritance and evolution, which characteristically neglects the magnitude of t of the contribution by inheritance/'sharing of phenotypically generative information' through multiple channels, having different long-term effects, different rates of dispersion, mechanisms of reproduction, retention rates, noise- & degradation-levels and biases, interacting in complex ways to give rise to evolutionary change of mental contents and characteristics in human populations.

The gene-centric / gene-reductionist view is characterized by some potentially misleading / unrealistic analogies (replicator vs vehicle, gene-meme). There is value in the comparison of cognitive sharing of information to genetic inheritance, but it needs to be carefully extracted from the web of possible misconceptions surrounding it.

Boyd and Richerson (Culture and the Evolutionary Process, The Origin and Evolution of Cultures, Not by Genes Alone - How Culture Transformed Human Evolution and Mathematical Models of Social Evolution: A Guide for the Perplexed) have published extensively on mathematical models of social learning, biased transmission, evolutionary change through social and cultural inheritance - that's where you should look for a solid theoretical foundation of information-sharing in social learning and its role in human evolution.

Laland, Feldman and Odling-Smee have modeled the phenomenon of "
Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution" providing he seminal work on the topic. It is based around the insight that environments are not static, immunable backgrounds to the actions of organisms as individuals and as populations. The conditions in an environment of indiviudals that allow a population to exist and interact with it just the way it does are not always, not even usually just a "given".

First - organisms locate to where conditions are best for them (within their range of migration), thus selecting the environemental conditions they face and interact with. Second, and more importantly, organisms change their environments in various ways - adaptively, neutrally and maladaptively - through many different channels, 'deliberately' as well as unknowingly.

Many plants change the chemical composition of soil in a way that is favorable to them (releasing poison, attracting microorganisms with beneficial effects etc..). That's a low-level example of niche-construction.

Beaver-dams are a more high-level example. Some capucin monkeys socially learn how to let nuts dry for a few days and then crack them open with stones on larger stones (hammer-anvil principle). This effectively changes the Umwelt of the population, qualitatively changing may aspects of their lives, interactions, and the conditions under which they can survive in the environment.

In humans, uniquely, there is cumulative cultural niche-construction.. (mostly through language), we can study the explicit and formalized theories, inventions and technologies of people in the past, model them in our minds, discuss them, discard or improve upon them - (EDIT:) and most importantly, culture, society and personal caretakers determine the developmental environment and resources our children face, having them grow up learning how to interact with a world that has the accumulated knowledge, theories, techniques and technologies of millenia of people improving on what they grew up with. Growing up we (ideally) become socialized and encultured, learning (some of) what ~2.500 years of rational, methodical investigation of the world has shown us and taught us.

Not only do we build cities that evolve with us and increasingly eliminate previous selection pressures (while creating new ones), but we continuously build cognitive captial, experience and power to predict and interact with the environment... that's why the human population has exploded the way it did, why our lives are quite far removed from 'nature - red in tooth and claw' as it exists everywhere else, and why we are here discussing this.

Finally, Kim Sterelny has provided a rather brilliant synoptic view on the evolution of human mentality - incorporating the insights of the gene's-eye-view, social learning, gene-culture co-evolution, multi-level inheritance and niche-construction theory. I thoroughly recommend his books, e.g. Thought in a Hostile World - The Evolution of Human Cognition and The Evolved Apprentice.

TL;DR: Here's Kim Sterelny's article 'Memes revisited', which clarifies how the central insight of memetics can be explicated in more rigours and diverse frameworks to better explain the workings of human mentality and their evolution

(EDITED for clarity - also: New example article for niche-construction->more topical)