X-Message-Number: 28415
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 20:05:34 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Re: Genes and Memes [egg plant]

At 09:00 AM 9/8/2006 +0000, John K Clark wrote:

>"Anthony ." <> wrote:

snip


> >How does natural selection work in this way on ideas? Please explain.
>
>Some ideas are able to reproduce rapidly and some do not. Sound like
>survival of the fittest to me.

I agree with you, but take it a little further.  Communicating minds 
(generally human ones) constitute the environment for memes.

At times dependent on specific environmental conditions (or anticipated 
conditions) certain classes of memes are massively amplified in the 
population.  See the Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War 
paper.

> >Do ideas ultimately reduce to memes?
>
>Ideas are memes.

In almost all cases.  The only case where an idea is not a meme is where it 
is never communicated to another, and even then it is a *potential* 
meme.  When you use "meme" instead of "idea" you are emphasizing the 
replication aspect.

"The old saying "Ideas have a life of their own" clearly encapsulates the 
"meme about memes". Keith Henson has traced this quote back to 1910 where 
an unknown interviewer of G. K. Chesterton used it - apparently as an old 
saying at that time.[2]

"One could conceivably trace this idea back to at least 1831, when Victor 
Hugo wrote: "...every thought, either philosophical or religious, is 
interested in perpetuating itself..." in his book Notre Dame de Paris 
(translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame) (Book Fifth, 
Chapter II)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/2000/16731.html

>Dawkins's idea was that from biological evolution's point
>of view the entire point of organisms like me and you is to carry genes into
>the next generation. In the same way the most successful memes are the ones
>most infectious to other minds. Usually the most successful genes or memes
>are also beneficial to body or mind carrying them, but it was Dawkins's
>genius to point out this is not always true.

A meme "teach me to two others and then commit suicide" would (in theory) 
wipe out the human race.

snip

> >you are again expressing the tired philosophy of dualism.
>
>I think the essence of both genes and ideas are made of the same stuff,
>information, you think they are two completely different things. And I'm the
>one who believes in dualism?!

Computer viruses are the third member of the larger category 
"replicators."  And agree the essence of all three is information 
independent of the media the information is coded in.

snip

> >Does this sound like an animal that freely wills itself >according to
> >careful rationality?
>
>I have no idea what  freely wills  means.

I doubt he does either.

Nice job.

Keith Henson

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