RE: meaning in memetics

From: Robin Faichney (robin@faichney.demon.co.uk)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2000 - 08:28:37 GMT

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From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk>
Organization: Reborn Technology
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: RE: meaning in memetics
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 08:28:37 +0000
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    On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Lawrence H. de Bivort wrote:
    >On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Robin Faichney wrote:
    >
    >>Did you really mean to say that our minds play a role in guiding the blind
    >>forces of evolution?
    >
    >Well, of course our minds play a role in guiding our evolution. See our
    >development of tools and linguistics.

    Sorry, but it seems to me that the *whole* point of memetics is to analyse such
    developments from the point of view of the meme, just as Dawkins' showed in the
    The Selfish Gene how biological evolution is best understood by asking what
    benefits the gene. We are mere gene-survival machines for Dawkins, and meme
    machines for Blackmore. You can argue against that (and do!), but you can't
    ignore it, because it's fundamental.

    >And we are learning how to do this
    >consciously, that is, deliberately doing things to affect our evolutionary
    >development.

    There's an enormous difference between learning how such stuff works in
    principle, and putting it into practice. In particular, are you suggesting
    that people will ignore their own individual interests in favour of
    evolutionary concerns? 

    --
Robin Faichney

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