Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA23509 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 22 May 2000 15:05:05 +0100 Message-ID: <3928F799.DBCFCAFD@mediaone.net> Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 10:02:17 +0100 From: chuck <cpalson@mediaone.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB1C6@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------E6494E0D8DA013E908471E68" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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Vincent Campbell wrote:
> I really do not understand how you cannot see media processes as dinstinct
> from the processes of natural selection (distinct not independent of).
>
> Here are some basic questions to show what I mean-
>
> When you go to the cinema, do you talk to the characters on screen? Why
> not?
I am puzzled that you think I don't agree with you on this *and* all your
examples. I guess where we disagree is exactly what to make of it. I put the
same issue in terms of the number of senses involved. Perceiving an event from
the media -- second hand -- indeed puts demands on the brain that it has not
been evolved to do. As an example, one study (that was never followed up) shows
that the longer people watch TV per day, the more likely they are to exaggerate
threats to their well being in the larger world. Here in the US the "if it
bleeds it leads" dominates the evening TV news. The shows will travel hundreds
or even thousands of miles to cover a murder that night because it is a cheap
way to increase their audience and get advertising dollars. The result is
interesting: people know enough about their own probability of getting murdered
so that they are not directly afraid that they or anyone even slightly close to
them will be murdered, but they estimate that murder is a far greater threa "out
there" than it actually is, and I strongly suspect this is one of the reasons
Americans are so much in favor of the death penalty. All because their view of
the broader world is fed to them through the TV screen. And for that matter,
foreign policy faces the same "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality that forces
politicians to take the kind of immediate action that it may not be objectively
prepared to make.
So, I agree: it has a huge effect in distorting objective reality and causing
inappropriate responses. And I also agree with you on the following statement:
> What I'm saying is that we did not evolve in an environment with such media
> (or most other technology for that matter), and we have to ask questions
> about how these developments may in themselves create environmental
> pressures on the process of natural selection. Once, you start to think
> about just how rapid technological and cultural change can be, in relation
> to genetic change, you also have to think about the impact of such forces on
> the behaviour of humans at a given point in time.
BUT, perhaps here is where we disagree: this is a "normal" process from an
evolutionary perspective (however abnormal it appears to us going through it).
Lots of people studying evolution agree that cultural products -- which are the
products of our evolved brains -- create selective pressures. Edward Wilson, the
sociobiologist, believes that there probably has been human biological evolution
over the past 2,000 years, and I suspect that he is right. For example, the
degree to which we as a large and very complex system must rely on second hand
reports of events by using paper, statistics, computers, etc. certain
personality characteristics has more survival characteristics than others.
Nevertheless, normal does seem very abnormal, as well it should with the rate of
change forcing such a rapid shift that simply cannot occur biologically. In
fact, I would argue that the rate of change has been well above anything our
species has ever seen, and it has been going on for about 500 years. I am
regularly struck with the hugeness of this change when I study any aspect of
social history.
> What is evident from
> history- as much as you'd like to ignore or dismiss it-
To the contrary. I study a lot of history because it deepens my understanding of
human behavior and gives me some perspective on the present rate of change.
> is that the
> combination of technology and culture has created in the past, and
> currently, behaviour not just from individuals, but entire groups that
> conflict with genetically beneficial behaviours.
This formulation is probably at the nub of our disagreement or, more possibly,
misunderstanding. Your notion of "genetically beneficial" has an internal
inconsistency which I suspect comes from thinking that technology etc. has an
evolution of it's own. There is always a percentage of individuals in a
population that is less fit (i.e., doesn't reproduce as much). Under most
periods in human history I would guess that it approximates a normal
distribution. Under current conditions, however, I suspect that it is nowhere
close to a bell curve.
What does that mean in terms of the future? Some say that the current rate of
change should force rapid selection if the laws of natural selection are still
operative and that everything will balance out. Others like fear that it will
not (I suspect you fall into the latter category, as I tend to do). My
understanding is that all of this technology is a response to a human population
density that has reached its limit. We need computers because the amount of
goods and services we have to keep track of in a complex economy is beyond what
we can keep in our minds. That complexity is itself a necessity because we have
run out of the resources that are easy to get and must therefore turn to more
complex ways of extracting resources. I have arrived at a point where I am
simply not very optimistic that anything can be done about this. Perhaps our
disagreements really lie in our different levels of optimism, because I think we
are probably equally alarmed by what the rate of change is doing to our
mentality.
> behaviours have not died out with those people, because the technologies and
> cultures that produced those behaviours are maintained and passed on in ways
> over than via the genes, e.g. through their writings, their architecture,
> their art etc. etc.
The problem for you as a media person, however, is immediate. How do you use a
very imperfect medium for communicating events - actually, virtual events - in
such a way that they do not distort when the very medium leaves out a huge chunk
of the reality we have evolved to need to make valid conclusions? Or perhaps,
How do people innoculate themselves from the distorting effects of the media?
When I myself watch the TV news, which is very rarely, it doesn't take me long
before I start believing a little bit of this and that in spite of myself.
Without direct access to those events, we all tend to take what information is
available to draw conclusions -- trying to be clever about something that is
very difficult to be clever about; I think that's basic human nature.
My basic point is that our brains have evolved to solve problems, and we
therefore do the best we can by using the information we get from the media if
it seems useful. That is how the media gains credibility - lots of virtual
images that seem useful even if they are in fact not useful or even downright
destructive. But since they have a monopoly on presenting events that we don't
have access to, we end up believing some of it -- far more than we realize.
What do you do as a media person to work around this? All I have been able to
offer you is the notion that it is an extremely difficult problem. If you can
figure out to start with how to measure the effects of the media, that in itself
would be better than anyone has done. As a negative offering, I still don't see
how looking at culture as a separate entity offers any practical or even
theoretical solution.
Phew! What a complicated set of issues you bring! But anyway, I learn a bit each
time I answer you. Hope I saw the forest AND the trees this time around.
>
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