Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA23718 (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 15:53:34 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB1CB@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Central questions of memetics Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 15:51:40 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Thanks for this response Chuck.
Perhaps we have been arguing at cross purposes in a lot of our messages, and
I'd accept much of what you say here.
I think you're right to identify our particular disagreement over whether or
not the changes we've discussed constitute part of normal processes, or add
something new to the melting pot, which may operate via a different process.
I suppose, in part, it depends on what one thinks the important questions
are, and if nothing else, memetics makes one think about fundamental
processes impacting on human behaviour.
The geneticist, Stephen Jones, in a television debate last year (I think)
about the importance of Darwin, made the point that in developed societies,
the survival rate of pregnancies is extremely high, and as we know, even
very severe disabilities do not prevent babies surviving when they would
surely have died in our ancestral environment. [I would include myself in
this, although not severely disabled, I was born with only one ear, and I
have often wondered how long I'd have survived in our ancestral environment
before some fierce animal snuck up on me!] Anyway, he claimed, and I'm not
saying he was right, that to all intents and purpose natural selection was
no longer occuring.
Now, I wouldn't go that far, but arguably a lot of the selection pressures
from our ancestral environment have disappated or changed very
significantly, and that's what I meant about genetically beneficial. I
meant we evolved into modern humans due to selection pressures in a
particular kind of environment that no longer exists (well, for the lucky
ones like us with computers etc.), and we can see evidence in some of our
more complex behaviours, like cultural behaviours, persisting in ways which
would not have happened in our ancestral environment.
Vincent
> ----------
>
> From: chuck
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 10:02 am
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics
>
>
>
> 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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