Re: Pursuit of Happiness and Genetic Fitness

From: Jorge Simão (jsimao@di.fct.unl.pt)
Date: Thu 29 May 2003 - 22:39:43 GMT

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    Hi!

    Happiness is the subjective feeling that comes from the pursuit and satisfaction of positively valued stimulus (stuff, events, people, etxc.). We do come do the world with the hability to differentiate and enjoy a small set of positive stimulus. All others are learned by spatio-temporal association and similarity. This was is called conditioning in psychology. Usually learned (or secondary) stimulus are usually useful to acomplish the sama or similar goals as primary stimulus, but not always. See Durham, "Coevolution", and also a paper I just submitted on the subject on my web page (What' Cool? ...). Value is ortoghonal to the specific stimulus, and wether or not they compete for "importance" in expressed behavior or in the mind. Thus, at least in this context, the concet of Meme can be dispensable. (BTW, Durham thinks otherwise).

    Cheers, Jorge.

    Reed Konsler wrote:

    > The pursuit of happiness is, in most cases, probably counter productive from
    > a genetic standpoint. The only kinds of pleasure that directly serve
    > genetic interests are those derived from sex, childbirth, and childcare. If
    > you have experience with these, you will agree that each is also fraught
    > with much frustration and suffering. What one focuses on will vary.
    > Pursuit of any other goal, save as a means to the ends above, is a genetic
    > dead end.
    >
    > I state this perception only to point out that one shouldn't get too hung
    > up, personally, on the idea of individual genetic fitness (i.e. is education
    > a good or bad thing). It would certainly make an interesting research
    > project, but the ultimate conclusion, I believe, would be that just about
    > everything we enjoy isn't serving a direct genetic interest.
    >
    > That is probably an indication of just how dependent we have become on
    > memes. It's unlikely that one could become "disinfected" and, if so, what
    > would be the result? Returning to the Garden isn't something that seems
    > very desirable to me.
    >
    > Best,
    >
    > Reed
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit 

    --
:o) Jorge Paulo Ferreira Simao {jsimao@di.fct.unl.pt} :o)
PhD Student at Computer Science Department, FCT / New University of Lisbon;
Addresses: (office) Departamento de Informática, FCT/UNL, Quinta da Torre,
2829-516 Caparica, Portugal; Phones: (office) +351 21 294 8536; (home) +351 21
0812096; (celular) +351 966850710; Faxes: (office) +351 21 294 8541; (home) +351
21 212 4306; HomePage: centria.di.fct.unl.pt/~jsimao
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

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