From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Tue 15 Feb 2005 - 15:15:28 GMT
At 08:37 AM 15/02/05 +0000, you wrote:
>>Definitely worth reading, though I obviously think he could have gone
>>further into evolutionary psychology.
>
>correlates with those rats in cage experiments where they kept on adding
>rats, and all sorts of problems broke out - including iirc a rise in
>homosexuality
There were probably several of that kind of experiment. The one I remember
supplied rats in a limited space with unlimited food.
But humans aren't rats.
While Diamond discusses several collapses, he discusses other cases where
humans made choices that kept their populations within the ecological
limits of their environment and what other conditions, particularly the
fragility of the environment, led to long term sustainable populations.
Where this relates to memetics is that while *some* xenophobic meme is part
of the causal sequence where populations with bleak prospects go to war,
any meme in that class will do. I.e., the particulars of the meme don't
matter.
Keith Henson
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