Re: reading a book

From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 05 May 2005 - 12:42:34 GMT

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    There is of course deception across the board, but what do we _mean_ exactly? An on-the-fly decision to deceive rather than the ability to deceive at all would seem to be an additional criteion to apply, otherwise mimicry and crypsis (visual, scent or call-based) can be included for a start; as could deception in mating rituals such as
    (iirc) the hanging fly's nuptual gift of a wrapped (in a leaf, again iirc) food morsel -- sometimes the wrap has _no gift in it_ but by the time the female unwraps (the lack of) it, the male has had his wicked way...

    I think there has to be some notion of a choice, or at least a theoretical option to be dishonest, that is beyond even being classifiable as epigenetic (in the sense of emergent, cf. all the hawk-dove game stuff). That means that one can only 'deceive' in the sense that (I assume) we mean it here if one can do that on the fly (as oppo to _by_ a fly :D ), which means that memes are a _prerequisite_. Ergo not much below primates should be doing this stuff period.

    There is another related thing here -- I saw a prog a while ago that showed a troop of chimps that were almost exclusively wary of water
    (they swim like bricks), but the ageing alpha male was keeping the hugely physically superior beta (a real thug of a chimp) from ascending by regularly going tromping up and down a local shallow stream ("OMG he must be a supersimian!"). Another form of deception (i.e. a sin of omission [of explanation that it is no big deal] rather than commission). Just for interest...

    Cheers, Chris.

    Kate Distin wrote:
    > Dace wrote:
    >
    >>
    >> Why is it that we don't see ape-like deception among other animals? Are
    >> apes simply that much more clever, or have they developed a genuinely
    >> novel
    >> trait that sets them apart?
    >>
    >> ted
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >
    > I don't know. Anyone?
    >
    > Kate
    >
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    -- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
  HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
===============================================================
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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