From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Thu 02 Feb 2006 - 19:13:09 GMT
At 02:23 PM 2/2/2006 +0000, Chris Taylor wrote:
snip
>Mutualism/commensalism versus parasitism; evolution of symbioses. I'd
>argue that memes obey the same rule as most other infectious diseases of
>changing over time to be less of a fitness burden on the host. This could
>be studied; how adapted is the meme pool to take account of some of the
>needs of the human-mind-mosaic environment?
Been making this point about the evolution of memes, particularly religious
ones, becoming less harmful as they age for 20 years now. I would love to
hear your thoughts about how it could be studied.
>Inclusive fitness is an important one when discounting suicide bombers
>etc.; maybe we could see the rise in payments to the family appearing, to
>mitigate the obvious downside for the individual making it almost a mutualism?
>
>Tragic the way Hamilton passed away -- I was gonna try for a postdoc with
>him once upon a time as he and I got on quite well at a conference not
>long before he died).
Oh man, tragic indeed! I think inclusive fitness is way underestimated in
how much it has shaped the psychological traits of humans.
Keith Henson
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