Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA05776 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:28:17 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745FF7@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: MR Evidence Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:18:20 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain X-Filter-Info: UoS MailScan 0.1 [D 1] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
It's just occurred to me that if this MR stuff was at all correct, how come
I can't swim or ride a bike (despite many attempts to learn both as a
child)?
Humans have been swimming for countless generations presumably, and yet I've
never managed it. According to MR, everyone should be able to do it as soon
as they jump in the water.
Bicycles haven't beena round for as long as swimming, of course, but
presumably by MR standards, 100 years plus should be long enough for
everyone to be able to ride a bike first time?
One of the problems of this very silly idea, it seems to me, is that it
suggests cumulative improvement of skills once they been
developed/discovered. But just like the 100th Monkey myth, we don't
suddenly appear with skills just because someone somewhere works out how to
do something.
I've been trawling through these posts, and my thoughts are back at the
birds and milk bottles phenomena. Milk rounds are reducing in the UK, for a
range of economic and social reasons, so I wonder just how many blue tits
today would still pass the MR bottle top test.
Someone asked New Scientist a few weeks back about any evidence for
improvements amongst species in relation to other human development-
particularly things like hedgehogs crossing roads. Little more than
anecdotal evidence of people reckoning that rounf their way hedgehogs seem
more canny about crossing the road without getting splattered by cars was
offered by other readers. (Maybe they've been secretly watching the road
safety ads for kids on UK TV that use animated hedgehogs crossing the road
safely....).
Actual studies of this would be good for studies of animal learning,
transmission by imitation (i.e. animal memes), and possibly an empirical
test of MR as well.
Vincent
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