RE: Thesis: Memes are DNA-Slaves

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:01:33 BST

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    From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    Subject: RE: Thesis: Memes are DNA-Slaves
    Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 18:01:33 -0400
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    >From: "salice" <salice@gmx.net>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >Subject: RE: Thesis: Memes are DNA-Slaves
    >Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 18:36:07 +0000
    >
    >
    > > No need for the people to survive as long as the doctrine does, e.g.
    > > suicidal cults, religious/political martyrs etc. etc. Some memes appear
    >to
    > > drive people to non-adaptive behaviours like celibacy and suicide.
    >
    >martyrs help a culture to survive (in best case). so it helps it's
    >people to survive aswell. if a kamikaze destroyed an us army ship he
    >might have been acting non-adaptive acording to his genes but he
    >might had saved 1000s of others, which might have been not that
    >different to him.
    >
    >when you look at these kind of behaviours you have to be aware of
    >the fact that a lot of dna is similar among people. so if
    >someone commits suicide but helps with this action 100s of others to
    >survive, who share similar genes with him, it's quite clever.
    >
    >there are a lot of symptoms which can't be directly explained with
    >normal evolutionary theory. like impotence for instance. but when you
    >look on the overall scale of effect certain actions make sense.
    >
    >
    What scale would explain coming to the aid of a whale or other wild animal
    in distress? I watched a program recently where a whale was in distress and
    a bunch of people got together to help it and it was then sent to a water
    park for rehabilitation. *Why* (in the evolutionary sense of the word) would
    someone consider the plight of sea turtles a serious concern? Would
    inclusive fitness or reciprocal altruism fit the bill here?

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