Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 15:28:20 +0200
From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl>
Subject: RE: Defection Rates and Classes (was Parody of Science)
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Tim:
That's kind of what I expected. With just a small amount of movement up and
down the gene pools can become so muddied that it becomes hard to talk about
one group or the other as a part of a specific genetic class.
Derek:
Yes, that would only occur when there were very rigid barriers.
Tim:
And this result might be seen by some as case of the memes' selfishness
overcoming -- or at least displacing -- that of the genes.
Derek:
Imagine at this point a mutant arises in the population, which we might call
'compulsive procreator'. The compulsive procreator mutant has no special
reproductive powers, but is in some way averse to the idea of limiting
his/her family size. Imagine that the compulsive procreation gene gives its
carriers a fertility of 1.5. ie. any pair with one partner carrying this
gene will have an average of 3 children as opposed to the normal Rw average
of 3 and the normal Rp average of 1.6.
This mutant arises in the professional class. So what happens now?
===============================================================
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