You may have glanced at Kahnemann’s superb book Thinking, Fast and Slow in which he explains the genetic basis of psychology. One of his key observations is that we have a syndrome he calls “what you see is all there is”.

Yes, I've read it a couple of times, great book. I would agree that much of our psychology has a genetic basis. However, the WYSIATI concept is an artifact of a finite mind in an infinite universe, and has little to do with genetics. Unless we become omnipotent, it is something every human on Earth will have to deal with.

A key point here is quite nebulous, which is that this concept would not apply without genetics, but does not change within the framework of genetics. It's a constant, meaning it is not selected for or against. The same as a heartbeat, the same as bowel movements. Variations within each function would be a different conversation.

No it cannot apply equally to either side, because denial is grounded in emotion while science is grounded in reason. There are different sets of genetic drivers for decisions based on emotion and reason. When a person shifts camp from denial to understanding, they decide to utilise a different part of their mental genetic inheritance.

Such a shift cannot be considered objectively. The same psychological characteristics are in play, but in reverse. Instead of denying science, a person would deny religion. Instead of applying their reason towards understanding/rationalizing religion, they would apply it towards understanding/rationalizing science. It's symmetrical Robert.

The category containing both leopards and climate change is “existential threats that are hard to see until too late.” Humans are reasonably well adapted to addressing this category of threat.

There are countless categories we could conceive containing both the scenarios. But the category that's applicable to this conversation is the jurisdiction of selective pressure. A leopard selects individually and specifically. Climate change is universal and indiscriminate.

My view is that zealotry is unscientific. The sort of cultural evolution I advocate is towards basing our ethical values on science, meaning we should use logic and evidence as the criteria for decision.

There are definitely zealotous scientists, whether you believe it or not. I'm not saying the process of science is zealotous. I'm saying a fraction of people are, regardless of where that zealotry is applied.

A signal can be cancelled out but that does not mean it is destroyed. Even an undetectable signal still exists.

Until it ceases to exist. There are many things in this universe that are not permanent. There are many things that vanish eternally, without a trace.

Again, my point here is that it is possible to prevent an apocalypse. But this prevention requires evolution from stubbornness to intelligence.

I understand your point very well, but you seem to be missing my point. Sorry for having to stress this. Show me how stubborness, as determined genetically, would be selected against by climate change. Will the "intelligent" people systematically murder stubborn people? Will flash floods spare intelligent people? What of all the "stubborn" people who support climate change? What of all the benefits of stubborness that will be selected for by a thousand other ancillary factors? There are many follow up questions I could ask that show such a genetic evolution to be ridiculous.

The evolution will be ideological. Causation regarding a genetic basis for stubbornness could easily apply in the opposite direction than the one you're claiming, for reasons you've never considered. We could become more stubborn as a species.

But of course climate change will select against climate change denial.

I agree entirely, if we're speaking in terms of ideology rather than genetics.

You use memes all the time, and refer to them all the time.

Atheists love referring to religion as a type of infectious meme, something like a virus. I'd note that their proselytizing about everything having a material explanation is itself a meme. Atheists speak as if they are immune to meme viruses. They are not.

Materialists with their material explanations for everything are themselves only material beings. To say that memes jump from one person to the next and are somehow imbedded in minds like computer chips is a rhetorical maneuver of convenience.
The middle ground between genetic inheritance and cultural inheritance is a meme. Genetic inheritance is material. Cultural inheritance is immaterial. Strictly speaking, a meme is not a scientifically testable hypothesis.
I just want people here who speak of memes to be free of delusion just in case they believe they are speaking scientifically.
They are not.
Sorry.

Are you referring to phenotypic plasticity?

I'd be lying if I said I was clear on what you've mentioned above. And I don't want to google it now.
What I was thinking of when I wrote, "There is also a gross misconception that genes provide a compete explanation for heredity" was the missing heritability problem.

Also, I think many people believe that genes program the form and behavior of organisms.
My understanding is that they do not.
Is your understanding different? I am not a gene scientist.

ant wrote: I just want people here who speak of memes to be free of delusion just in case they believe they are speaking scientifically.
They are not.
Sorry. .

Gee, thanks for that. I frequently use "meme" interchangeably with the word "idea." It's just a different way of looking at how ideas can spread which can, indeed, resemble the way a contaigon spreads. Dawkins himself in The Selfish Gene takes great pains to make that distinction. It can be a useful way of looking at how ideas spread. The process does resemble evolution in some interesting ways.

Great pains? Really?
You're exageratting:

"As my colleague N.K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: `... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically."

Richard Dawkins.


Just how familiar are you with his writings and such?

ant wrote:Great pains? Really?
You're exageratting:

"As my colleague N.K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: `... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically."

Richard Dawkins.


Just how familiar are you with his writings and such?

I read The Selfish Gene which is where the idea of memes was first introduced. Have you read it?

Specifically, Dawkins says that memes “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (Selfish Gene 192).

Dawkins does, in fact, take great pains to say there are often two ways of looking at something, both ways equally valid. He uses the necker cube as an illustration of this point.

geo wrote:

ant wrote:Great pains? Really?
You're exageratting:

"As my colleague N.K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: `... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically."

Richard Dawkins.


Just how familiar are you with his writings and such?

I read The Selfish Gene which is where the idea of memes was first introduced. Have you read it?

Specifically, Dawkins says that memes “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (Selfish Gene 192).

Dawkins does, in fact, take great pains to say there are often two ways of looking at something, both ways equally valid. He uses the necker cube as an illustration of this point.

u


Are you saying I'm misquoting him?
That I'm lying?
Or that im misinterpreting what he said and has said since The Selfish Gene?

Lets not be ridiculous,geo.
Tulip has called Dawkins "polite"
You are denying what he is on record as saying.
His double speak betrays him. But it's for a reason.
It diliberate. I've read Dawkins. I've also Youtubed the hell out of him.
He camouflages scientifically unsubstantiated claims in an attempt to present everything he says as "scientific."

It's not. Its theory mostly.
And just because there are interesting parralels it doesn't mean it's science.
Lets be fully honest about this. I don't want young minds indoctrinated by people who will go as far as saying we just about understand the nature of reality ( courtesy Robert Tulip)

ant wrote: Are you saying I'm misquoting him?
That I'm lying?
Or that im misinterpreting what he said and has said since The Selfish Gene?

Lets not be ridiculous,geo.
Tulip has called Dawkins "polite"
You are denying what he is on record as saying.
His double speak betrays him. But it's for a reason.
It diliberate. I've read Dawkins. I've also Youtubed the hell out of him.
He camouflages scientifically unsubstantiated claims in an attempt to present everything he says as "scientific."

It's not. Its theory mostly.
And just because there are interesting parralels it doesn't mean it's science.
Lets be fully honest about this. I don't want young minds indoctrinated by people who will go as far as saying we just about understand the nature of reality ( courtesy Robert Tulip)

So the answer is no, you haven't read the books where Dawkins introduces and explains the idea of memes. But you have Youtubed the hell out of Dawkins and that gives you the arrogance to presume to tell us how to think about memes.

All I know is that I've actually read The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, and my understanding—based entirely on those two books—is that memes are a way of describing how ideas are spread. It's as simple as that, and that's how Dawkins presents them.

Indeed, memes has become a very illuminating way of thinking about ideas. The word serves as a useful metaphor. In the second paragraph of his chapter on memes, Dawkins says this: "Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution."

ant wrote:To say that memes jump from one person to the next and are somehow imbedded in minds like computer chips is a rhetorical maneuver of convenience.
The middle ground between genetic inheritance and cultural inheritance is a meme. Genetic inheritance is material. Cultural inheritance is immaterial. Strictly speaking, a meme is not a scientifically testable hypothesis.

Your description of memes quoted above bears no resemblance to what I've read about them in Dawkins' books. Who actually says that a meme is a scientifically testable hypothesis? I'm pretty sure Dawkins doesn't. I'm pretty sure Susan Blackmore doesn't.

You seem to get most of your information by Googling and Youtubing. Here's an idea. Why don't you actually read Dawkins' books.

You continue to paint atheists and materialists in stark black-and-white terms that don't actually correlate to reality. So, yes, you are indeed quoting Dawkins out of context. And it's clear that you don't know what you're talking about.

This does raise an interesting question, which is what Dawkins might think of his meme theory today. Does anyone know? I recall (I hope accurately; someone with the 30th anniversary edition of TSG on hand might be able to check) that RD said in the notes to the book, "If memes turn out to be a scientific idea..." That seemed a less that ringing endorsement of his own brilliant idea 30 years after he came up with it. He also said that with the meme theory his "designs on culture were vanishingly small." That struck me as disingenuous or as if he were distancing himself from his theory. Then, a couple of years ago, I heard him interviewed briefly on a radio show about internet memes, as the inventor of the meme. He didn't make any claim for memes that was different from the status they have assumed in popular culture, denoting viral fads sweeping the internet. I do not believe that, after a fairly brief period in which memetics was tried out as a discipline, anything much has come of it as a field or as a tool used in other disciplines. But I do hear meme used now and again in a different context, enough that it seems to have filled a need that wasn't being met before. I would say we use the word when we want to reference a particularly sticky or tenacious idea that has spread and become lodged in culture. Interestingly, I can't think of an instance in which under such a usage a meme is cited as a welcome thing, though there would seem to be no reason why it shouldn't be.

Materialists with their material explanations for everything are themselves only material beings. To say that memes jump from one person to the next and are somehow imbedded in minds like computer chips is a rhetorical maneuver of convenience.

I'm wondering what you think a meme is. A meme is an idea. Nothing more, nothing less. If you get into the "Meme Hypothesis" in any of it's many forms, then we can be disagreeable. But a meme is merely an idea. The conceptual definition is slightly different, in the sense that ideas can be considered transferable(I'm sure you agree that ideas can be transferred), and that they have characteristics that are linked to a sort of evolutionary algorithm.

By referring to an idea as a meme, there is the added connotation of informational evolution. How ideas propogate, replicate, and mutate. I see it more as a mathematical issue, mixed with equal parts psychology. Why are some stories repeated more frequently than others?

So many people have such an antagonistic stance towards memes that I don't think it's wise to use the word anymore. Although I greatly enjoy considering how ideas spread across society, and why people believe some things over others. Perhaps we could start a thread and yell at each other about how memes aren't real?

I just want people here who speak of memes to be free of delusion just in case they believe they are speaking scientifically.
They are not.
Sorry.

I'm sure science will at some point track the flow of ideas from person to person. There are studies that will be able to do that in time. Tracking patterns and identifying pathways and idiosyncracies. Using the internet may be an essential component. Otherwise we'd be left to interviewing people. That's always a can of worms.

On a side note, who cares if anyone is speaking scientifically or non-scientifically, and what the heck does that even mean? I think that most times we're merely waxing philosophical, and science is only used as information fodder from time to time. That chip on your shoulder is large, ant.

Memes are similar to genes in that both ideas and organisms evolve by the same causal processes of natural selection. Evolution builds upon precedent through cumulative adaptation. Random mutation sees only those changes which are more adaptive to their niche succeeding. These processes apply equally to ideas and genes. Meme is a term to describe the evolutionary quality of ideas.

The determinants of success for both memes and genes are defined by Dawkins as whether the evolving gene/meme is durable, stable and fecund. The philosophical value of the concept of meme is to illustrate how cultural change happens under the same physical causal evolutionary rules as genetic change, progressing gradually towards increased complexity, punctuated by occasional major shifts.

Just as scientists apply game theory to understand why life evolves as it does, it should be possible to apply game theory to understand why a meme evolves in one direction rather than another, within the constraints of its selective pressures.