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MEMES

                                             December 20, 2018

                                    Starting with some remarks
                                    posted at crookedtimber:

                                    http://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/30/sam-harris-and-the-ideology-of-reason/

There's nothing wrong with the idea of memes, and
logically something like "memetic evolution" has
to be going on, but the idea doesn't seem to have
any explanatory power.  Nothing that happens in       Richard Dawkins, in an
the realm of human affairs really needs to be         Appendix to the Selfish
thought of as some sort of meme phenomena.            Gene argued that there
                                                      were analogies of genes
There is one thing that memes get you, which is a     and genetic evolution
point of view where questions about motives           in-play in the cultural
become irrelevant-- if you take the case of           realm: "memes".  His
someone like Sam Harris, he does *such* a bad job     example was the trans-
of being an apostle of reason you'll find many        mission and evolution
people suggesting it's all a put-on, and he's         of glitches in folk songs.
just behaving outrageously on purpose to attract
attention.  If you stop thinking in terms of              In the internet era,
human minds generating ideas and think of ideas           the term "meme"
as things which *use* human minds, you can side           quickly evolved
step a lot of that.                                       to mean a cartoon
                                                          made from an edited
It also works as an arch insult (which often              image-- the logic
seems to be all we've gotten out of cognitive             there being that
science): I espouse reasoned argument, you are a          different punchlines
conduit for mental viruses.                               get tried and the
                                                          more successful
Though actually, doesn't it seem like human ideas         ones get transmitted
should be more fluid if it's all a matter of meme         and viewed more
recombination?  Remember memetic evolution is             often.
more "Lamarckian" than "Darwinian", you'd expect
it to proceed much faster. You need to invoke                Still, it's
some sort of countervailing force that explains              funny the
why human ideas are so *stable*-- they rarely                word "meme"
change very much throughout the life time of an              was itself
individual. Why is the tide of human affairs so              subjected to
much longer than the flu season?                             memetic
                                                             evolution...










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