X-Message-Number: 11964 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: re: memetics and the possibilities of ants Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 23:41:20 +1000 (EST) Hi everyone! This addition to Cryonet will be short. Basically, the replies to Peter Merel's message seemed weak. They only raised the POSSIBIITY that the notion of memes may prove useful; the same may be said of many notions which appear and disappear. I do agree with Fideli and its empirical usefulness will be the only true test. To Mike Perry, about ants: I know that you think consciousness and some seat of intelligence will be needed to do the kinds of things people do... at least as stated very broadly (to do exactly the same as what human beings do probably would require consciousness, but I wasn't suggesting that for these hyper-ants at all). We, collectively, may never know the answer to that question on any empirical ground: discovery of a species of hyper-ant would tell us that consciousness and some kind of intelligence ISN'T needed, but what if we never run across in all our explorations for millions of years ANY hyper-ant? That would prove nothing at all. It might help, Mike, if you can try to explain just WHY you think some kind of intelligence similar to ours is needed to do such things as space travel. And remember that I'm not claiming that any other system will get there as fast as us; I'm just raising the possibility that other means to get there, fast or slowly, may exist. Development of some form of space travel (in the very wide sense that sending spores to other worlds would be a form of space travel) looks like a good thing to look at. Ants and termites both have existed on Earth for much longer than humans; in that time they have invented slavery, agriculture (both of other insects and of plants), and several other things (Wilson"s book THE INSECT SOCIETIES is a beautiful place to start if you want to find out all the things they can collectively do). Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11964