X-Message-Number: 28403
From: "egg plant" <>
Subject: Genes and Memes
Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:00:41 +0000

Anthony     Wrote:

>The thing is that Dawkins is a biologist, not a social >scientist

True, Dawkins was not a social  scientist . Thank god!

>It is quite clear that ideas are nothing like
>genes.

That is not clear to me, that is not clear at all. Both genes and ideas are 
made of the same thing, information, both can easily duplicate themselves; 
some memes in the meme pool and genes in the gene pool hinder survival, but 
natural selection insures that most do not.

>Ideas are not subject to natural selection in the same way > by any stretch 
>of the imagination

Then your imagination does not stretch very far. The idea that you should 
immediately kill all your offspring has not caught on for some reason. Do 
you think it is could be because natural selection has not favored the idea?

>many ideas which hinder our survival chances continue to > exist because we 
>are not entirely rational creatures

And yet most of us are still here. Yes freakish ideas exist just a freakish 
genes exist, some people think it is a good idea to become a suicide bomber, 
but most do not.

>Some of us might argue that that person was Stephan
>Jay Gould

Gould may have been a better writer than Dawkins but I don't for one instant 
believe he was a better scientist.

John K Clark

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28403