X-Message-Number: 5363
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Reply to Clark
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 01:17:23 +1100 (EST)

John Clark writes,

>The DNA of plants, bacteria, and even viruses have been passed  on for   
>billions of years and the phenotype they use as a vehicle have no  
>intelligence whatever. 

I'm sorry, did you mean human intelligence? It's plain that plants,
bacteria and even some viruses react intelligently with respect to their
environments. You may care to hold that such behaviour is qualitatively
different to human intelligence - I shouldn't agree, but I shouldn't
argue it with you either.

>DNA predisposes us into certain directions. DNA "wants" to
>survive, the reason for this is that is that the DNA that was
>not "interested" in survival became extinct long ago. Survival
>and growth is what DNA is maximizing thus that is it's "purpose". 
>DNA accomplishes it's "goal" by engineering into it's phenotype, 
>it's vehicle, us, a predisposition to want to survive as well. 
>If it starts to look like we will not survive we usually become 
>unhappy and try to change the situation. That's why we have medicine, 
>and cryonics.

I'm sorry, but this is not so. Both on a personal scale and on a mass
scale, humans have proven eager to act in ways that are counter to the
purpose of passing on their genes. Apart from homosexuality, we enjoy
warfare, suicides, high-fat diets, smoking, drinking, risky sports,
celibacy and breeding without regard to resource limitations. Your
"predisposition" here ignores the almost universal popularity of these
activities.

If we were actually blessed with such a predisposition, cryonics
wouldn't be so damned hard to sell - though obviously a bigger seller
would be a business that pasted human DNA into amoebae, algae and other
highly procreative organisms.  I'm sure that would be feasible without a
lot of work these days - but do you really believe there'd be a market
for such a service?

[big snip - no argument]

>Genes aren't the only thing that can reproduce, so it's not too
>surprising that the same process happens for ideas, for example
>the concept that it's a good thing to die for your country.

What an astounding oversimplification. John, if you would like, I'll
repost my criticism of memetics here and we can try to get that
discussion going again - I guess it's probably been long enough since
the last abortive attempt. My only caveat is that I'm not going to get
involved in a lot of philosophical ranting - my argument is a simple one
and I don't think it will require rocket science to refute it if it's
going to be refuted.

Peter Merel.


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