X-Message-Number: 5379
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 21:35:41 -0800
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Why we don't want to die.

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In #5363  Peter Merel <> On  Fri, 8 Dec 1995 Wrote:



                >It's plain that plants, bacteria and even some viruses react
                                >intelligently with respect to their environments. 
                
Viruses? Wow, it turns out I must be an old fart too. I thought it was  
radical when I timidly suggested that machines may soon have a few faint  
glimmerings of intelligence and not just be data processors or 
servomechanisms, but that's nothing compared to brainy viruses. 
How about salt crystals, are  they intelligent too? Is there anything 
that is NOT intelligent?   


                >I'm sorry, did you mean human intelligence? 

I mente the only kind of intelligence I know anything about, the kind that  
deals in abstraction, foresight, induction and deduction.
                


                >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. 
                
You're mixing genes and memes and two separate theories, one
about biology  and one about the mind. Everybody has heard of 
"survival of the fittest" in  biological evolution, but exactly
what is it that is being selected for to  survive? Is it the gene, 
the individual, the species, the genus, the family, the order, 
the kingdom, or what? I agree with Dawkins that it is the gene  
that is being maximizes, but all this has little to do with memes. 

The things you're talking about are memes not genes and the two
can have  very different goals. For example, A celibate person
and his genes can not  reproduce, but the celibacy meme can and
does reproduce. That set's the stage for a battle between the
genes and memes, sometimes the gene wins and the  person breaks his 
vow of celibacy, sometimes the meme wins and the person has no offspring.
                   

                >If we were actually blessed with such a  predisposition, 
                >[...]  a bigger seller would be a business that pasted human 
                >DNA into amoebae, algae and other highly procreative 
                >organisms.                 

Genes could never tell us to do that, because genes don't known
anything about humans, DNA, amoebas, algae, procreation, or
anything else. Knowing about things is memes work. It's just
that genes that produce phenotypes that take active measures to
avoid destruction, grow faster and thus become more common  than
genes that do not. That's why most of us don't like pain and
don't want to die. Also, genes that are in animals that have
large brains often do better in a complex world than genes in
smaller brained beasts. That's why we have  big brains.

The brain is an astonishingly complex machine and it's full of
strange memes, some of them quite intricate and subtle, so it's
not always possible to know  exactly how a brain will respond in
a given situation. Sometimes a brain works at cross purposes to
the genes that made it. Personally I don't think  that's always
a bad thing. I am my memes, I want to keep them happy, if my 
genes don't like it my genes can lump it.



                                             John K Clark     
                                             

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