X-Message-Number: 5397
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 21:50:24 -0800
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Memes and Genes
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In #5385 Peter Merel <> On Sun, 10 Dec 1995 Wrote:
>Jim Clark writes,
Make that John Clark writes,
>My concise OED has a functional definition of "intelligent"
>as "able to vary its behaviour in response to varying
>situations, requirements and past experience".
I've never seen a definition of intelligence that I thought was
any good, but that doesn't mean that the term is meaningless.
Good definitions are always nice to have, but in most cases are
vastly overrated. People are seldom able to produce definitions,
even of familiar concepts, and it's even rarer that they need
them, unless they're dealing in a few highly specialized fields
like mathematics. Formal logic is only a small part of our
intelligence, so most of our knowledge is not in the form of
definitions, it's in the form "like this" and "not like this".
That's just what you'd expect if we are more like neural nets
than expert systems, few definitions but lots of examples.
The great thing about The Turing Test is that we don't need to
come up with a definition of intelligence, whatever quality it
is that we call "intelligence" when we see it in other people
it's the same quality when we see it a machine or anything else.
I don't see it in a thermostat, and I don't see it in a virus,
even one that mutates.
>as to salt crystals, you might like to read Seth Lloyd's
>article on quantum computing in the October Scientific
>American.
I read it. If quantum computers are ever built and if they use
salt crystals as Lloyd suggests then thing might change, but for
now salt is pretty dumb, that is they act pretty dumb, maybe
rocks are really brilliant but just shy, but I wouldn't count on it.
>Aren't dictionaries fun!
Sure there fun, but don't take them too seriously, especially
in philosophy where it's customary to push concepts to extremes
to see where they will break. Usage, context and example is
where meaning comes from, that is after all, where the lexicographers
got the knowledge to write their book in the first place.
By itself a dictionary is nothing but one big circular definition.
All the definitions in a dictionary are made of words, and those
words also have definitions made of other words also in the dictionary,
and round and round we go. The way out of this paradox is the fact that
much, perhaps most, of our knowledge in not in the dictionary because
it is not made of words.
>I'm not the one claiming that the continuity of our genetic
>information predisposes us towards certain behaviours
Are you saying that NONE of our genes EVER have ANYTHING to with behavior,
not even the genes that build our brain? Human brains are different from the
brain of hamsters because the genes that code for them is different, human
behavior is also somewhat different from the behavior of hamsters.
Are these two facts TOTALLY unrelated?
>or that our genetic information has anything to do with
>"the meaning of life".
I don't know who you're quoting but it sure isn't me. I'll be glad to tell
you what the meaning of life is just as soon as you explain to me in a
non circular manner the meaning of the word "meaning".
>>Genes could never tell us to do that [paste human
>>DNA into an amoebae], because genes don't known
>>anything about humans, DNA, amoebas, algae,
>>procreation, or anything else. Knowing about things
>>is memes work.
>didn't you just tell me that a celibate has some kind of
>internal conflict between his "genetic predisposition" [...]
>and his memetic information?
Yes, but the conflict is not between passing on genes or not,
it's about having sex or not. DNA doesn't know anything about
genes, until very recently even memes didn't know anything
about genes. The phenotypes of successful DNA like to have sex.
DNA builds animals so that when the nerves in the sexual organs
are stimulated in certain ways the animal finds it pleasurable.
This leads to activity that will pass on these genes to future
generations. Even if a gene that induced biologists to slice
their DNA into amoebas was possible (and it's not) I don't see
how this activity would produce more biologists who wanted to
do the same thing. It would soon become extinct, replaced by
more successful genes.
>if you had to place your money on either algae or humans to
>survive the next millenium, which would be the better bet?
A valid point. Life has come up with two quite different plans
about reproduction, Dawkins calls them "Evolutionarily Stable
Strategies". In one you put all your effort into reproducing
fast and often and hope that a few individuals manage to survive.
Bacteria and insects have used this strategy with great success.
The other strategy is more recent, it is to put more effort
into the individual, put a high priority on cell repair so the
animal lives longer and it is hoped long enough to reproduces.
Sometimes this even goes so far as to give the animal a brain.
This strategy reaches it's most extreme form in human beings.
It's worked very well for us in the last million years, but
it's much too soon to say if it is better than the older strategy
over the long haul. Ask me again in a billion years.
John K Clark
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