Memes!

Bloody things. Can you believe this damn book spurred a sort of philosophical science area of study known as Memetics?? I'm not kidding. I already read a book by one of the fields leading, um, people called "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore. So I pretty much know a bunch about them already, but here I get to read the chapter, the grandaddy of all these memes!

Essentially memes are ideas that follow the evolutionary pattern. Specifically Richard Dawkins' selfish gene, selfish immortal replicator pattern. Memes are like selfish ideas. So when the human brain was formed it's so goddamn big and powerful that we started to develop things like culture, religion, music, ideas et cetera. Memes are like an evolutionary explanation of this. So memes have a very loose unit, like genes, nothing extremely exact, and can change upon replication. And replication is as simple as: I hum a tune, you hear that tune it gets stuck in your head involuntarily. That's an example of a replicated meme. It's not limited to music, it's more like all ideas. Think of it as viral software for the brain. Like units of software that go from brain to brain to brain to brain. Some much more successful than others. Basically memes, like genes just want to multiply and live on as immortal replicators. But it's really not limited, fashion counts, body language, films, you name it. Culture, et cetera, all this extra stuff caused by our humongously awsome brains.

They are competitive like genes because the human brain only has so much space, and so much attention. So memes compete for attention, and once they are at attention they can be replicated more because say I would be more likely to talk about it. Just think of bands that get popular and your local open mic band. One had a more viral meme. Stuff like that.

Basically once again Dawkins has completely shifted the perspective from the unit of survival being the human, or the brain, to the unit of survival now being these ideas. Our bodies exist as survival machines for our genes, and our brains have evolved to become survival machines for our memes. It is certainly an interesting perspective.

In essence Dawkins has once again ruled out the entity as important, explained it away as a through away tool for something else. We are now truly cogs being ground out by the wheels of genes and memes. But wait! Dawkins hilariously at the end says, ah but we can rebel against our genes and our memes because we have big brains! Particularly he is focused on people becoming truly altruistic.

This last little cry is not just funny, especially considering he just crushed our significance with the rest of the book, it seems really childish and simplistic. First of all, I don't think altruism for the sake of altruism is as virtuous a goal as people make it out to be. Surely give of yourself, but does it make sense for everyone to consider themselves worthless and everyone else worthwhile? It could create an interesting holding up of each other's existence, but it seems really bizarre when you take it to its logical conclusion. Maybe it's my interest in Yoga and Philosophy, but it makes much more sense to me for us to find and accept our own place in nature and the universe and flow with that, instead of pure sacrificing of all for other. I definitely feel like Dawkins is stuck in this weird science limbo of evolution worship and a strange morality that seems to have no rhyme or reason when compared to his beliefs about science.

One last thing, there's some great pot shots he throws at religion here. The funniest is his main example of a meme is the god meme and he keeps coming back to it. Not subtle at all. Also just about all the bad things he mentions that memes cause are related directly to religion. He attributes absolutely zero positive things about memes to the religion meme. His hatred of blind faith without evidence reminds me of a younger more naive me. Laughs all around!

Blurring the line of Distinction

Here's an interesting philosophical thought: where does one organism end and another begin? Dawkins treads this territory in his latest chapter and it is quite fascinating. First he discusses social insects, how bees, ants and termites have infertile drones, that actually work towards the continuation of their genes, in the sense that do everything for the queen, who is the only reproducer. In this sense they almost all work as one organism.

Furthermore he cites lichen which is a symbiotic relationship between a fungi and an alga. They are completely reliant on one another and aren't very far from being a single organism. He then brings up the question, could there be other things that have evolved from being their own organism through a symbiotic relationship into part of another organism. He gives the mitochondria as a possible example. Maybe it was it's own organism in the primordial soup.

And of course he ties this into genes, saying his thesis that they are the true unit of life. As opposed to individual organisms. So far it's hard to disagree with him, even look at rogue DNA, a.k.a. viruses, don't exist on their own, but they are basic.

However, why don't we take this one step further? I have come to the conclusion that distinctions are merely a function of the human brain and do not exist without a consciousness. For example, the only thing that distinguishes sound from other waves is that is the range of waves that our ears and brains detect, they are otherwise indistinguishable. Why wouldn't all matter be this way? Distinction is a product of perception. Light is the exact same way, and in fact as we've seen quantum physics leads to some even more bizarre speculations. Since until light and apparently all matter is determined it is in superposition, a mere probability, it is not distinguished. The only reason a table is different from a frog is because our brains have made that distinction. Otherwise differences seem to become more and more superficial. Could humans working together become an organism, or maybe the internet, or anything? And even organisms themselves are made up of smaller organisms called cells. And those of molecules, as are inanimate objects. Suddenly distinction is truly superficial.

Buddhism and Hinduism have had this insight for thousands of years. The chariot parable is a common example. Is a chariot it's wheels? But wheels are not a chariot. Is a chariot it's chair? But a chair is not a chariot, et cetera. If it's not the parts that make it up, then what is a chariot exactly? Even with this mind problem definition becomes meaningless.

Even Dawkins vaunted genes are admittedly by him hard to describe exactly. They have no exact size or unit. They just seem to have consistencies going from generation to generation. And they can be split up every generation, though only slightly, what once was a gene might be only part of that gene in the next generation. The only thing really holding it together is the fact of consistency through generations. Could this slippery undefined piece really be the central unit of life? Again seems to become another superficial distinction.

This stuff just fascinates me.

Love is a Battleground!

I apologize for the cheesy title. But this last chapter was excellent.

Often we think of relationships between man and woman, or male and female as a mutual effort. That a pair does what is in the best interests of each other to work towards something together. Well according to the bad ass world of genes that's just plain bullshit!

So when it comes to reproduction, cells produced meiotically (half the genes) fuse with other half gened cells to become new organisms. Now a bigger cell would be much more valuable because it would be able to protect and feed this new organism. And therefore would win out genetically over other cells because it could survive and move on the genes better. However, what if there were some really tiny nasty cells that were extremely quick and opportunistic, that say new how to exploit the resources of those larger cells. Wouldn't they be successful eh? Well now we have egg and sperm!

And essentially the male has evolved to exploit the much more valuable female! The thing is though, both want to reproduce and send on their genes, so they need each other. Not because they want to, but because they have to. And in the end each has in a way evolved to exploit the other. Females know that they are more valuable, so they play coy until they can find a male that will not only give sperm, but help raise offspring. And males just want to shoot off in everything that moves, because sperm are extremely expendable. Sound familiar? Well anyway eventually a sort of balance has been struck, but it is a balance of need through conflict. Sounds like a Jane Austin novel right? Different animals balance it in different ways too. But the conflict makes it fascinating.

This gave me some ideas of what harmony truly means in the world as well. And what balance is. Often when people think of balance and harmony, they think of pretty flowers, happiness, world peace, et cetera. I think this is not only boring, but also a misinterpretation. Harmony is a balance of opposing forces, and this can be quite beautiful. And it shows up in things.

For example, musical harmony. Here, different notes clash, but work together in different ways. In a major third for example there is a lot of conflict between the two notes, but it actually ends up sounding nice. Even really dissonant notes in a certain context, when balanced can be beautiful.

Yoga also has some really interesting points in this. For example there are many situations where flexing a muscle, and pulling in will actually help you release other muscles to be more flexible. Because of the strength imposed your muscles now feel comfortable to relax in ways they would not have before. It is a strangely seemingly opposed balance.

This could be a fundamental way in which the world works. True harmony as not a resolution of conflict, but a manifestation of it. As being right in the middle of it. I'm not even close to being prepared to discuss, explain clearly, or back this idea up right now, but I am definitely interested in exploring this pattern further. In many ways it is much more interesting when you feel it and are in the midst of it than if you just explain it. But I still would like to study this more intellectually as well. Just some thoughts. Who knew Dawkins would have me thinking so metaphysically?

Gah, my troubles with blog consistency!

So I'm back from not posting in a while. I've been kind of busy last week or so, been sorting some things out and I've gotten like 4 chapters ahead on the Dawkins. I really plan to make posts more often more consistently, just to keep my writing up. So here we begin.

First things first, Dawkins can wait, let's talk some hockey. The drama that is the impending Ilya Kovalchuk trade is just edge of your seat intensity! I'm frothing with anticipation! (frothing??) Anyway, it turns out Atlanta's GM is the biggest moron on the planet and can't fork out the money to save his franchise. That's right, I said it. Ilya Kovalchuk is the only reason any fans come to the games, and now, it's going to be even worse. They're gonna miss the playoffs and suck. I would do anything to keep him if I were Don Waddell, unfortunately I am not. Kovalchuk wants to stay too, he's said it. He just wants a truck load of money, which he damn well deserves. Possibly the purest goal scorer in the game right now.

Sources including TSN and ESPN have said that Waddell has told Kovalchuk a trade could happen in a couple hours or a couple days. That could be as I'm typing this post, trade could be made as soon as I post this! But thinking about where he's going is kind of exciting.

It looks like the biggest lookers are New Jersey, Philly, and LA. Let's hope he doesn't go to Philly, besides they need someone more responsible defensively anyway. Though their offense would get even more nasty, but yeah, I can't stand the Flyers. Now, if he went to New Jersey, that would be obscenely dangerous. They really only have one guy that can score, Parise, the rest of the guys are good, but they are such a defensive team. With Kovy's absurd hands and impossible sniper skills, they would be lights out, instant cup contenders. Now with LA, he could do some damage there too. Again a strong defensive team, but one that can score. With an elite winger like Kovy, again, instant Cup contender.

There has also been talk about Chicago or Boston being interested. If Chicago gets him, you might as well not even play the rest of the season, they're already cup favorites. Boston could really use Kovy, since they traded Kessel they can't score worth shit. We'll see how this pans out, but I'm really excited to see what happens (please not Philly, please not Philly *crosses fingers*).

Ok, so now that we're done with that, let's move on.

The Dawkins is getting a little tedious. His argument is very clear at this point: genes are the central unit of life, as opposed to individual organisms, and can explain many counter intuitive things that happen in nature like altruism. And now he's just running through examples, giving all the details, and not as much crazy lol statements about worshipping evolution or the epic battle that is gene competition. Honestly it's just been a lot of stuff about how the family works. Like a child is 50% their parent and 50% their sibling and vice versa. Though they're more likely to know for a fact that their parent is actually the same genes as them. And basically he's gone through a lot of examples and play around this kind of thing. Shown some related things that go on in the world of nature. Not compelling like the earlier stuff.

I guess I'll just hit some random stuff that was kind of interesting:

He talks about game theory, which I've never understood fully, but actually seems really fascinating. Essentially it is the study of how games work and how strategies find balances. It is a mathematical field, but is often used when looking at the behavior of animals and why they do the things they do. Like who aggressive strategies work well against, who passive strategies work well against, and then more complex strategies, and it seems like after a while they seem to really balance out, or one becomes more dominant, then fluctuates when another becomes more dominant. Apparently the theory insists that like there is an ultimate strategy that will remain dominant, that is more complex, but honestly I think it is much more likely to have this fluctuation and oscillation. (though like I said I really don't understand this fully how it works).

But what I find fascinating about it, is I wonder if it's ever been applied to sports. If you just look at sports you can watch how the strategies have evolved over the years. In football it was really run and short passes in the 70's and 80's, but now (especially with the rules changes), it's really a pass first game. Then again though, it seems like the rules often change in nature too, consider the world before and after humans. Our ability to construct things changes the playing field entirely, way more than the "no touch" rules on passing in the NFL. You can see the same with hockey, after Wayne Gretzky pretty much broke the stand up goalie style, the new strategy became butterfly. Anyway, I'm very curious if and how game theory could apply to sports, especially considering sports are games.

Meh, I guess that's it, nothing else really made me think. He's currently trying to back up why altruism exists. I don't think it's that far a stretch, but he wants to make sure the details are right.

Alright, I should be back soon. At least for a small Dawkins update, and or some other stuff, for now I'm off.

Genes as computer programmers

Parallels between brains and computers have been very common. Dawkins in this last chapter pretty much explains that genes work as the programmers for the computers. The key distinction here is that genes do not directly control our actions, but instead give our brain parameters like a programmer gives the computer. Still ultimately genes control our actions, just not directly, it's like a deal going on between the brain and the genes. Genes are like "we give you decision-making and simulation, you stay alive for us, and propogate us" and they shake and voila, you have autonomous survival machines. Cool concept.

Best part of this chapter is his recognition of consciousness. I don't know if he's bought into Dan Dennett's crap by now, and I know he doesn't care too much, but he says it does seem bizarre that consciousness arose and it is hard to see a function for it as far as genes and survival goes. He even makes the distinction between computers creating simulations without consciousness, and how we do have consciousness. Though now that I think about it, he probably at least rolls with the Dennett view a little bit because as it turns out consciousness is not physical, and there's no room for a non physical thing in a closed physical world (supposedly). I don't know, this is the only book I've read by Dawkins, so I don't know if he recognizes any view of consciousness at all, or really cares. My bet is he ignores it. Not his field of expertise anyway.

He is extremely focused on behaviorism, though this makes sense because his actual field of study is ethology: the study of behavior in animals (particularly, instead of specific animals, specific behaviors as the occur in different animals). But I'm not convinced something isn't lost when describing something purely in terms of behavior. All I can say right now is that it bothers me, but that's just an intuition. It makes sense that we would describe life by the way it acts and then use that as an explanation. That is pretty much all we can observe, I think right? We'll have to come back to this.

I'd just like to say I've been thinking about perspective a lot recently. One of the things I really like about Dawkins is that he can shift the perspective really well. Particularly from us feeling like we are the main entities on the earth to making genes the central entities of the earth. And then shifting back and explaining how the brain becomes a new secondary perspective. Then again, reading and watching interviews with Dan Dennett, where he will also shift perspectives to give you an interesting (though I believe often circular) argument about whatever he is talking about.

But the one thing this always brings me to, is the difference between first person and third person. Science is done exclusively as a third party. And the common belief is that finding the truth means truth is something objective out there, observable third party. The problem is that all observation is done first person. We assume third party status because we believe we are not involved, but everything we experience is a construction that occurs in our brain. These constructions lead us to believe that it is based on information from the outside garnered by our senses, but no matter what the test is or theory, there will always be a subjective lense to it. We only have what our brain, what our consciousness gives us. Furthermore, "objectivity" is merely an agreement between subjective parties. And this could easily be flawed communication. Ok I'm digressing. What I'm trying to get at is there is this trend of believing that we are observing the absolute truth in the third person. And I believe that this is jumping to conclusions. [/end rant

The Godfather, genes style

Dawkins has painted an awsome picture so far of the kill or be killed world of the genes. Alleles, rivals, compete for spots to replicate. And Dawkins' fascination with intricacy and interworkings has created an explanation that works from the microcosm to the macrocosm. The key is the refocusing. While we focus on us, and birds and plants and fish and on the different entities of the world as possibly the purpose, or even inhabitants, as the center of life if you will, Dawkins brings the focus to the genes. This is a really interesting and cool perspective shift, that gives the genes all these intentions and just leaves the different species of the world as throw away objects like coats you bought at walmart. Like a toy you play with too much and it breaks. Or even like computers are for us, we constantly upgrade them and throw away the defunct outdated ones. That's how genes treat our bodies.

In doing this it's like Dawkins has added a new property to the world as a true out there reality. He calls it "moving towards stability" but really it's more like "competition." In Dawkins world competition is like a real out there in the world principle. The constant struggle of existence as a force, like gravity and magnetism. This certainly could be true too. I mean even us as a species (or at least I) get an incredible thrill from competition. Sports are incredibly enjoyable because of the possibilities being reduced to 2: win or lose. And we get excited when we see the best competitors at any given sport, well at least sports fans do. But these are situations where we can feel competitiveness. The only problem I have with competition as a real force is it has a lot of subjective properites. It seems like the human brain pattern and Dawkins' poetic account of struggle are adding properties of our interpretation. Though on the other hand it is probably impossible to disentangle "what is truly there and happening" from "what is added by our interpretation." Seperating the two would be like trying to seperate cream from coffee after you've poured it in, or maybe even the cofee ingredients from the water in the coffee drink itself.

One more thing, Dawkins deffinition of gene is good, but is almost too flexible. I'm not totally comfortable with it. It is extremely fuzzy on distinction. Dawkins explains that a gene is a pattern in the DNA that lasts for generations. He gives lots of examples to explain it but overall it ends up being this semi-vague deffinition. Truthfully you have to give him credit because of the way DNA works genes are not a cut and dry matter. But if they are the answer he claims them to be, you'd think they might have more distinction. I mean, is a gene as small as a two chain pattern? That wouldn't seem very useful. But he does say that when plants and animals do non-sexual reproduction that a chromosome is pretty much synonymous with a gene. It's verging on that line of the gene is a pattern in the DNA that lasts for generations that works for him. Because otherwise the gene almost explains itself away, like it's a fake arbitrary unit. Then how could it be so selfish? But on the otherhand, the amount of DNA preserved every time it is copied is utterly astonishing and points towards some kind of information pattern. Considering every human is 99.9 something percent alike genetically. and apes are like 98 percent the same genetically as us.

I guess I'm mostly splitting hairs, I'm still uneasy with his deffinition, but I'll take it for the sake of his argument. I'm looking forward to see what comes next.

New Reading: The Selfish Gene

I'm going to start to reacting what I'm reading currently. And since I just finished Biocentrism, which has totally reignited my love of philosophy, I am on a tear and what to read thought provoking books. And it was especially exciting because it seemed like serious progress on the arguments of David Chalmers, who just plain rocks.

Not sure why the next book I've chosen is Richard Dawkins. I think part of it is that he's super popular, and I'd like to know what all the fuss is about. Another part is, I think I'll learn a lot about evolution from this book, because he is an expert. Also, this seems to be the bedrock on what all his later works are based on (especially the bold ones), so I'd like to be informed when arguing about this stuff.

Alright, so first chapter done. He wants to take survival selfishness down to the level of the gene and it makes a lot of sense. Most of this chapter is a disclaimer not to misinterpret what he's saying as well as articulate exactly what he means semantically. That's the best way to start any new argument, he's covering his bases firmly. He also does an excellent job of keeping things interesting, his style of writing keeps you with him I dig it. I can already see what a bit of the fuss is about, so far deffinitely a good read.

Some observations:
The first statement is hilarious. "If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization is: 'have they discovered evolution yet?'" Evolution was certainly a huge discovery for our species and has been unbelievably important in helping us make strides in biology and medicine. And clearly this statement is purely made to point out the importance of understanding evolution (And really I'm just taking a pot shot that's irrelevant to the book, but like I said this is an observation). But we have no clue what a higher being could understand about the universe. The line certainly got me thinking about all the possibilities that higher being could bring to the table as far as "level of civilizaton." The truth is, the possibilities are infinite. Even with humanoids, or alien creatures with the exact same brain and thinking structure as us (i.e. logic/rational) they still could have discovered something about the nature of our existence that we haven't even thought of that equals the profoundness of evolution. Just a thought.

The opening paragraph is a bit of a duzy. It seems Dawkins believes that evolution is the very meaning of life. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I don't know what else to take from "we no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for?" Granted he could mean "there is no meaning to life," but either way, evolution has nothing to do with these questions. The whole statement seems irrelavent to me. Evolution is a "how" theory, not a "why" theory. The answers that it gives are all processes. Now it's possible that his selfish gene theory in this book may have some "why" answers in it, but as far as Darwin's theory's go, they merely say "this is how it has happened."

Given all this, I think this book will be a fun read, and a very interesting perspective. I'm anxious to see what comes next, and I like his style of writing. More to be posted when more is read.