RE: virus: Meme, the Underlying Cause

Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Fri, 26 Sep 1997 11:25:31 +0100


> From: Tadeusz Niwinski[SMTP:tad@teta.ai]
>
> Robin wrote:
> >But I don't agree! Just about everyone around here seems
> >to be happy to reify memes, to view them as "things", when
> >for me they're theoretical constructs. Thus, any piece of
> >behaviour that tends to be propagated is a meme (or meme-
> >complex). The meme is not some underlying cause, as is
> >the gene.
>
> Robin, you brought the main issue here: is meme the "underlying
> cause"?
>
> I was furious when, as a teenager, I first heard that out genes are
> using us
> as their vehicles. It is so difficult to accept the fact that *we* do
> not
> really count in the game of life -- it's only the information carried
> by our
> genes which counts and "we are here to help". As I understand
> Dawkins,
> exactly the same concept applies to memes, so in fact memes *are* the
> "underlying cause".
>
Nope. You seem to mean they're the underlying cause of some
vague, general thing, which is not what I was talking about. The
question I'm interested in is, are they the underlying cause of
behaviour. I say no, they *are* items of behaviour. Your
existential doubt is your problem, not mine. :-)

> In other words it is only information which really counts.
>
Counts for what? What counts depends entirely on the
context of the question. In absolute, general terms, either
absolutely everything counts, or absolutely nothing does.

> Living organisms
> are preserving some information, which seems to be "more important"
> than
> life itself. With computers and the Web it seems that information
> will soon
> "find" a better way of evolving than through bacteria and humans.
>
Superstitious twaddle. :-)

Robin