From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Thu Jan 01 2004 - 16:36:27 MST
On Thu, Jan 01, 2004 at 03:47:50PM -0500, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> > Unfortunately for the genes, the parasitic
> > memes are now evolving faster because of greater communications
> > bandwidth between non-relatives so that even the symbiotic memes can't
> > catch up.
>
> This sounds confused. Sorry.
Ok, let me rephrase.
Consider two types of memes: A) those that provide justification for
having children or caring for relatives, and B) those that makes one
consider having children or caring for relatives silly or unimportant.
Type A memes will do better when most communications take place between
relatives, especially in childhood, and type B memes will do better when
most communications take place between non-relatives. I suggest that type
B memes were a threat to our genes even in our environment of evolutionary
adaptation, and therefore we evolved defenses against them, which includes
increased suspectibility to type A memes. But those defenses are no longer
adequate now that a lot more meme transmission take place between
non-relatives.
Does that help?
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