From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 12:52:24 MST
[Joe Dees] No, because memes inhabit and compete for space in an intentional
environment (human brains and the recursive and meaning-creating,
bestowing-and-apprehending minds which emerge from this complex material
substrate) rather than in a natural and nonintentional
environment, such as a terrestrial ecology. People actually intentionally
deconstruct memeplexes into component memes and recombine them in novel ways
for preconceived purposes (or just for the helluvit), rather than them just
mutate at random without so much as a whiff of intentional human agency.
[Hermit] Isn't this one possible expansion of "especially memetic selection"
(others being genetic and environmental)? What else is implied (to you) by
"memetic selection"?
[Joe Dees] Your modified quote seemed to imply that memetic mutation was
random; I do not see either the mutation or the selection as random in its
entirety, but as a combination of random (say, inadvertent or accidental)
and intentional (as far as selection goes, for - hooks, among other things -
and against - filters, among still others)(as far as mutation goes, we are
here ostensibly engaged in an exercise in intentionally driven - not random
- memetic engineering, for clear and meaningful purposes). In fact, I see
the intentional component in both as quite sizeable. This is an area where
genetic theory and memetic theory significantly diverge.
[Hermit] Shakes his head again.
[quote]
"The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds,
by random chance." [Hermit: A quote of a misunderstanding]
There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that the
arguer doesn't understand evolution. Chance certainly plays a large part in
evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of
natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in
the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material
that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts
out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive
success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial
mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations
are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a
different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually
to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they
don't interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating.
Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance.
Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to
their chemical properties. In the case of carbon atoms especially, this
means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex
molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules.
Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural
selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators. The
first self-replicating object didn't need to be as complex as a modern cell
or even a strand of DNA. Some self-replicating molecules are not really all
that complex (as organic molecules go).
[/quote][url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html]
"Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution", Mark Isaak[/url]
[Hermit] Selection is not random. I see memetic evolution and genetic
evolution as exact peers. Note the formal definitions of modern evolution,
they do not speek to the cause, but only to the effect:
[i][b]Evolution:[/b] changes in the genetic composition of a population with
the passage of time.[i] ["Understanding Evolution by Erminio", Peter Volpe,
Brown, April 1985]
[i][b]Microevolution:[/b] the shifting of gene frequencies in a local
population. [/i][supra]
[i][b]Macroevolution:[/b] major transformations of organisms over geological
time.[/i][supra]
[i][b]Genetic Variation:[/b] the genetic difference between members of a
population.[/i]["An Introduction to Genetic Analysis", Anthony J. F.
Griffiths, Jeffrey H. Miller, David T. Suzuki, Freeman & Co., March 1996]
[Hermit] I see no need to postulate a divergence. To my understanding, the
only difference between genetic and memetic evolution which stands out is in
Macroevolution, where the very rapid generation shift possible for memes,
allows memetic macroevolution to occur faster than in geological time. We
can see the same effect in living creatures with very rapid generation
rates, e.g. drosphilia. [viz "Experimentally created incipient species of
Drosophila." Dobzhansky, T. and O. Pavlovsky, Nature, 1971, 230:289-292].
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