RE: virus: The Virus Homepage stuff

Tadeusz Niwinski (tad@teta.ai)
Thu, 06 Feb 1997 12:58:31 -0800

Richard Brodie wrote:
>Dave Pape wrote:
>>Sorry, but no... Dennett and Dawkins and Speel all agree that one of
>>the
>>major selection pressures on memes is whether or not they confer a
>>genetic
>>benefit on their host organism.
>
>Whoa bucko! Brodie definitely does NOT agree, and thinks that this
>egocentric view of memes will be SMASHED when further research is done.
>This "major pressure" is a faint echo of a time when the ancestral memes
>conferred an ancestral genetic advantage on their host. Meme evolution
>happens so much faster than gene evolution that these pressures no
>longer have much bearing on genetics. I make this point many times in
>VIRUS OF THE MIND.
>
>Rememeber, you heard it here first.

Remember also that Mr.Hyde does not believe IT:
"We have an ideology? Cool! What is it? No, seriously, David, there are few
dogmatists in this group. I'm probably the worst, constantly harping on my
Level 3 crap. But I don't BELIEVE it!"

With not much changing with genes (until DNA engineering is better
developed) would memes look for better hosts? The Web seems to be a good
start for them (as a matter of fact their jokes with duplicating every
message from the virus list is little annoying... psst... or they start
triplicating).

Regards, Tadeusz (Tad) Niwinski from planet TeTa
tad@teta.ai http://www.teta.ai (604) 985-4159