🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <aoff0a.162.ln@linuxsys.ii01.org>,
Robin Faichney  <robin@ii01.org> wrote:
>
>> I agree that the weebling in that chapter (and it IS weebling) is
>> not generally accepted, but back in the 1950s and 1960s even
>> Lamarckism was not really accepted.  It is now generally accepted
>> as being a valid model (and perhaps the correct one) for the huge
>> amount of mammalian behaviour that is taught rather than innate.
>> And the step from that to considering ideas as inheritable is not
>> large.
>
>Memetics has nothing in common with Lamarckism!  Except that that's a
>common misunderstanding of it.  In fact, the biggest single advantage
>of memetics is that it explains how phenomena that would appear to
>require the inheritance of acquired characteristics -- behavioural
>patterns arising in one generation and recurring in subsequent ones --
>in fact, don't.
>
>Memetics is certainly a valid model for the cultural as opp. genetic
>transmission of behaviour, but I'd be interested to know in what context
>you got the impression that it is "generally accepted".
>
>And I know only a couple of people who take seriously the concept of
>heritable ideas -- and I don't take *them* seriously!  That is very,
>very far from mainstream memetics.

Hmm.  I think that there is a lot of terminological confusion here :-)

The serious papers that I have seen have used none of the above terms,
and have actually not referred to the concepts directly.  But they
HAVE shown that they were using them.  I was referring to the
inheritance of intelligence (e.g. some papers in Nature) and similarly
language and technological concepts.  It is now generally accepted that
such "taught inheritance" is very important in the higher mammals and
probably as important as genetic inheritance in humans as far as brain
function goes.

30+ years back, this was an extreme view.  100+ years back, it was
heresy.

I am not deeply into this area, so don't know what is currently held
to be mainstream mimetics.  But I am am afraid that I am increasingly
disenchanted with the way that new terms are being created - often as
a way of putting a coherence or importance on conglomerations of ideas
that don't deserve it.  Computing is particularly bad at present :-(

>> An example of a theory that is still heretical is the one about
>> the laws of physics being created rather than discovered.  This
>> reached science fiction a decade or so back, but is still not
>> referrable to in serious publications.  Yet a fair number of people
>> has suspected there may be something to it since the 1960s.
>
>I don't know whether you consider that a scientific theory, but I don't,
>even though I'm sympathetic to it.  The issue here would seem to be the
>inadequacy of common concepts, with the truth lying somewhere between the
>extremes of "created" and "discovered".  Personally, I like Frieden's
>formulation, that the laws of physics are generated by the attempt to
>minimize the difference between an entity or system's own, physical
>information, and the information that physicists can obtain about it.
>More on this at http://www.ii01.org/physics.html

It is a perfectly good scientific theory, and passes all tests for
one of them.  Yes, it IS testable :-)  What is more, it explains
certain observations that are simply denied by the establishment,
despite the fact that they were accepted a while back.  The issue
lies a LOT deeper than mere description, whatever the truth of the
matter is.

I really do mean the theory that human belief can change the way that
the universe behaves.  Heaven alone knows whether there is anything
in it, but I can think of ways to test it, though they are politically
impracticable.  And it is DEFINITELY heretical :-)

>> Harking back to "memetics" - the invention of the term merely
>> indicates that there is a new religion - I would not go so far as
>> to claim that many people regard ideas as a form of life.
>
>Are genes a "form of life"?

Not as I view it.  But where the boundary comes, heaven alone knows.
Viruses?  Prions?


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:  nmm1@cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679