Monday, September 26, 2005
Memes and genes, sexual activities and cognitive brain work
I had suddenly the idea of comparing two phenomena of the human behaviour. It was a kind of an aha-experience. Genes take care of that what is important for them, reproduction of the human bodies, as in this way also the genes are being reproduced or replicated, as many prefer to say today. On the other hand memes are not so much interested in reproduction of human body but, in invading the brains of humans.
A known fact is that females who plan to make a career usually postpone their first sexual contacts. On the other hand girls who do not plan any academic career but become waitresses or cleaning personnel usually have sex much earlier. Girls planning career usually have sex in the age of 17 or 18, sometimes even later, as they concentrate on the studies. Sex is behavioural exhibit caused by genes, not having sex and concentrating on studies is a behavioural exhibit caused by memes.
Sometimes it is genes who win "the meme–gene" fight, then humans have sex, when memes are more successful , then humans study and do not have sex. This might be a pretty strange idea but somehow it seems to me that it fits, but of course, the idea might be completely wrong, though it seems to me to be plausible. I do not maintain that this idea must hold true for ever, but at present it seems to fit all studies made about first sex in females. I must admit I have never read any studies about males to this topic.
# posted by Dalibor @ 11:04 AM 
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Sharing food as a social aspect and the division of labor
Matt Riddley writes in his book “the origins of virtue” about food sharing, especially about the differences in meat sharing and berries sharing. I myself believe that the explanation delivered by Matt Riddley is not fully correct; there might be much easier and, at least to me, much more plausible explanation. It is logical to share meat, based on economical idea of waste. If a hunter in a hunter-gatherer society succeeds in catching a bigger prey, say a deer, and he would not share, he would need a refrigerator for the rest of the meat that he cannot eat at once. At that time there were no refrigerators. So it would be a waste not to share. Gathering berries is a different story. If the female goes to the forest to get some berries, mushrooms or roots, she can always bring pretty much the amount of it which is currently needed. Therefore there is no need for sharing the results of the gatherer, but there is a huge economical need for sharing meat. Of course, as usual, it is possible to “misuse” the surplus of meat by offering it to the neighbor, in order to establish good social relations, and make sure that the neighbor will be also willing to share with me, if once I return from the hunt with no prey caught.
I suggest here an idea which I have for a long time, and idea that one phenomenon in human life can be used in manifold ways. Typical is that sometimes something happens really accidentally, but having seen what can happen humans than can create the same or extremely similar phenomenon, situation themselves to achieve the same or pretty similar wished outcome.
So meat sharing is actually a “misuse” of a lucky hunter to bind his neighbor to repay the “service”. The lucky hunter would always have the possibility of not sharing and letting the prey decay, but this is a waste, so sharing meat is actually one first step to division of labor among hunters. One can specialize in hunting big game, the other in getting smaller animals.
Meat sharing and the economic idea of wasting the meat if not sharing are actually memes, ideas; and they came to being through adaptedness of human mind to its surroundings. So we can see how some memes come to being, I suggest that first was the idea of waste, and then the idea of avoiding the waste by sharing, and sharing brought about the idea of reciprocity
Matt Riddley writes in his book “the origins of virtue” about food sharing, especially about the differences in meat sharing and berries sharing. I myself believe that the explanation delivered by Matt Riddley is not fully correct; there might be much easier and, at least to me, much more plausible explanation. It is logical to share meat, based on economical idea of waste. If a hunter in a hunter-gatherer society succeeds in catching a bigger prey, say a deer, and he would not share, he would need a refrigerator for the rest of the meat that he cannot eat at once. At that time there were no refrigerators. So it would be a waste not to share. Gathering berries is a different story. If the female goes to the forest to get some berries, mushrooms or roots, she can always bring pretty much the amount of it which is currently needed. Therefore there is no need for sharing the results of the gatherer, but there is a huge economical need for sharing meat. Of course, as usual, it is possible to “misuse” the surplus of meat by offering it to the neighbor, in order to establish good social relations, and make sure that the neighbor will be also willing to share with me, if once I return from the hunt with no prey caught.
I suggest here an idea which I have for a long time, and idea that one phenomenon in human life can be used in manifold ways. Typical is that sometimes something happens really accidentally, but having seen what can happen humans than can create the same or extremely similar phenomenon, situation themselves to achieve the same or pretty similar wished outcome.
So meat sharing is actually a “misuse” of a lucky hunter to bind his neighbor to repay the “service”. The lucky hunter would always have the possibility of not sharing and letting the prey decay, but this is a waste, so sharing meat is actually one first step to division of labor among hunters. One can specialize in hunting big game, the other in getting smaller animals.
Meat sharing and the economic idea of wasting the meat if not sharing are actually memes, ideas; and they came to being through adaptedness of human mind to its surroundings. So we can see how some memes come to being, I suggest that first was the idea of waste, and then the idea of avoiding the waste by sharing, and sharing brought about the idea of reciprocity
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Remarks to Matt Riddley`s The origins of Virtue and Susan Blackmore`s The meme machine
In his book “The origins of virtue”. Matt Riddley describes the theories about the first division of labor based upon sexual differences between human males and females, in chapter 5, Duty and the feast. The sub chapters being called “meat for sex in chimpanzees”, “sexual division of labor”,
The subchapter “sexual division of labor” finishes with the following sentences:
“There is, incidentally, abundant material for those who like stereotypes here, but none of it says anything about the woman’s place being in the home. After all, the argument goes that men and women both went out to work in the Pleistocene, one to hunt, the other to gather. Neither activity was remotely like trooping off to and office and answering telephones all day. Both sexes are equally unsuited to that.”
I do not fully agree with this idea. Matt Riddley has forgotten to take the evolution and the memes into account. This is far better done by Susan Blackmore in “The meme machine”.
Why we are not suited to go to an office and answer telephones all day? Actually we do that, so where is the catch? I would suggest that the catch is in the evolutionary point of view at the fight for power between genes and memes over the human body, as the means of transport for both of them, genes as well as memes.
My idea is that through evolution, humans are not only gene-driven but the driving forces in humans are of genetic as well as of memetic origin. Some human individual might be 1% meme-driven and 99% gene-driven; and vice versa and all possible combination in between.
Those who are more meme-driven might become thinkers, mathematicians, and those who are more gene-driven become cooks, masons etc. There is never a human being driven only by genes or only by memes. Since we started to work with information the memes have been involved and fight for their place in human body.
The more information we are exposed to the more power is gained by memes. This of course does not mean that genes are out of the game. No. Only the mutual ratio of power is changing. Memes overtake more power, but they cannot survive without genes. Genes produce the brain which is needed by memes, for memes cannot produce the brain itself. Brain is a product of genes, but used by memes.
From the evolutionary point of view, memes will overtake more and more power over the humans. But not completely, in the time of adolescence we can see specific mating ritual in humans which are mostly gene-driven, adjusted by memes to fit to the social settings of humans. We describe that as that we learn. We, surely do learn, and therefore we can sit the whole day in an office and answer phones as well as we can sit at home in the living room and typing adventurous theories about the evolution of human beings, spite the fact that he hunter-gathers 100 000 years ago were not used to it.
I would here suggest that the meme influence is passed over much faster than the genetic influence. A child today can read at the age of 4, operate computer at the age of 6. A generation or two ago children used to play soldiers until they were 10 or more. In some families there is still the idea that to put a child to school a year later is good for the child, that its childhood will be prolonged that way. It will, but the one year at the beginning of a life a human can cost him later many years of mental and social development.
I do not want to speculate about how we will look like in several hundreds of years, maybe as borgs from the sci-fi series. But one thing seems perfectly clear to me: we, humans, will develop steadily more an more under the influence of memes. Actually, we can become dependent on the memes as a dope, as we are dependent on sex as a dope. And it is good so, if we were not dependent on sex, most probably we were not here at all.
The TV is a good example of addiction to memes; young children being exposed to TV start to be hungry for new memes delivered to them through TV rather than books. TV is good for spreading memes into the lazy brains. Diligent brains read books or even watch TV but aimed at specific type of information. The reason might be the way of processing and storing of memes in human brain. If the pictorial version of a memes is delivered free home, it is easier for the brain to process and store such memetic information, if the information is deliver in other types of signs, let’s say in words, then the brain firs must create the pictorial version of that memetic information and then process it and store it. This might be felt as extra work which some brains refuse to do if not trained to it. In normal life, we say that reading books develops and supports the imagination, the fantasy of the young human being. Such human being or maybe better to say its brain is then trained well to convert the lexical form of memetic information into a pictorial form which seems to be easier to process and store and recall.
The fact that pictorial way of storing memetic information I have experienced while working as a professor at EARU in Germany, teaching economics and statistics to US personnel stationed in Germany. Any time when I succeeded in presenting certain economic idea in a “pictorial” way, so that the students can easily imagine a picture or even a video sequence in their head, I noticed that such an economic idea was remembered better, processed and stored better. This usually happened when I succeeded to picture the idea well and at the same time to refer to something my students knew for sure.
In his book “The origins of virtue”. Matt Riddley describes the theories about the first division of labor based upon sexual differences between human males and females, in chapter 5, Duty and the feast. The sub chapters being called “meat for sex in chimpanzees”, “sexual division of labor”,
The subchapter “sexual division of labor” finishes with the following sentences:
“There is, incidentally, abundant material for those who like stereotypes here, but none of it says anything about the woman’s place being in the home. After all, the argument goes that men and women both went out to work in the Pleistocene, one to hunt, the other to gather. Neither activity was remotely like trooping off to and office and answering telephones all day. Both sexes are equally unsuited to that.”
I do not fully agree with this idea. Matt Riddley has forgotten to take the evolution and the memes into account. This is far better done by Susan Blackmore in “The meme machine”.
Why we are not suited to go to an office and answer telephones all day? Actually we do that, so where is the catch? I would suggest that the catch is in the evolutionary point of view at the fight for power between genes and memes over the human body, as the means of transport for both of them, genes as well as memes.
My idea is that through evolution, humans are not only gene-driven but the driving forces in humans are of genetic as well as of memetic origin. Some human individual might be 1% meme-driven and 99% gene-driven; and vice versa and all possible combination in between.
Those who are more meme-driven might become thinkers, mathematicians, and those who are more gene-driven become cooks, masons etc. There is never a human being driven only by genes or only by memes. Since we started to work with information the memes have been involved and fight for their place in human body.
The more information we are exposed to the more power is gained by memes. This of course does not mean that genes are out of the game. No. Only the mutual ratio of power is changing. Memes overtake more power, but they cannot survive without genes. Genes produce the brain which is needed by memes, for memes cannot produce the brain itself. Brain is a product of genes, but used by memes.
From the evolutionary point of view, memes will overtake more and more power over the humans. But not completely, in the time of adolescence we can see specific mating ritual in humans which are mostly gene-driven, adjusted by memes to fit to the social settings of humans. We describe that as that we learn. We, surely do learn, and therefore we can sit the whole day in an office and answer phones as well as we can sit at home in the living room and typing adventurous theories about the evolution of human beings, spite the fact that he hunter-gathers 100 000 years ago were not used to it.
I would here suggest that the meme influence is passed over much faster than the genetic influence. A child today can read at the age of 4, operate computer at the age of 6. A generation or two ago children used to play soldiers until they were 10 or more. In some families there is still the idea that to put a child to school a year later is good for the child, that its childhood will be prolonged that way. It will, but the one year at the beginning of a life a human can cost him later many years of mental and social development.
I do not want to speculate about how we will look like in several hundreds of years, maybe as borgs from the sci-fi series. But one thing seems perfectly clear to me: we, humans, will develop steadily more an more under the influence of memes. Actually, we can become dependent on the memes as a dope, as we are dependent on sex as a dope. And it is good so, if we were not dependent on sex, most probably we were not here at all.
The TV is a good example of addiction to memes; young children being exposed to TV start to be hungry for new memes delivered to them through TV rather than books. TV is good for spreading memes into the lazy brains. Diligent brains read books or even watch TV but aimed at specific type of information. The reason might be the way of processing and storing of memes in human brain. If the pictorial version of a memes is delivered free home, it is easier for the brain to process and store such memetic information, if the information is deliver in other types of signs, let’s say in words, then the brain firs must create the pictorial version of that memetic information and then process it and store it. This might be felt as extra work which some brains refuse to do if not trained to it. In normal life, we say that reading books develops and supports the imagination, the fantasy of the young human being. Such human being or maybe better to say its brain is then trained well to convert the lexical form of memetic information into a pictorial form which seems to be easier to process and store and recall.
The fact that pictorial way of storing memetic information I have experienced while working as a professor at EARU in Germany, teaching economics and statistics to US personnel stationed in Germany. Any time when I succeeded in presenting certain economic idea in a “pictorial” way, so that the students can easily imagine a picture or even a video sequence in their head, I noticed that such an economic idea was remembered better, processed and stored better. This usually happened when I succeeded to picture the idea well and at the same time to refer to something my students knew for sure.
