1 00:00:00,410 --> 00:00:06,535 means save you from having to be totally sui generis. You are not a person who has to build 2 00:00:06,535 --> 00:00:11,980 themselves from the ground up from the very day you start to acquire knowledge. Instead 3 00:00:11,980 --> 00:00:17,264 you get distilled bits of knowledge constantly passed on to you. Some of it's been tested 4 00:00:17,264 --> 00:00:21,467 for its utility, some of it hasn't. Some of it's just been tested for its appeal. Some 5 00:00:21,467 --> 00:00:26,812 of it just gets loaded into the bushel basket of your head just because it's there. But you 6 00:00:26,812 --> 00:00:33,430 are saving an awful lot of time. every time somebody says take a left there instead of 7 00:00:33,430 --> 00:00:37,550 a right you don't have to first take a right to see if it's better to take a right or a 8 00:00:37,550 --> 00:00:45,130 left in order to test every testable proposition that means it just tremendous time savers thought 9 00:00:45,130 --> 00:00:51,170 savers effort savers uh... they're not violent all that this in a neutral in that regard and 10 00:00:51,170 --> 00:00:55,170 that's why it's worth carrying the burden of the rubbish ones because most of them are are 11 00:00:55,170 --> 00:01:00,938 doing such a good good time Right, ah although I think that certainly the environment has 12 00:01:00,938 --> 00:01:06,272 changed as you point out in your book, Susan, and now it is easier for memes that are not 13 00:01:06,272 --> 00:01:11,586 good for us to spread than it was back when, say, you we lived in a hunter-gatherer society 14 00:01:11,586 --> 00:01:16,999 and we got many of our memes from our parents who more or less had our welfare at heart 15 00:01:16,999 --> 00:01:23,174 and culture didn't evolve so fast eh back then. The implications of this are quite scary in 16 00:01:23,174 --> 00:01:29,560 some ways. What I've tried to think about is what happens as domestic evolution goes faster 17 00:01:29,560 --> 00:01:33,972 and faster and is more horizontal, that is, between people of the same age rather than 18 00:01:33,972 --> 00:01:39,195 down the generations. And you're right, the grip of the genes begins to be loosened because 19 00:01:39,195 --> 00:01:44,048 it's no longer true that it matters much to our genes. And I think a general process is 20 00:01:44,048 --> 00:01:49,611 going on anytime you have a replicator, whether it's genes or means or any other replicator. 21 00:01:49,812 --> 00:01:54,900 What happens is the replicator and the machinery that copies it evolve together. I've argued 22 00:01:54,900 --> 00:02:00,452 in the book that our big, human brains specially adapted for language and so on were actually 23 00:02:00,753 --> 00:02:06,085 evolved along with the memes to suit the memes. And what the memes are doing now is creating 24 00:02:06,085 --> 00:02:11,177 new apparatus for copying them. So if you think what apparatus is there around copying memes 25 00:02:11,177 --> 00:02:15,799 at the moment, well it's all the, what we're using now, the radio studios and the tape recorders, 26 00:02:15,799 --> 00:02:21,941 books, computers, the internet. Now it may sound bizarre to say the memes have created 27 00:02:21,941 --> 00:02:27,158 these things, but I think that's... a good way of looking at it. It's that co-revolutionary 28 00:02:27,158 --> 00:02:33,022 process that develops the means and the mean-copying apparatus. So when you look at the Internet, 29 00:02:33,022 --> 00:02:39,206 this has not much to do with genes. It still has a connection, and Robert is an expert on 30 00:02:39,206 --> 00:02:43,960 what the connection is to do with sex and so on, how we're set up to choose certain kinds 31 00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:50,384 of means, but it's rapidly getting away. And as soon as the means get so far that they can 32 00:02:50,384 --> 00:02:55,798 produce self-replicating computers and so on on the Internet, and sort of romantic rather 33 00:02:55,798 --> 00:02:59,920 than human ways of copying and editing text, it would be clear that it's way, out of our 34 00:02:59,920 --> 00:03:04,109 control. And we need to face up to that and start trying to understand the process that's 35 00:03:04,109 --> 00:03:09,643 going on there. Jill writes from Fairbanks, Alaska, I recently read an article in which 36 00:03:09,643 --> 00:03:15,675 Mr. Dawkins mentioned demonstrating a complex, transforming origami figure that ultimately 37 00:03:15,675 --> 00:03:21,968 perpetuated as a meme. Where can I find directions for that fascinating figure? sounds like even 38 00:03:21,968 --> 00:03:27,871 more fun than that other ubiquitous hand-me-down paper toy, the cootie catcher, which, as the 39 00:03:27,871 --> 00:03:33,883 father of a second grader, I hadn't even seen a cootie catcher in 35 years. Didn't know 40 00:03:33,883 --> 00:03:39,285 they still existed, and then I my daughter playing with one the other day. A Bob writes from Minneapolis, 41 00:03:39,446 --> 00:03:44,968 correlation does not prove causality. Just because memes may act like other natural phenomena 42 00:03:45,068 --> 00:03:51,242 does not mean that they have any other relationships. Unfortunately, new age pseudo-scientists seeking 43 00:03:51,242 --> 00:03:56,586 the mystical and the scientific attempt to bolster their beliefs with such examples as memetics. 44 00:03:56,866 --> 00:04:02,280 Once again, however, the ends don't justify the memes. Oh, Bob, I think you might have 45 00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:06,213 written the whole letter just so you could say that. And Joseph writes from Madison, Connecticut, 46 00:04:06,553 --> 00:04:11,877 the array I teach graphic design at the university level, and I use the meme in educating my students 47 00:04:11,877 --> 00:04:17,421 about the origins of symbolic meaning. One of my favorite examples of a meme is the arrow, 48 00:04:17,561 --> 00:04:23,187 that is, the pointed thing. that is not only an actual object with aerodynamic properties, 49 00:04:23,307 --> 00:04:29,129 but also the symbolic thing that points us in directions or shows us where to go. The arrow 50 00:04:29,129 --> 00:04:35,221 was probably originally a sharp stick used to hunt animals. This evolved into a sharpened 51 00:04:35,221 --> 00:04:39,772 stone, a metal point, a bullet, a rocket, a nuclear missile, a man on the moon, and probably 52 00:04:39,772 --> 00:04:45,984 a million other things too. The pointed direction thing, that is the arrow, was adapted symbolically. 53 00:04:46,328 --> 00:04:51,562 probably as a rough mark carved on a tree or on the ground to show where game was located. 54 00:04:51,722 --> 00:04:58,086 Food for the tribe. This in turn meant direction too. We use thousands of symbolic arrows every 55 00:04:58,086 --> 00:05:03,851 day in, out, this exit, this way to restrooms, push here, forward, backward, the mouse arrow 56 00:05:03,851 --> 00:05:09,114 and our computer interface and owe this method of communication to our hunting ancestors. 57 00:05:09,235 --> 00:05:15,236 So I half-jokingly ask my students what if civilization had started in Australia? would we be using 58 00:05:15,236 --> 00:05:20,409 the boomerang to show direction instead means on no gimmick they're real things that shape 59 00:05:20,409 --> 00:05:26,081 our civilization and direction as a species socially culturally and in ways we have yet 60 00:05:26,081 --> 00:05:32,244 to discover so well skeptical reaction and uh... and someone who seems to be really sold on 61 00:05:32,244 --> 00:05:41,018 the idea susan blackmore uh... it you know i mean that i have that last one especially where 62 00:05:41,018 --> 00:05:46,934 uh Oh, well, I agree. It's interesting that she relates it to symbolism. I don't do that. 63 00:05:47,094 --> 00:05:50,774 I personally have trouble with understanding what a symbol is, although that might sound 64 00:05:50,774 --> 00:05:54,034 odd, but the more you think about it, the more tricky it becomes. And one of the things I 65 00:05:54,034 --> 00:05:58,594 quite like about memetics is you can, if you wish, stick to the behaviors, the artifacts. 66 00:05:58,674 --> 00:06:02,574 You can stick, if you like, to the arrows themselves, the drawings of the arrows, and in that sense 67 00:06:02,574 --> 00:06:06,714 I agree with her wholeheartedly. It's an excellent example. When it comes to symbolism, I'm a 68 00:06:06,714 --> 00:06:11,194 little more dodgy. But I must say something about the skeptical guy because he has completely 69 00:06:11,194 --> 00:06:16,588 misunderstood memetics if he thinks it's kind of pseudo-scientific mystical. It may be wrong 70 00:06:16,588 --> 00:06:21,642 science, it may be useless science, it may be all kinds of things and end up needing to 71 00:06:21,642 --> 00:06:25,945 be thrown out and I could be wrong. But I will not accept that it is somehow mystical and 72 00:06:25,945 --> 00:06:31,259 pseudo-scientific. Some people misinterpret the memetic idea as though memes are somehow, 73 00:06:31,559 --> 00:06:35,011 I don't know, little sort of spiritual entities that kind of hop out of your head and jump 74 00:06:35,011 --> 00:06:39,205 into somebody else's head. And I must make it clear that that's not what's meant. All that's 75 00:06:39,205 --> 00:06:45,038 meant is that every time somebody copies somebody else, hears a story and passes it on, that 76 00:06:45,038 --> 00:06:49,520 is what we call a meme. We're just giving a name to the information that is copied. There's 77 00:06:49,520 --> 00:06:53,892 nothing spooky, there's nothing paranormal or psychic going on. know, this is the real science 78 00:06:53,892 --> 00:06:57,163 we're dealing with here. Whether it's right or wrong, we have to find out in the future. 79 00:06:57,203 --> 00:07:03,005 San Francisco is our next stop. Bob, welcome to the program. Thanks. The problem I'm having 80 00:07:03,005 --> 00:07:09,188 with this meme's concept is that it seems to uh be kind of a zero-sum game between locating 81 00:07:09,188 --> 00:07:15,691 the agency in the meme and locating the agency in the mind of the people that are perpetuating 82 00:07:15,691 --> 00:07:22,544 these memes. And this is at odds with one of my favorite memes, which is that the nature 83 00:07:22,544 --> 00:07:28,401 of people is that we're organisms that pretty much define our own nature. And I guess what 84 00:07:28,401 --> 00:07:34,302 I'm really saying is meme to me basically means our scenes. uh I know nothing about memes aside 85 00:07:34,302 --> 00:07:39,467 from whatever on this program, but it seems that you're basically using memes to mean idea. 86 00:07:39,647 --> 00:07:45,401 And it seems that my understanding of ideas is we can kind of accept them or reject them 87 00:07:45,401 --> 00:07:51,055 as we choose. So I'd much rather locate the agency in the mind of the person than in the 88 00:07:51,055 --> 00:07:56,749 meme itself. oh It's a fair point. First of all, I don't like to equate memes entirely 89 00:07:56,749 --> 00:08:01,613 with ideas. Many ideas are memes. But if you have an idea that you invented by yourself 90 00:08:01,613 --> 00:08:06,245 or yourself without any help of anybody else. That's not a meme. By definition, memes have 91 00:08:06,245 --> 00:08:11,268 to be passed from person to person. Now, as far as the agency is concerned, I'm not saying 92 00:08:11,268 --> 00:08:15,630 that memes are entirely the agents and humans have nothing to do with it. Rather, I'm saying 93 00:08:15,850 --> 00:08:20,273 the order of view might be we humans are the agents and we consciously and deliberately 94 00:08:20,273 --> 00:08:26,096 choose to do this, to pick up that idea or whatever. The new view, the memetic view, is that there 95 00:08:26,096 --> 00:08:31,481 are memes and there are meme machines, that's us, and In the brain machines, our brains 96 00:08:31,481 --> 00:08:35,614 are set up to select some memes and not others to try and filter out the bad ones and pick 97 00:08:35,614 --> 00:08:39,918 up the good ones, which we sometimes exceed and sometimes fail. It's an interactive process 98 00:08:39,918 --> 00:08:44,442 between the memes which are copied or not and our brains which are copying machines. And 99 00:08:44,582 --> 00:08:50,376 in that sense, it's an evolutionary process as goes on with genes. And evolutionary processes 100 00:08:50,376 --> 00:08:55,070 give rise to novel design. And that's why I like this, because you do away with any kind 101 00:08:55,070 --> 00:09:00,090 of ghost in the machine idea. But you don't do away with the idea that humans are... uh... 102 00:09:00,090 --> 00:09:04,892 taking action in the process you i mean it's going to happen you're listening to talk of 103 00:09:04,892 --> 00:09:11,335 the nation from npr news robert rand yeah i certainly agree that if you want to can turn 104 00:09:11,335 --> 00:09:15,966 things around and you can use his active and in fact we often speak this way we talk about 105 00:09:15,966 --> 00:09:22,080 an arresting idea you know someone who's seen by an idea or something uh... uh... but equally 106 00:09:22,080 --> 00:09:26,662 as bob point out you can talk about that the humans is being uh... the more active force 107 00:09:26,934 --> 00:09:31,916 And the question is how much value is added by inverting the normal worldview and viewing 108 00:09:31,916 --> 00:09:38,548 the memes as in the driver's seat. And it's not yet clear to me that there's a whole lot. 109 00:09:38,548 --> 00:09:43,919 mean, certainly the idea that Susan alluded to earlier, that sometimes there are parts 110 00:09:43,919 --> 00:09:49,771 of culture that aren't good for us, and yet we host them anyway. ah You can describe things 111 00:09:49,771 --> 00:09:58,588 like that ah without you know, attribute anything like uh agency or great activism to the means 112 00:09:59,089 --> 00:10:06,211 themselves. Now, the other thing Susan was saying just a minute ago about the kind of uh