Monday 28 May 2012

Jonathan Haidt: The Groupish Gene

This one is called "The Groupish Gene: Hive psychology and the origins of morality and religion".

It is more from Jonathan Haidt advocating group selection. I tend to see this as the sort of thing you get without proper ideas about memetics and cultural kin selection.

Kin selection pretty-much swept group selection away in the 1960s and 1970s. We may well see history replay itself in some detail - with cultural kin selection and cultural group selection.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Dawkins and Blackmore discuss memetics

This event: Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore in conversation was held yesterday.

This blog post describes the discussion.

It was recorded, so let's hope for a video soon.

If I was still in Bristol I would have gone.

Saturday 5 May 2012

David Sloan Wilson at the consilience conference

Cultural evolution from about 6 minutes in. Memes are about 8 minutes in. It's a poor framing of memes. Memes are best employed as a useful concept - not as dud science.