Richerson is asked about his beefs with memetics in the video. His #1 point is that memetics emphasized that memes are maladaptive pathogens. That just seems like a rather silly misunderestanding to me. The cases where meme interests and gene interests are not aligned are important because that's where theories based on them make different predictions. It is also where memetic immune responses can be expected to focus. However, that's about the size of it. Not all memesare bad for their hosts and nobody ever said otherwise.
His #2 critique seemed to revolve around "selflishness". I was remineded of the critique that "genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological". Richerson has previously made some more sensible criticisms of memetics; I think this was an off day.
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