Selfishness != parasitism

There's a longstanding muddle associated with the "selfish gene" terminology of Richard Dawkins. The idea is that genetic selfishness tends to lead to anti-social individual behaviour. This misunderstanding has been transferred by some to memetics. Peter Richerson provides our example of this today:

One of the problems with the meme concept as it evolved is that users of the term focused far too heavily on the selfish potential of memes. But I think it is near to undeniable that cultural variants are sometimes selected to become selfish patthogens along the lines that Dawkins suggested.

Here, Richerson seems to be equating - or associating - selfishness with parasitism. To a memeticist, this is a false equation. Most memes behave selfishly. By that, what is meant that they behave as though they are self-interested agents that act so as to maximize their representation in future generations. Most genes also behave selfishly in this way. That is the meaning of the title of "The Selfish Gene".

Memeticists correctly focused on the selfish potential of memes. Memes are typically selfish - and treating them as such allows you to understand and explain their behaviour. However, selfish genes can reside in deleterious symbionts (like fleas), or mutualist symbionts (like gut bacteria). Selfish memes are the same: they can reside in helpful ideas (such as knots) or unhelpful ones (such as obestity-promoting memes).

Selfishness != parasitism. This is just a misunderstanding of the "selfishness" terminology - when applied to memes and genes.

I've picked on this Richerson quote before - but that was for different reasons.

Repurposing epidemiology

Memetics is deeply based on the science of symbiosis. However, sometimes the study of symbiosis seems to be in almost as much of a muddle as the evolution of culture.

I think one of the more obvious proposals for fixing its terminology involves the term "epidemiology".

Epidemiology is the study of health-events, health-characteristics or health-determinant patterns in a population.

The etymology of the word says it means, roughly speaking: "what is on the people".

Epidemic is worse - that says epidemics are concerned with disease spread.

At the moment, the word occupies a position which could potentially be useful to the science of symbiosis. What the science of symbiosis really needs is a term to refer to the spread of symbionts through a population of hosts.

However, epidemiology today seems to be all about health. Health varies due to host genes and inorganic environmental factors as well as being affected by symbionts.

At the moment, epidemiological terminology is used ubiquitously to describe symbiosis. However it is pretty bad at dealing with mutualisms. Students of symbiosis really need to decide on their terminology. The most obvious options are:

• Hijack epidemiology and attempt to repurpose it;
• Develop a "generalised epidemiology" variant that covers any trait - not just health;
• Develop a "symbiotic epidemiology" variant;
• Deploy some entirely new terminology to describe the spread of symbionts;

I think there's a good case to be made for the first option. The second option has some merits too. I expect that the fourth option is not going anywhere.

The "rationale" for the first option is: mutualist symbionts actually have a positive effect on health. Exactly neutral symbionts are too rare to be worth mentioning. As for the fact that health varies due to host genes and inorganic environmental factors: that is acceptable.

This is pretty-much how I treated epidemiology and its associated concepts in my "Memetics" book.

I think the etymology is supportive of widespread deployment in the context of symbiosis. An alternative to repurposing epidemiology would be to develop a science of symbiology - with its own terminology. This would deal with the spread of symbionts - but not inorganic environmental factors such as chemical spills or nuclear fall-out. However, symbiology is currently underdeveloped and doesn't yet have good terminology in this area.

Perhaps in time, "epidemics" and "epidemiology" will lose their explicitly medical associations as well.

The terms "pandemic" and "plague" should also probably be taken away from medicine and repurposed for the greater scientific good.

Update: see the Generalised epidemiology post for more details.

Domatia videos

Some of the mutualist relationships of particular interest to memeticists are ones which feature adaptive symbiont homes.

Ant Domatia are one of the most obvious enlarged structures which function to house symbiont visitors.

Domatia are relevant to memetics, because of the big brain hypothesis - according to which our enlarged cranium has swollen up to make a nest for memes.

For more about the significance of domatia in the context of memetics, see my book.

Perfect Symbiosis - tree ants.

Ant Domatia.

Elephants Are Terrified By Ants.

Acacia Tree Ants.

Bull-Horn Acacia Ants.

Elephants keep ants in harmony with tree hosts .

Ants and the Whistling Thorn Acacia.

Ant Plant - Myrmecophyte.

Ant-House Plants, So Strange!

Mutualism videos

In memetics, culture is in a symbiotic relationship with humans. Cultural creatures have symbiotic relationships with humans - and with each other. So: understanding symbiosis is the key to understanding how human culture works.

Some symbiotic relationships are mutually-beneficial. The term for such relationships is "mutualism". Mutualist relationships are ubiquitous in biology. Some videos illustrate the phenomenon in the organic world:

Ant and caterpillar symbiosis.

Acacia Tree Ants.

Leaf cutter ants and fungus.

Clownfish and Sea Anemone Partnership.

Caribbean Cleaners.

Hippo Spa.

Elephants Are Terrified By Ants .

Ant Caterpillar Mutualism.

Perfect Symbiosis - tree ants.

Ant-aphid mutualism.

Coral Reef Symbiosis.

Evolution coevolution of the ant and fungi.

Symbiotic Relationships.

Ants farm aphids.

Tree Ants & Caterpillars.