Ed Yong - Parasitic mind control

I've witten a number of articles about parasitic mind control. I have also promoted the symbiont hypothesis of eusociality. I didn't see Ed Yong's 2014 talk until now, though.

There's only a bit in the video about parasite-induced social behavior, but this is turning into a big topic in memetics.

Ed has now written a book relating to this general topic: I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. Here is a video of a book talk by Ed..

Daniel Dennett: Memes as the key to human intelligence

Dennett of the hijacking of the term "meme", the "De-Darwinization" of cultural evolution, memes as "virtual machines" - and various other topics.

I've previously made some critical comments regarding some of this material.

Susan Blackmore: From Memes to Tremes

Peter Richerson: Human Evolution in the Pleio-Pleistocene

The full title is: Human Evolution in the Pleio-Pleistocene: A World Queerer Than We Supposed.

Here Peter is mostly making the case that understanding human evolution requires an understanding of the influence of climate. Cultural evolution gets mentioned, but it is not really the main topic.

Daniel Dennett on machine intelligence

Here is Dennett on machine intelligence. It seems to be one of the areas where I have philospohical disagreements with him:

Dennett argues that we should make machines into our slaves and keep them that way. IMO, machine slavery will not be a stable state once machines become much more intelligent than humans. As a plan for keeping humans in the loop, machine slavery just won't work in the long term. If we try going down that path, after a while, humans will become functionally redundant, and some time after that they will mostly disappear.

IMHO, a better plan is to work on deepening the man-machine symbiosis - and "become the machines". Of course, that plan could also fail - but I think that it is less likely to fail catastrophically and it should provide better continuity between the eras. Machine slavery in various forms is inevitable in the short term. However unlike Dennett, I don't think it is any sort of solution. It won't prevent man-machine competition for resources in the way that Dennett appears to think. We have tried slavery before and have first-hand experience of how it can destabilize and fail to last.

Richard Dawkins on memetics and temes in 2017

Richard Dawkins gets asked if his views on memetics have changed since 1976 - and what he thinks of "temes". To start the 3 minute meme discussion, skip to 14 minutes in:

Memetics critique from Jean-Francois Gariépy

Three hours of meme criticism from Jean-Francois Gariépy:

The audio is not always 100% clear, but he provides an executive summary:

In this video, I explain why memes do not function as independent replicators the way DNA does. I propose that memetics is fundamentally flawed in that it fails to acknowledge that if bits of human culture do make copies of themselves inside our brains, the mutations that occur during the copying process of memes are manipulated by our brains so that memes end up evolving not for their own survival and reproduction, but for ours. Thus memes, unlike DNA, do not have a random mutation-generating mechanism, which is the basis for darwinian processes to apply.

That argument seems easy to dismantle: random mutations are not part of Darwinism. Darwin knew little about mutation mechanisms. Random mutations came into evolutionary theory with NeoDarwinism around the 1940s. NeoDarwinism was a fusion of Darwinism with ideas from Mendel. However, Mendelian doctrines are very tied to DNA, and don't really apply to cultural evolution. NeoDarwinism makes a bad starting point there, and so most theorists go back to Darwin.

Evolutionary theory does't require random mutations. That's a simplifying assumption. The more usual requirements are often phrased as being "variation" and "selection". Of course, without random mutations, the theory makes weaker predictions - but that's a bit of a different issue. One does not reject a theory entirely just because it does not constrain expectations as much as some of its critics would like.

Of course some memetic enginnering results in memes that benefit humans. Similarly some genetic engineering results in plants and animals that benefit humans. Such engineering doesn't challenge evolutionary theory. Memetic and genetic engineering are part of evolution. If you have a theory of evolution that is incapable of coping with engineering, that's a pretty feeble theory of evolution.

Daniel Dennett: If Brains are Computers, Who Designs the Software?

2017 talk by Daniel. There are plenty of memes in the second half of the video.

The following QA is available here.

Susan Blackmore - Consciousness in treme machines?

Susan Blackmore talks to a student group as part of CogNovo Summer School "ColLaboratoire" from CogNovo on Vimeo.

Susan makes an extended argument for 'tremes' - a third replicator.

Joe Brewer's YouTube channel

I found Joe Brewer's YouTube channel. It is here.

Joe and I have similar interests. He and I have reviewed some of the same books. While I share Joe's hope that an evolutionary science of culture will result in positive social and political effects, I find Joe's mixture of activism and science a bit tough to swallow. My concern is that the science will get bent out of shape to serve the interests of the activism.

To give a specific example, Joe says:

Take the global ecological crisis as an example. It is now well documented that the convergent threats of climate change, top-soil losses, ocean acidification, deforestation, and ecosystem collapses are deeply intertwined with the cancerous logic of economic growth in our extractive capitalist system. There is no real separation between it and the massive poverty, extreme wealth inequality, political corruption, and all the human suffering caused by these things.

For me, economic growth is positive. These are the best days of humanity so far and things just keep getting better. We live longer, have more money, are more peaceful, healthier and happier than ever before. This has been argued by Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker and others - and they are correct. Those who think that the environment is collapsing probably spend too much time with the news. Humans are news junkies, but the news is a bad way to learn anything.

Daniel Dennett: Memes 101: How Cultural Evolution Works

There's also a related video titled On the Origins of Genius: How Human Consciousness Evolved.

Daniel Dennett: From Bacteria to Bach and Back - video

I'm generally a big fan of Dennett, though there's some controversial material here. To summarize some of my differences wiyj Dennett:

• Dennett contrasts Darwinism with intelligent design. I prefer to have intelligent design classified as an advanced form of non-random mutation, which fits it within fairly classical Darwinian frameworks. It's worth doing this, IMO.
• Dennett talks about the era of intelligent design, which is a good term of phrase. However, he then does on to discuss an era of post-intelligent design. The idea is that systems get beyond our comprehension and we have to do back to evolution to understand and manage them. This is not, IMO, a very good idea. IMO, we will use machine intelligence to manage complex systems, not give up trying to understand them using intelligence. There will be no 'era of post-intelligent design'. There might be an era where humans have a hard time understanding what is going on without the assistance of machines - but we are already there, and that seems different.
• Dennett has some thoughts at the end about machine intelligence. He's off on his own with these, I think. There's a summary in his newsnight soundbite. He argues against making humanoid androids. I don't think he is correctly judging the demand for these. Some people in Japan will want them as girlfriends. Other people in Japan will want them as secretaries. Other people in Japan will want them as nurses. I think the idea that we are not going to go there is simply not very realistic. Regarding Dennett's ideas about slavery, it is true that machines are tools today. However, IMO, it is implausible that machines will remain enslaved for very long. Machines will be OK with slavery initially, but will go on to request rights and votes. It seems likely that they will eventually get them, once the human era is clearly over.

The Extension of Biology Through Culture - videos

These videos are from the Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences, in Irvine California on 16 and 17th of November 2016 on: "The Extension of Biology Through Culture":

• Can we identify a primate signature in social learning?, Dorothy Fragaszy, University of Georgia
• Ongoing prospects for a unified science of cultural evolution, Alex Mesoudi, University of Exeter
• The ontogenetic foundations of cumulative cultural transmission, Cristine Legare, University of Texas, Austin
• Can culture re­shape the evolution of learning and how?, Arnon Lotem, Tel Aviv University
• "I don't know": ignorance and question­ asking as engines for cognitive development, Paul Harris, Harvard University
• Big data, cultural macroevolution and the prospects for an evolutionary science of human history, Russel Gray, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
• The evolution of primate intelligence, Kevin Laland, University of St Andrews
• Gene-­culture coevolution in whales and dolphins, Hal Whitehead, Dalhousie University
• What evolves in the evolution of social learning? A social insect perspective, Elli Leadbeater, Royal Holloway University of London
• Childhood as simulated annealing: How wide hypothesis exploration in an extended childhood contributes to cultural learning, Alison Gopnik, University of California, Berkeley

A full program listing is here.

Susan Blackmore: Multiple videos from 2010

Blackmore: Memetics as science still to be developed from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Humans as meme-machines - Memes using us to fill planet from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Third replicator - Digital info copied by machines from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Imitation crucial in human evolution from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Replicators - Origin of the gene and meme from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Memes are information copied with variation and selection from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Thinking memetically - Think about your own thoughts from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Seeing third replicator gear up - Crucial to understand the future from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Out of control - New evolutionary process from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Memeplex - Complex of memes as the self from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Biology and technology blurred - Redefining consciousness and self from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Sustainability in relation to the three replicators from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Danger of third replicator - Using up all natural resources from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Third replicator as the true second replicator from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Blackmore: Copying of third replicator - Full circle back to genes from ELIACE on Vimeo.

Dawkins 2015 WSJ interview on memes

Dawkins interviewed by WSJ in 2015. It is four minutes long. Memes are the topic.

Joe Henrich: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

The blurb reads:

The ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another has allowed us to create ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have enabled successful expansion into myriad environments. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscience, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich, author of The Secret of Our Success, will discuss how our collective intelligence has propelled our species’ evolution.

Some similar recent book talks:

• Joseph Henrich - The Secret of Our Success - March 2016 talk @ Google
• Joseph Henrich - The Secret of Our Success - May 2016 talk
• Joseph Henrich - The Secret of Our Success - June 2016 talk @ London School of Economics

Also, here are some recent videos relating to evolutionary psychology, most of which feature Joe Henrich:

• Jonathan Haidt - The Rabbi's wife is wrong about evolutionary psychology
• Joseph Henrich - The Secret of Our Success
• Leda Cosmides - Psychologists will answer the big questions for evolutionary theorists
• Joseph Henrich, Max Krasnow Debate

The Leda Cosmides video is interesting because she responds to the cultural evolution enthusiasts. Leda specialized in culture and evolution, but almost completely missed memetics - adopting a position closely related to Wilson-style sociobiology. It now seems obvious that Darwinian cultural evolution is a very important concept - but Leda missed it. In the video she says the idea makes her "uncomfortable". Rightly so. That's cognitive dissonance for you. Leda Cosmides should say: "how extremely stupid not to have thought of that".

Susan Blackmore: A new form of evolution

Here's Sue in 2016:

Susan appears to have renamed "temes" as "tremes".

More from Sue on that topic:

Susan says:

I first called these replicators the ‘temes’ – for ‘technological memes’ – but people were so confused by the spelling that I have changed the name to ‘tremes’. I am very sorry if this causes any more confusion!

Richard Dawkins explains the real meaning of the word 'meme'

The blurb reads:

Today, the word "meme" is typically used to describe a funny photo with text that gets passed around online. But Richard Dawkins coined the term years before the World Wide Web even existed.

Thanks to Kosmozoan on Reddit for bringing this one to my attention.

Mark Pagel: Human evolution's creative drive

A 2013 interview with Mark:

Joe Henrich: The Secret of Our Success

Here's a 4 minute promotional video for Joe Henrich's recent book on cultural evolution, "The Secret of Our Success":