It's like: The more you do somthing, the better it comes out! Try it out yourself first ...then look around and ask for help. Since I don't own a CAR Company I'll buy one from ....! Since I don't produce jeans I'll buy them or walk outside with undies. Since my teacher says I have to study Meme, Teme and what else, I do it to get an A.
Meme theory is nonsense and downright pseudoscience. It gives no regard to consciousness, qualia or the free will arguments. It's flawed and vague on so many levels.
I see the same religious fervor that's seen in religious nuts when the science nuts talk about darwin and the theory of evolution. Does that really make you think that you've come closer to uncovering what binds you?
If you look up the documentary 'Stoned in Suburbia' she admits that she loves to smoke Marijuana at least. I have no doubt she must have eaten shrooms too at some point in her life, how else do you come up with such wild theories. Read some of her books, there are some impressive non-darwinian-brain-gymnastics she's performing in there.
Mirror neurons provide a testable mechanism for this.
A proper science of memes can now begin combining these facts with the observation that human infant brains are remarkably unwired at birth due to our neotenous nature and so uniquely capable of high levels of culturally sourced configuration.
Evolution in fact requires "good enough copying" to work effectiviely. Most cultural copying is nowhere near good enough to start the process off reliably. BUT one subset is. Mechanical copying, copying of skills and expressions, has a demonstrable high level of fidelity and a likely mechanism for achieving this. Victoria Horner has shown how human infants (as opposed to chimp infants) will copy actions with high fidelity even though they are counterintuitive.
For those who say Memes are crap. What gave you the impulse to spread that information? Why would you argue with someone you can't see? Memes are more than just ideas. The come together to make up the very fabric of who we are. They use us and we use them. Most are benign. But some are very powerful, when shared by an entire group. Our religion, our politics even our culture can drive us to war. Why? Because Memes are selfish and don't care.
I suggest that the 'meme seller' is usually a person of some perceived high status. We ape successful humans. Do we desire to be like the successful? Why do we desire that which we desire in the first place.
I also suggest that language is a teme, as are alphabets. (Where will oriental ideograms be in 100 years?)
If you have Variation, Selection, and Heredity, you must have evolution.
But where do the laws regulating the natural processes evolve? Must be from the Mind. Funny how everything tends toward chaos yet order continuously exerts itself resulting in life.
She's a perfect example of having "diarrhoea of the mouth". Talks too much but says too little. That's the problem these days. People think they are so smart but they really don't know shit. Just like this woman. Not at all surprised to learn that she is a Zen Buddhist. This is best listened to by standing on your head, having a lotus flower stuck in your navel, and not taking a bath for weeks.
@SuperQNerdy Having been invited to speak at a conference, perhaps you'll forgive her for talking for 20 minutes. Your objections don't really work: Zen buddhism is the system of thought which best accords with what we are finding out about human consciousness, not some silly eye-roller. It is you who appears not to know. And she is an exceptionally bright and well-read woman. Have you read her book, the Meme Machine? She knows what she is talking about.
@SuperQNerdy "she believes in the legalization of drugs? Yeah she's really clever, huh. She looks like if she had a few good brain cells fried by some drugs. No surprises there."
Is that your best? Really? I'll ignore the irony of you screwing up your sentence while accusing Blackmore of frying brain cells, and ask you how you think Prohibition went? How is the War on Drugs going?
Many clever people have called for legalisation. Why not read the arguments instead of deciding beforehand?
@SuperQNerdy Never said I was clever, or a genius. Just pointing out that there are a lot of good arguments out there for legalising drugs, and many people of all political persuasions have advocated such views. Milton Friedman, the laissez-faire capitalist, as well as liberals etc.
Never said give children drugs, just like tobacco and alcohol are against the law for children.
@SuperQNerdy And why are you so sure that I myself think all drugs should be legalised? I haven't stated my position. You also implied I take drugs, why? The whole subject seems to be so deeply taboo to you that you are not capable of looking at it without already having decided the issue.
Blackmore is a good scientific thinker - by the way, that's why she does Zen, to analyse consciousness, and her theories are troubling. Is the idea of memes and "no-self" another taboo for you, perhaps?
@SuperQNerdy She says little because she's a mystic. She takes Dawkin's undeveloped meme idea and creates a scifi myth of evil ideas taking over out of it. Typical TED.
I just realized why a 3 billion year old species would want to lend some of their genes to some apes and farm an entire planet with a new species on it. hanging out in the background and harvesting radically new perspectives, new memes, is good for their security and survival and evolution. I don't think this world wide web is the first one in the galaxy.
I think it's important to recognise that 'meme' theory is NOT 'pop' science. And how can it be creationism when it embraces the notion of universal darwinism?! You ought to read The Meme Machine, if you haven't already, and The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch or the work of Daniel Dennett. How you can call these three "pop" scientists, and also by extension Richard Dawkins, Darwin, Cloak (who defined memes as i-culture and m-culture), Delius, Lynch, Durham et al, I do not know.
@lewisrain Notice how similar your arguments are to creationists who say 'You should read such and such a book on creationism...'
Look, sorry to break the news, but 'scientist' doesn't mean 'expert in all fields'. Dawkins is a biologist, not an anthropologist. If he was, he wouldn't recommend reading The Golden Bough to see how gullible religious believers are. It was fabricated - so that's how clued up Professor Dawkins is outside his field.
@lewisrain I'm a great fan of the "Selfish Gene" and I do believe that the original idea of a meme is interesting and merits further investigation. But this women is a fraud. Of course the memes have to serve the genes. It does all come back to the genes. Yes, wrong memes are replicated, but there are reasons for it that have causes in selfish gene theory.
This lecture should give the Richard Dawkins brand of Atheist (i.e., the "Brights" who try to spread the wonders of Atheism) some pause. After all, if religion is a meme that is replicated tens-of-thousands of times a day - millions of times a year - then any notion of doing away with religion is utterly futile. You cannot out-compete that meme. You may as well try to cure the common cold. Better to make peace with it.
Chemist Canetti wrote in German for him transformation and replication (repeate stream of ever chancing life) are the same proces. With evolution a tranformation takes a long time with revolution a short time. Susan's 'fear' is this fast proces. Canetti's word for both speeds of transformations is in German "verwandlung".(becoming the same by imitation) It has many (classic) associations that doesn't exist in English: the same related ("verwandt") and metamorphosis, but also chancing scene. X=Y
epigenetic evolution is an interesting meme, but still its a "chicken and egg" situation. What came first, the meme or the memer?
evolution is diven my more than the need to replicate efficiantly. If that was the case we never would have "evolved" beyond bacteria. Bacteria do replication just fine. One needs to do away with a linear conception of time to understand what is going on, well in my opinion. Darwin's system works, but explains only a small part of what is going on here.
@fecesfeces9 so poopoo9, by your name i have to wonder if you prefer the garbage shoot to the pearly gate...? Was your potty training phase at little rough? You know fecal-fans, or garbage men if you will, are often attracked to poo as the meme of sodomy sprouts and grows in the phycologically disturbed soil.
@fecesfeces9 I wouldn't put it quite like that myself, but she is lovely, clever and engaging, isn't she, such an interesting woman, with an interesting story, having had an out-of-body experience at Oxford University she went on to investigate the paranormal for 10 years, found nothing, and concluded that a better arena of study would be the phenomenon of consciousness instead. She is a Zen practitioner and believes in the legalisation of drugs, I believe, marijuana for sure. Top gal.
she believes in the legalization of drugs? Yeah she's really clever, huh. She looks like if she had a few good brain cells fried by some drugs. No surprises there.
Don't buy it. This doesn't actually explain anything. Arms race my arse! Bigger brains = more intelligence = better survival rate. Complicated ideas build society increasing this rate even further.
@Theolence I'm with you that this woman and her ideas are nonsensical to say the least. I still believe that you could make something out of the original meme idea, but of course it would have to come back to the gene. For example, it might be beneficial for a gene to be "for being irrational under certain circumstances".
1:46 "The idea is so simple and yet it explains ALL design in Universe"... a typical claim of an enthousiatic scientist (in must) popularizing (increasing) a concept.
Blackmore and accumulation: a dark megalomanic combination.... "Who's afraid of a new Replicator".
Sure Susan...there is a relation between accumulation, replication and transformation... this is in mass all what's automatic matters for counting and describing.
We are not in absulute power we have to cope with our relativity.
In modern economie is 'desire for increase of Kangeroos' changed in a command (3:48) for grow of wealth: greed is good! Replicator is what we are and where we are integrated: a mass. The genes, memes etc. are derivatives of this old transforming desire for more. Our relation which large numbers, with mass, is a steady factor: full churches, theatres, stadiums, shops, in general concern of ratings. Increasing vocabularies are engines for longing more (life): knowledge is a crucial part of it.
"The TRANSFORMATION, which cherished tradition, and, as totem, the sign of the relationship existing between certain men and the kangeroos, signified also a connection with their number. the numbers of the kangeroos were always larger than those of men, and since they were connected with man, he disered their INCREASE. When they increased, he also increased; the increase of the totem animal was IDENTICAL with own".
Quote "Crowds and Power" 1960 shows a finer replicator concept of E Canetti.
Tame the temes? First we domesticated animals for our own benifit and now we must domesticate modern technology our PC. Language was already something technical: counting was important for earlly agriculture civilizations. Mathematics was coming up. Language as social and political phenomenon becomes also powerful (dangerous) for individuals. Words made identities.
The problem is the growing mass of people. Imitation: mass are identical beings.
I think it's important to recognise that 'meme' theory is 'pop' science. It's obviously a kind of social science, as it tries to explain how culture spreads. However, these 'pop' ideas can be very seductive because they appeal to laypeople, and are interesting without requiring real technical knowledge. What should ring alarm bells is that 'meme theory' is almost universally rejected in academic social science. It is actualy just 'cultural creationism', pretending to be science, like creationism
I don't recall her saying theat memes were the means of copying. I thought the brain was the means of copying - a brain made adept at copying through "mimetic drive" (the best copiers survive, and this drives brain growth?)
"Blackmore thus eliminates any effect on human behaviour, such as social, economic, political." I don't understand: her theory is all about effect on human behaviour.
What do you perceive as Blackmore's ideological agenda?
@Thimbledunk I think it's important to recognise that 'meme' theory is NOT 'pop' science. And how can it be creationism when it embraces the notion of universal darwinism?! You ought to read The Meme Machine, if you haven't already, The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, the work of Daniel Dennett. How you can call these three "pop" scientists, and also by extension Richard Dawkins, Darwin, Cloak (who defined memes as i-culture and m-culture), Delius, Lynch, Durham et al, I do not know.
@Thimbledunk That is is rejected by the social sciences is actually a good sign in my book. I still think its nonsense, but so is most of the social sciences.
Think how interesting the word 'replicator' is. Genes don't actually copy, really- they replicate themselves. How does a toilet roll replicate 'itself'? Answer - it doesn't; humans replicate it. Blackmoore confuses these two senses, eliminating the human - the ACTUAL means of replication - from the equation. So, again, how does a roll replicate itself without humans? Blackmoore thus eliminates any effect on human behaviour, such as social, economic, political. See how political this is?
Finally, ask yourself some difficult qs. Is domestic violence a meme? Is war? Is torture? Is sexual deviance?
Blackmoore, for very ideological reasons, wants you to accept that humans simply copy. To support this philosophically, she has to make humans in to machines who have no conscious will, but simply copy, copy, copy. Actually, she's not right - obviously. Even tightly knit groups contain surprising diversity. So the difficult question, as always, is 'why' - and she don't answer it.
@Thimbledunk I sound like a creationist because I recommend the work of genuine scientists? How does that work?
"Blackmoore, for very ideological reasons, wants you to accept that humans simply copy." I'm baffled. She never said this or even implied it. And what are these ideological reasons?
How does a toilet roll replicate itself? Well, like a tune or a joke, it needs people to spread it (for now). Of course, it has no volition, no desire to get copied. But neither do genes.
A river flows from it's source. Only conscious flows toward its source. Nothing rises above its source. Since we are all above the earth in complexity, what does this say about our source?
The memes could have killed us off. The temes are controlling us. What will we all do at 'the third replicator point' when the temes suck up all our planets resources? The internet wasnt created for us, IT WAS CREATED BY THE TEMES!!
There is no need to look elsewhere for how absurdly overstated darwin evolutionism is becoming than this idiot.
Anyone see terminator 2? I think she has watched it one too many times
@rhuber11 Wholeheartedly agreed. What's interesting is we're almost at a point where if you don't accept this dogma, some people assume you're rejecting science, and are a religious nut. There's very little awareness that meme theory is deeply - in fact critically - academically flawed.
@Thimbledunk Yeah, I'm in the midst of a P.h.D which takes a critical stance at such theories. Its not that science isn't useful, it just has its limitations. It's kind of annoying when Blackmore and Co. try and explain something as complex as cultural transitions with an obvious lack of knowledge in the literature. Also, the idea of Memes has been around for about 60 years pre-Dawkins and it has been showed time and again by many thinkers that it is theoretically flawed (e.g. Tim Ingold)
Are we *really* sure that no philosopher in Chinese or Indian history came up with this idea? Buddhists were atheists 2500 years ago. Asians came up with the notions of ecological protection thousands of years ago, preceded Europeans by hundreds of years with discoveries such as the circulation of blood, the ability to multiply and divide negative numbers, etc.
@givebirthathome actually they did...its called samskaras..mental impressions left on the mind via ...music..poetry..mantras etc. etc. some beneficial some not!
i hate to break it to the atheists out there...there is a middle path between atheists and theists..."maya vadi" which is the idea that god for example is a useful idea and ideas exist ! god is an idea so therefore exists! its why western atheists have a hard time with eastern traditions! sorry atheists u are WIZARDS! lol meme = spell
Memetics is not the study of how ideas evolve, its the study of how to manipulate, implant and incept ideas into the masses over time making them think its their own idea
a people will work, sacrifice, fight and die for an idea if they believe its their own and not someone else's this is the slavery of the 21st century
owning your own thoughts and expelling the foreign ones is the key to freedom but how many of the pig masses are capable of thinking or even providing fro themselves anymore
First I laughed with about her theory, now she my most respected TED speaker, as I started to understand what she was speaking about, she changed the way I look at society and human nature. Yes I'm infected with her memes. They can explain many things and make you more aware about how society operates on information.
One of my greatest moments was interviewing and talking with Dr. Susan Blackmore! I'm reading her book, The Meme Machine again and it is just as profound as the first time I read it!
She has some interesting ideas, but the way she's treating them is bullshit. To suggest that human mind is a *passive* replicator is enormously stupid, and to suggest that no other animal except human imitates behavior is ignorant.
The tendency of the brain to increase in both size and complexity can be clearly traced for all terrestrial life, and human childbirth is complicated by our spine's adaptation to walking, not by the size of our heads.
So the humans who can adapt to technology the best will survive until technology discovers it can carry on better without them which is probably likely because it will be able to iterate much faster, with greater numbers, and with more variation than any biological system - especially with the increasing move towards automation. Pandora is open, so now how to deal with it? Need a concerted effort of global humanism to lead tech that way too? But even Asimov's robotic laws don't work that well?
People need to consider the details of what she's saying. The complex nature of cultural transmission is easily 'fudged' to fit a pet theory. So you have to listen to the details of the fudges, to see it going on. Listen to what she says - toilet roll tucks 'want' you to copy them. No, they don't. Dawkins's psuedo-science takes another step to becoming a scientistic religion - now it has a prophet, predicting an imminent doomsday. Maybe she got the religion meme.
@Thimbledunk On Susan Blackmore, you said "Listen to what she says - toilet roll tucks 'want' you to copy them. No, they don't.". As she actually points out numerous times in her talk, that is a shorthand for "if they can be copied, they will". You're either wilfully misrepresenting her, or not watching the whole thing. It's not pseudoscience, as you suggest, but a hypothesis, a well-argued one at that. And certainly nothing to do with religion, simply the logic of evolutionary theory.
@lewisrain Probably more important for you to consider is that she says memes are both the thing copied and the mechanism of copying - she in fact insists in this video that memes are 'only that which is copied' - and then insitst that they are actually the means or mechanism of copying. Astonishingly, no one seems to recognise that this is a fallacy caused by thinking of memes as genes - which are both copied and copier. It's a schoolyard philosophy level error.
Think - do memes really 'get copied if they can'? Think how fuzzy that statement is, how unscientific. The reason, as always in poor social philosophy, is to try and cover a flaw in the fundamental logic of the proposition. You always have to revert to 'well what she means by that is...' and then you re-state something equally fuzzy. T rolls in no way 'get copied if they can' - that implies some form of intent in the roll. What you might mean is that we are pre-disposed to coy certain things.
'Copy', rather. In which case, you, and Susan, need to go back and read 150 years worth of anthropological discussion on how culture spreads. E.g., why don't we all have the same culture? Why don't we all copy the same things? And think how political this theory is. Coca cola 'wants' to be drunk. Where is the awareness of cultural manipulation to create the desire to buy certain goods, think certain ways? Meme theory eliminates deliberate manipulation by powerful social players.
I was wandering along the seashore today and page 52 from the Webster Dictionary had naturally selected itself in the sand. Evolution MUST be true! I'm always amazed when information just appears. You just can't stop information arising on its own I suppose. I guess it's possible someone may have put it there but that's highly unlikely.
@88tuner You said that you were "always amazed when information just appears", then used the example of a dictionary in the sand. Who among those who understand evolution ever claimed that? "Selected itself"? No. Environmental conditions did. Who knows, maybe God did? Seems unlikely to me. But anyway, disproving natural abiogenesis would NOT disprove evolution. At all. Soz bud.
If robot would speak once by own idea, people nature would think, that is broken robot, accident, virus software, sorry, that is truth about human nature. What memes would make people able to see machines as a life?
Viruses are not alive form in discuss, that doesnt make them not able to be and even more: copy, attack, destroy, mutate, change, take production in own 'hands'. Machines by memetic are very powerfull and we have to speak with them and see, what they want really.
@11:50 "All other species on this planet are gene machines only then don't imitate at all well..."
What about Vervet Monkeys that appear to have a fairly complicated series of signals to alert their fellows in case of attack? They make different sounds depending upon the predator.
Really, the biggest load of shit i have watched in a long time. I would prefer to establish the existence of memes first before detailing their functions. Then this kind of theoretical psuedo-science might have some kind of basis.
@klindred Amen. I think the levels of reification, fallacy, anthopmorphic fantasy, lack of awareness of social science methodology, involved in her thinking are just so complex that it is, ironically, simpler for people to believe this nonsense.
@Thimbledunk I decided to check her out a few years ago since i saw she was a big name in parapsychology and skepticism. Her work struck me as simplistic garbage not at a level of professionalism at all. But armchair scientists seem to get a lot out of her. Bless their silly brains.
A meme is philosophy not science. Popular science maybe but definitely not a fact. More like a theory without any basis. A virus of the mind? Come on! This is L Ron Hubbard on LSD!
@klindred, memetics belongs to the Platonic tradition, not Aristotelian tradition of hard science. Other things from Platonic tradition: Hegelian dialectics, Freudian and Jungian psychology, Levi-Strauss's structuralism, semiotics, and even Richard Dawkins's selfish gene.
I am not sure where to put Darwinism itself. Perhaps it spans across Platonic-Aristotelian division.
You can call it philosophy, of course. But what does that change?
@noobyfromhell, sorry, who didn't consider experiment necessary? Aristotel? He's the founder of this approach, so he has to be excused for a lot of things. All sorts of things we now take for granted in science: Occam's razor, control of outside conditions, repeatability of experiments, etc. appeared in the Middle Ages or later.
@Kurtlane AFAIK Aristotle favored pure thought as the method of inquiry, which was later heavily criticized by Bacon.
If you want to trace the origin of modern science (which is an endeavor of questionable value IMO), Ancient Greeks will disappoint you. Look at Enlightenment or Medieval Islamic thinkers instead.
@noobyfromhell, the origins are still in the Greeks. Erastothenes measured the size of the earth, distance to the sun was measured, Archimedes discoveres all sorts of things, including integrals. These are tremendous achievements. Why should I be disappointed?
@Kurtlane I didn't say Greeks aren't influential, but I don't think what they were doing can be considered "hard science", because they did not consider experiment necessary for the development of a theory.
@noobyfromhell, I agree Greeks didn't do hard science. But they stand at its foundations.
I guess like the ancestor of whales didn't swim in the sea, but it's still the ancestor of whales.
Obviously, Greeks did experiments and developed theories from them. Erastothenes measuring the size of the earth was an experiment. Archimedes law is theory based on experiments.
@noobyfromhell, sorry, there were no other computations available. He had nothing but the length of his measuring stick, the length of shadow it made on summer solstice and the distance from Alexandria to Sienna (now Aswan) to rely on.
@Kurtlane Do you even know what the word 'experiment' means? What he did was calculation based on a mathematical model, which is as far from experiment as you can get.
@noobyfromhell, what he did was great. Whatever you call it.
I hate these "theoreticians of science" (not to confuse with theoretical physicists, etc.) which never discover anything themselves but are ready to criticize the hell out of those who do. All they do is stifle real science.
Nice talk. Couple of things though. Memetics also occur with other animals. For instance, the songs of birds. Meme could indeed be equivalent to idea. Genes imitate each other, and they aren't memes. Memes ang genes aren't the only replicators on this planet. You can see replication taking place in the phenomena of emergence. Snow flakes, crystals, clouds and fractals in general.
@Aldelirium she did actually mention that some animals do have memes, but it's really very limited. Most animals can't think about the meme's and cause variation in them, therefore they wouldn't really be considered memes because they wouldn't "evolve". I must disagree with your second point, emergence is just physical laws shaping the formation of something, there's no replication and no selection at all.
@ShiftyMcSly I think it was on The Selfish Gene that Dawkins speaks of witnessing the creation of new songbird songs due to "errors" in the interpretation. These "errors" were passed from bird to bird. Thus, the bird memes are evolving.
There is replication and selection in emergence. Think of fractals. The smaller levels replicate the bigger ones, or viceversa. If this replication is useful (e.g. more surface area), it is preserved by natural selection.
There is a truly engaging concept expressed here regarding the logistics of what in essence is another means of human consciousness expressed, yet there is also a very troubling tendency which constitutes a dangerous meme in itself. In that she personifies temes as expressing their own volition (as if 'using' us for their own purposes), she is promoting the separation of responsibility from cognizance, a similar fault as misinterpreting a deistic religion (i.e. "the devil made me do it").
That's what she's getting at mate. You work for them. It is like the genes and memes are the Owners and You are the a prole. But there will be no revolutionary struggle. The Genes and Memes are your god.
@S2Cents Memes & genes will either be preserved or go extinct over time based on their usefulness to the replicators. It's not the other way round. Genes are useful and therefore continue to survive only because they make gene products that are useful to us. If those products don't serve us, the genes die out over time. Only genes that help the species can survive over time.
This whole concept is rather circular. "We define memes thus, therefore they MUST behave as we predict."
The memes in TV soaps & commercial radio stations, even the lyrics in songs are put there by design by people who know what they are doing. Notice how TV soap people don't question authority? Notice how the same old shit gets played? They don't want people to think for themselves. Memes are what shape behaviour & they use them ALL the time. Most people are completely unaware of this. The NWO is using memetics to guide their sheeple into stupidity & unquestioning blind submission right now.
This is one of the most awesome lectures I have ever heard on so many levels. The humor and style of the speech itself, the energy of the speaker, and the depth of the concepts being presented. What a remarkable role model to inspire people about science again. We need more of this!
@McDaidUSA - wow you must be of the "small brains" that somehow mysteriously survives to this day... humor, style, and energy can make for an ENTERTAINING but NOT EDUCATING speech. and considering her ranting mentions zero science we DON'T need more of this... craptacular overmasticated bollus of b.s...
Temes remind me of that particular von Newman's rectal infestation from Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, you know, the one where "shit ticks build more shit ticks, that build more shit ticks, that build more shit ticks".
A third thing - sorry... I just want to add that I wasn't too impressed by this speach generally, and I'm often sceptical to using the meme concept. I'm not against the idea, I just think it hasn't been worked out nearly enough to be put to use. At this point, the only books that makes use of the meme should be books on the theory itself, in my view. In the future; who knows.
Oh, one more thing... :) Of course the word 'selection' is a metaphor since it's an anthropomorphist concept, but that is just getting stuck on words. Call it whatever you like and the phenomenon remains the same. It doesn't matter if it's actually selected (as in artificial selection) or 'selected' in the metaphorical sense - it still does it's job within the algorithm. I know it's controversial, but as far as I can see it's not crazy.
No offence, but I get the feeling you do not quite understand what either an algorithm or a meme is. There is nothing weird about an algorithm involving an element of randomness. And a meme is really a 'type' and not a 'token', to put it in a philosophical language. Even if the concept is kind of useful I agree that it is vague, but 'gene' is really just as abstract. That too is a type and not a token, so it's all metaphores in a sense and needs to be understood as such.
This is 'cut and paste' pseudo-science and nothing can gloss over it. They've taken their crude and rather vulgar view of evolution and dropped it into the realm of culture.
From this point it becomes an exercise in presentation and filling all numer of gaps with evolutionary language and metaphor. This is not the way that science should be done. It's lazy, shoddy and don't be easily seduced by it
Darwin's theory is good in organic nature, it breaks down in culture. We need to keep on working
The entire reasoning here is to try and inflate the narrow gene-centrism within evolutionary thought, from the kind of people who would crush and cram all nature's grandeur and diversity into gene frequency. The 'DNAologists' as Richard Lewontin has said.
They denied earth systems science for decades, and groupd selection because they want everyone to believe in gene-centrism and now this drivel, meme-centrism.
Check out the you tube video 'The Purpose of Purpose' (2009) where Dawkins now states that cultural evolution is "only superficially similar" to genetic evolution.
Dennett wrote in 1995 that memes matched genes "quite exactly". Total garbageplex.
All this crowd have are weak analogy, metaphor, literary prose and sprinkled with evolutionary language.
Not only is there no Journal of Memetics, but no online Journal of Memetics. This is all driven by Universal Darwinian dogma.
I agree that human babies' brain size makes giving birth difficult (not from personal experience) but the posture assumed when giving birth also factors in. Lying on the back is not a practical position for anyone other than the doctor and observers trying to get a good view. Squatting, kneeling, standing -- positions that let gravity help rather than hinder are optimal. Many women aren't even capable of squatting long because they don't do it in everyday life.
Memes exist when people are anchored or conditioned. There are unconditioned people. I don't know why I'm compelled to write all this. DNA are just a form or class of memes, not different from them, according to neo-darwism, but I am not necessarily a neodarwist. I'm an evolutionary agnostic. I DON'T KNOW and I'm not afraid to say it! I'm free to go either way. But according to NeoDarwin, genes ARE memes. But I think mind exists and spirit exists, never dies!
even consciousness can guide evolution. Natural genetic engineering. I admire blackmore's intelligence and her going with this theory. I'm sure it will get us thinking about new things. But think about what she's saying, and ASSUMING!
I reject all memes unless they serve. Even language- I like being silent than speaking, and when I speak or write, it's the spirit behind the letter that I'm going for! Even language! Memes made me do it. that will be used in the court someday, mark my words! :)
we imitate people, but we CHOOSE to imitate them. We choose to imitate our parents as children, and not to imitate others. We choose to emulate teachers or authorities. Think! The problem is people are passing and don't think. They surrender their freedom! Mind is REAL. MIND EXiSTS. It's hard to believe I have to argue this! Alas, helpless zombies. Memes work when one surrenders.
I wear logos sometimes- when I can buy a shirt at the thrift store. I don't buy the shirt because of the logos.
The only thing that exists is consciousness. Our bodies are just a vehicle for consciousness and when we "die" we don't really "die" rather our consciousness just leaves the body vehicle to another frequency range... "Mind" is just consciousness combined with the effects of the brain.
People like David Icke cover this stuff and people like Blackmore and Dawkins just dismiss these things without even looking at them. The real meme is denying anything out of the ordinary like they're doing.
wisdom can SHUT DOWN these so called replicators. Wisdom and understanding can stop memes. People say that advertising made them drink coke or certain symbols and signs makes them think or do things. They disempower themselves. Wisdom and turning inward can DELETE all the BS that exists in the mind. u don't forget them. u just inactivate them. That's why people go to nature to meditate. In nature there are no 'memes'. We are given a choice. We always have a choice. There is a deeper truth!!!
Go read 'The Social Construction of Reality' by Berger & Luckmann from 1966 where this is all explained far more powerfully than evolutionary could ever do.
She has her detractors because there is not a shred of evidence in Universal Darwinism. Darwin didn't work out culture in his day and despite numerous attempts (Social Darwinism, eugenics, Sociobiology, memetics, cultural ethology, evolutionary psychology, etc) that remains the case today.
Whether you like or not, evolutionary psychology and memetics are gathering more momentum and increasing relevance among the social sciences and there are here to stay.
The explanatory models they provide were never meant to be an alternative but a complement. They provide the" why" question while, like your, social construction models provide the "how" questions. There is no competition that you should be afraid of.
O god I thought this going to make me lol
Williamqtlowrey 1 day ago
It's Like Matrix...... Ah, Ah
paolourru 2 days ago
It's like: The more you do somthing, the better it comes out! Try it out yourself first ...then look around and ask for help. Since I don't own a CAR Company I'll buy one from ....! Since I don't produce jeans I'll buy them or walk outside with undies. Since my teacher says I have to study Meme, Teme and what else, I do it to get an A.
paolourru 2 days ago
@homuncuius
Imagine what they told darwin when he released his studies.probably said same stuff you said about meme
lugo033 2 weeks ago
I want to make sure I understand. Was she talking about the machines taking over?
lugo033 2 weeks ago
Marveleous !
rafaelwaa 1 month ago
This bitch screams desperation
HomuncuIus 2 months ago
Meme theory is nonsense and downright pseudoscience. It gives no regard to consciousness, qualia or the free will arguments. It's flawed and vague on so many levels.
HomuncuIus 2 months ago
Interesting vid. I was the 66,666th viewer.
beerandbanjo 2 months ago
Is there a meme that makes a person an atheist?
grfield1 2 months ago
Braingasm!
masusomasuso 2 months ago 4
I see the same religious fervor that's seen in religious nuts when the science nuts talk about darwin and the theory of evolution. Does that really make you think that you've come closer to uncovering what binds you?
crudhousefull 3 months ago in playlist More videos from TEDtalksDirector
All I can say is that i have never seen anything more convincing. Stunning idea!
SuSiMa1lu 4 months ago
This lady needs to smoke some shrooms, to get those darwin bats out of her plumbing.
movchok 5 months ago 4
@movchok
If you look up the documentary 'Stoned in Suburbia' she admits that she loves to smoke Marijuana at least. I have no doubt she must have eaten shrooms too at some point in her life, how else do you come up with such wild theories. Read some of her books, there are some impressive non-darwinian-brain-gymnastics she's performing in there.
AcidProblemChild 5 months ago
Blackmore would do well to focus on this likely wellspring of memetic function- mechanical copying in early childhood.
(3 posts in reverse order sorry)
fliprim 6 months ago
Mirror neurons provide a testable mechanism for this.
A proper science of memes can now begin combining these facts with the observation that human infant brains are remarkably unwired at birth due to our neotenous nature and so uniquely capable of high levels of culturally sourced configuration.
fliprim 6 months ago
Evolution in fact requires "good enough copying" to work effectiviely. Most cultural copying is nowhere near good enough to start the process off reliably. BUT one subset is. Mechanical copying, copying of skills and expressions, has a demonstrable high level of fidelity and a likely mechanism for achieving this. Victoria Horner has shown how human infants (as opposed to chimp infants) will copy actions with high fidelity even though they are counterintuitive.
fliprim 6 months ago
For those who say Memes are crap. What gave you the impulse to spread that information? Why would you argue with someone you can't see? Memes are more than just ideas. The come together to make up the very fabric of who we are. They use us and we use them. Most are benign. But some are very powerful, when shared by an entire group. Our religion, our politics even our culture can drive us to war. Why? Because Memes are selfish and don't care.
ELI3K 7 months ago 11
@ELI3K The west is slowly coming to realize what was uncovered initially through meditation. Meditate and you'll uncover more truth.
crudhousefull 3 months ago in playlist More videos from TEDtalksDirector
I've had her.
chubbylilloser85 8 months ago
the cultural evolutionist variant of an evangelical motivational speaker
lespleen1 8 months ago
THANKS FOR SHARING..
sinvinci 8 months ago
I suggest that the 'meme seller' is usually a person of some perceived high status. We ape successful humans. Do we desire to be like the successful? Why do we desire that which we desire in the first place.
I also suggest that language is a teme, as are alphabets. (Where will oriental ideograms be in 100 years?)
markjbaldwin 8 months ago
If you have Variation, Selection, and Heredity, you must have evolution.
But where do the laws regulating the natural processes evolve? Must be from the Mind. Funny how everything tends toward chaos yet order continuously exerts itself resulting in life.
jjvescovi11 8 months ago
If you have Variation,
jjvescovi11 8 months ago
She's a perfect example of having "diarrhoea of the mouth". Talks too much but says too little. That's the problem these days. People think they are so smart but they really don't know shit. Just like this woman. Not at all surprised to learn that she is a Zen Buddhist. This is best listened to by standing on your head, having a lotus flower stuck in your navel, and not taking a bath for weeks.
SuperQNerdy 8 months ago
@SuperQNerdy Having been invited to speak at a conference, perhaps you'll forgive her for talking for 20 minutes. Your objections don't really work: Zen buddhism is the system of thought which best accords with what we are finding out about human consciousness, not some silly eye-roller. It is you who appears not to know. And she is an exceptionally bright and well-read woman. Have you read her book, the Meme Machine? She knows what she is talking about.
lewisrain 8 months ago
@SuperQNerdy "she believes in the legalization of drugs? Yeah she's really clever, huh. She looks like if she had a few good brain cells fried by some drugs. No surprises there."
Is that your best? Really? I'll ignore the irony of you screwing up your sentence while accusing Blackmore of frying brain cells, and ask you how you think Prohibition went? How is the War on Drugs going?
Many clever people have called for legalisation. Why not read the arguments instead of deciding beforehand?
lewisrain 8 months ago
@lewisrain
"Many clever people have called for legalisation. Why not read the arguments instead of deciding beforehand?"
Ok i see, then why don't give you child or friend some heroin or cocaine. Or why not tell them to start smoking?
but then again, i am not as "clever" as you are. maybe when i start using drugs i will be a genius like you, yes?
SuperQNerdy 8 months ago
@SuperQNerdy Never said I was clever, or a genius. Just pointing out that there are a lot of good arguments out there for legalising drugs, and many people of all political persuasions have advocated such views. Milton Friedman, the laissez-faire capitalist, as well as liberals etc.
Never said give children drugs, just like tobacco and alcohol are against the law for children.
lewisrain 8 months ago
@SuperQNerdy And why are you so sure that I myself think all drugs should be legalised? I haven't stated my position. You also implied I take drugs, why? The whole subject seems to be so deeply taboo to you that you are not capable of looking at it without already having decided the issue.
Blackmore is a good scientific thinker - by the way, that's why she does Zen, to analyse consciousness, and her theories are troubling. Is the idea of memes and "no-self" another taboo for you, perhaps?
lewisrain 8 months ago
@SuperQNerdy She says little because she's a mystic. She takes Dawkin's undeveloped meme idea and creates a scifi myth of evil ideas taking over out of it. Typical TED.
john42t 7 months ago
@SuperQNerdy
Frustrated because you are unable to spread your memes?
tubulussinga 3 months ago
I just realized why a 3 billion year old species would want to lend some of their genes to some apes and farm an entire planet with a new species on it. hanging out in the background and harvesting radically new perspectives, new memes, is good for their security and survival and evolution. I don't think this world wide web is the first one in the galaxy.
Cashify 9 months ago
I find this video difficult to masturbate to.
BIG96SMOKE 9 months ago 15
@BIG96SMOKE Funny- I had no problem.
Thimbledunk 8 months ago
@BIG96SMOKE Try hardcore pornography then.
TulipFarella 4 months ago
I think it's important to recognise that 'meme' theory is NOT 'pop' science. And how can it be creationism when it embraces the notion of universal darwinism?! You ought to read The Meme Machine, if you haven't already, and The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch or the work of Daniel Dennett. How you can call these three "pop" scientists, and also by extension Richard Dawkins, Darwin, Cloak (who defined memes as i-culture and m-culture), Delius, Lynch, Durham et al, I do not know.
lewisrain 9 months ago
@lewisrain Notice how similar your arguments are to creationists who say 'You should read such and such a book on creationism...'
Look, sorry to break the news, but 'scientist' doesn't mean 'expert in all fields'. Dawkins is a biologist, not an anthropologist. If he was, he wouldn't recommend reading The Golden Bough to see how gullible religious believers are. It was fabricated - so that's how clued up Professor Dawkins is outside his field.
Thimbledunk 8 months ago
@lewisrain I'm a great fan of the "Selfish Gene" and I do believe that the original idea of a meme is interesting and merits further investigation. But this women is a fraud. Of course the memes have to serve the genes. It does all come back to the genes. Yes, wrong memes are replicated, but there are reasons for it that have causes in selfish gene theory.
john42t 7 months ago
This lecture should give the Richard Dawkins brand of Atheist (i.e., the "Brights" who try to spread the wonders of Atheism) some pause. After all, if religion is a meme that is replicated tens-of-thousands of times a day - millions of times a year - then any notion of doing away with religion is utterly futile. You cannot out-compete that meme. You may as well try to cure the common cold. Better to make peace with it.
gnomechomskylives 9 months ago
Why does the general american population act like 12 year olds.....even the educated ones...?
happyhazelnut 9 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Chemist Canetti wrote in German for him transformation and replication (repeate stream of ever chancing life) are the same proces. With evolution a tranformation takes a long time with revolution a short time. Susan's 'fear' is this fast proces. Canetti's word for both speeds of transformations is in German "verwandlung".(becoming the same by imitation) It has many (classic) associations that doesn't exist in English: the same related ("verwandt") and metamorphosis, but also chancing scene. X=Y
Contextcatcher 9 months ago
epigenetic evolution is an interesting meme, but still its a "chicken and egg" situation. What came first, the meme or the memer?
evolution is diven my more than the need to replicate efficiantly. If that was the case we never would have "evolved" beyond bacteria. Bacteria do replication just fine. One needs to do away with a linear conception of time to understand what is going on, well in my opinion. Darwin's system works, but explains only a small part of what is going on here.
aramhampson 9 months ago
Comment removed
Contextcatcher 9 months ago
Well the cultural significance of jewelry is quit significant historically and thus ultimately genetically aswell perceivably
koenraad72 9 months ago
This gives Gaultier haut couture some real penach
koenraad72 9 months ago
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I would bang her until she couldn't walk.
fecesfeces9 9 months ago 7
@fecesfeces9 so poopoo9, by your name i have to wonder if you prefer the garbage shoot to the pearly gate...? Was your potty training phase at little rough? You know fecal-fans, or garbage men if you will, are often attracked to poo as the meme of sodomy sprouts and grows in the phycologically disturbed soil.
aramhampson 9 months ago
@fecesfeces9 I wouldn't put it quite like that myself, but she is lovely, clever and engaging, isn't she, such an interesting woman, with an interesting story, having had an out-of-body experience at Oxford University she went on to investigate the paranormal for 10 years, found nothing, and concluded that a better arena of study would be the phenomenon of consciousness instead. She is a Zen practitioner and believes in the legalisation of drugs, I believe, marijuana for sure. Top gal.
lewisrain 9 months ago
@lewisrain
she believes in the legalization of drugs? Yeah she's really clever, huh. She looks like if she had a few good brain cells fried by some drugs. No surprises there.
SuperQNerdy 8 months ago
Don't buy it. This doesn't actually explain anything. Arms race my arse! Bigger brains = more intelligence = better survival rate. Complicated ideas build society increasing this rate even further.
Memes suck. This sucks.
Theolence 9 months ago
@Theolence I'm with you that this woman and her ideas are nonsensical to say the least. I still believe that you could make something out of the original meme idea, but of course it would have to come back to the gene. For example, it might be beneficial for a gene to be "for being irrational under certain circumstances".
john42t 7 months ago
1:46 "The idea is so simple and yet it explains ALL design in Universe"... a typical claim of an enthousiatic scientist (in must) popularizing (increasing) a concept.
Blackmore and accumulation: a dark megalomanic combination.... "Who's afraid of a new Replicator".
Sure Susan...there is a relation between accumulation, replication and transformation... this is in mass all what's automatic matters for counting and describing.
We are not in absulute power we have to cope with our relativity.
Contextcatcher 10 months ago
meme's are a load of shit, they are absolute psuedo science, there is no phsyical evidence for them
marcusantonio91 10 months ago
In modern economie is 'desire for increase of Kangeroos' changed in a command (3:48) for grow of wealth: greed is good! Replicator is what we are and where we are integrated: a mass. The genes, memes etc. are derivatives of this old transforming desire for more. Our relation which large numbers, with mass, is a steady factor: full churches, theatres, stadiums, shops, in general concern of ratings. Increasing vocabularies are engines for longing more (life): knowledge is a crucial part of it.
Contextcatcher 10 months ago
"The TRANSFORMATION, which cherished tradition, and, as totem, the sign of the relationship existing between certain men and the kangeroos, signified also a connection with their number. the numbers of the kangeroos were always larger than those of men, and since they were connected with man, he disered their INCREASE. When they increased, he also increased; the increase of the totem animal was IDENTICAL with own".
Quote "Crowds and Power" 1960 shows a finer replicator concept of E Canetti.
Contextcatcher 10 months ago
Tame the temes? First we domesticated animals for our own benifit and now we must domesticate modern technology our PC. Language was already something technical: counting was important for earlly agriculture civilizations. Mathematics was coming up. Language as social and political phenomenon becomes also powerful (dangerous) for individuals. Words made identities.
The problem is the growing mass of people. Imitation: mass are identical beings.
'Teme' as identity? Susan: "I scared myself".
Contextcatcher 10 months ago
Memorable recommandation 3:30 Susan Blackmore is in "must"...
Contextcatcher 10 months ago
I think it's important to recognise that 'meme' theory is 'pop' science. It's obviously a kind of social science, as it tries to explain how culture spreads. However, these 'pop' ideas can be very seductive because they appeal to laypeople, and are interesting without requiring real technical knowledge. What should ring alarm bells is that 'meme theory' is almost universally rejected in academic social science. It is actualy just 'cultural creationism', pretending to be science, like creationism
Thimbledunk 10 months ago
@Thimbledunk Thanks for your reply.
I don't recall her saying theat memes were the means of copying. I thought the brain was the means of copying - a brain made adept at copying through "mimetic drive" (the best copiers survive, and this drives brain growth?)
"Blackmore thus eliminates any effect on human behaviour, such as social, economic, political." I don't understand: her theory is all about effect on human behaviour.
What do you perceive as Blackmore's ideological agenda?
lewisrain 10 months ago
@Thimbledunk I think it's important to recognise that 'meme' theory is NOT 'pop' science. And how can it be creationism when it embraces the notion of universal darwinism?! You ought to read The Meme Machine, if you haven't already, The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, the work of Daniel Dennett. How you can call these three "pop" scientists, and also by extension Richard Dawkins, Darwin, Cloak (who defined memes as i-culture and m-culture), Delius, Lynch, Durham et al, I do not know.
lewisrain 9 months ago
@Thimbledunk That is is rejected by the social sciences is actually a good sign in my book. I still think its nonsense, but so is most of the social sciences.
john42t 7 months ago
Think how interesting the word 'replicator' is. Genes don't actually copy, really- they replicate themselves. How does a toilet roll replicate 'itself'? Answer - it doesn't; humans replicate it. Blackmoore confuses these two senses, eliminating the human - the ACTUAL means of replication - from the equation. So, again, how does a roll replicate itself without humans? Blackmoore thus eliminates any effect on human behaviour, such as social, economic, political. See how political this is?
Thimbledunk 10 months ago
Finally, ask yourself some difficult qs. Is domestic violence a meme? Is war? Is torture? Is sexual deviance?
Blackmoore, for very ideological reasons, wants you to accept that humans simply copy. To support this philosophically, she has to make humans in to machines who have no conscious will, but simply copy, copy, copy. Actually, she's not right - obviously. Even tightly knit groups contain surprising diversity. So the difficult question, as always, is 'why' - and she don't answer it.
Thimbledunk 10 months ago
@Thimbledunk I sound like a creationist because I recommend the work of genuine scientists? How does that work?
"Blackmoore, for very ideological reasons, wants you to accept that humans simply copy." I'm baffled. She never said this or even implied it. And what are these ideological reasons?
How does a toilet roll replicate itself? Well, like a tune or a joke, it needs people to spread it (for now). Of course, it has no volition, no desire to get copied. But neither do genes.
lewisrain 8 months ago
Actually, Talking about the subject in question , its hard not to be so enthusiastic.
kamikazuu1 11 months ago
Was anyone else distracted by her right hand? Anyone know what happened to her?
Great lecture though. I'd like to check out more from Susie.
FishFromFortFack 11 months ago
A river flows from it's source. Only conscious flows toward its source. Nothing rises above its source. Since we are all above the earth in complexity, what does this say about our source?
88tuner 11 months ago
She's a good talker, but she doesn't really SAY much.
pureevilfnord 11 months ago
This would be the one video I would be fine with someone doing a "first!!!" post...
arithine 11 months ago
Where's the third replicator? Meme's are still the subject of replication, wether replicated by us or machines. There is no third replicator.
jaspal99 1 year ago
A teenage extra terrestrial student called Qauzerk had to pass his exams in genetics so he mixed his DNA with apes and made us.
CCSofChocolatesvill 1 year ago
@CCSofChocolatesvill Did he pass?
Thimbledunk 1 year ago
@Thimbledunk No Qauzerk fucked up we are mess and he was executed by the intergalactic space council :)))
CCSofChocolatesvill 1 year ago
The memes could have killed us off. The temes are controlling us. What will we all do at 'the third replicator point' when the temes suck up all our planets resources? The internet wasnt created for us, IT WAS CREATED BY THE TEMES!!
There is no need to look elsewhere for how absurdly overstated darwin evolutionism is becoming than this idiot.
Anyone see terminator 2? I think she has watched it one too many times
rhuber11 1 year ago
@rhuber11 Wholeheartedly agreed. What's interesting is we're almost at a point where if you don't accept this dogma, some people assume you're rejecting science, and are a religious nut. There's very little awareness that meme theory is deeply - in fact critically - academically flawed.
Thimbledunk 1 year ago
@Thimbledunk Yeah, I'm in the midst of a P.h.D which takes a critical stance at such theories. Its not that science isn't useful, it just has its limitations. It's kind of annoying when Blackmore and Co. try and explain something as complex as cultural transitions with an obvious lack of knowledge in the literature. Also, the idea of Memes has been around for about 60 years pre-Dawkins and it has been showed time and again by many thinkers that it is theoretically flawed (e.g. Tim Ingold)
rhuber11 1 year ago
Um, don't we just call cultural memes, trends, or fads?
Zodslayer 1 year ago 2
@Zodslayer Yes, we do.
Thimbledunk 1 year ago
@Zodslayer maybe its something that becomes so ingrained it becomes part of culture....tradition i guess....
lumpfish99 9 months ago
Are we *really* sure that no philosopher in Chinese or Indian history came up with this idea? Buddhists were atheists 2500 years ago. Asians came up with the notions of ecological protection thousands of years ago, preceded Europeans by hundreds of years with discoveries such as the circulation of blood, the ability to multiply and divide negative numbers, etc.
givebirthathome 1 year ago
@givebirthathome actually they did...its called samskaras..mental impressions left on the mind via ...music..poetry..mantras etc. etc. some beneficial some not!
i hate to break it to the atheists out there...there is a middle path between atheists and theists..."maya vadi" which is the idea that god for example is a useful idea and ideas exist ! god is an idea so therefore exists! its why western atheists have a hard time with eastern traditions! sorry atheists u are WIZARDS! lol meme = spell
WORLDARYANREVIVAL 1 year ago
I didn't like her dressing. The talk is good, though.
siddkulk 1 year ago
blue bangs
anikorising 1 year ago
Memetics is not the study of how ideas evolve, its the study of how to manipulate, implant and incept ideas into the masses over time making them think its their own idea
a people will work, sacrifice, fight and die for an idea if they believe its their own and not someone else's this is the slavery of the 21st century
owning your own thoughts and expelling the foreign ones is the key to freedom but how many of the pig masses are capable of thinking or even providing fro themselves anymore
godscuttingyoudown 1 year ago
@godscuttingyoudown angry,angry man
MultiJacob17 1 year ago
First I laughed with about her theory, now she my most respected TED speaker, as I started to understand what she was speaking about, she changed the way I look at society and human nature. Yes I'm infected with her memes. They can explain many things and make you more aware about how society operates on information.
MrPandaDork 1 year ago
One of my greatest moments was interviewing and talking with Dr. Susan Blackmore! I'm reading her book, The Meme Machine again and it is just as profound as the first time I read it!
philippematthews 1 year ago
She has some interesting ideas, but the way she's treating them is bullshit. To suggest that human mind is a *passive* replicator is enormously stupid, and to suggest that no other animal except human imitates behavior is ignorant.
The tendency of the brain to increase in both size and complexity can be clearly traced for all terrestrial life, and human childbirth is complicated by our spine's adaptation to walking, not by the size of our heads.
noobyfromhell 1 year ago
Jesus...this video is fucking 21 mins long....O...my ....fucking.....god Dx
jcpunk914 1 year ago
So the humans who can adapt to technology the best will survive until technology discovers it can carry on better without them which is probably likely because it will be able to iterate much faster, with greater numbers, and with more variation than any biological system - especially with the increasing move towards automation. Pandora is open, so now how to deal with it? Need a concerted effort of global humanism to lead tech that way too? But even Asimov's robotic laws don't work that well?
intermender 1 year ago
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shes not that funny!
TheHumpers1992 1 year ago
I wonder if altruism is a meme...
clairsentient 1 year ago
Comment removed
katzunjammer 1 year ago
People need to consider the details of what she's saying. The complex nature of cultural transmission is easily 'fudged' to fit a pet theory. So you have to listen to the details of the fudges, to see it going on. Listen to what she says - toilet roll tucks 'want' you to copy them. No, they don't. Dawkins's psuedo-science takes another step to becoming a scientistic religion - now it has a prophet, predicting an imminent doomsday. Maybe she got the religion meme.
Thimbledunk 1 year ago
@Thimbledunk On Susan Blackmore, you said "Listen to what she says - toilet roll tucks 'want' you to copy them. No, they don't.". As she actually points out numerous times in her talk, that is a shorthand for "if they can be copied, they will". You're either wilfully misrepresenting her, or not watching the whole thing. It's not pseudoscience, as you suggest, but a hypothesis, a well-argued one at that. And certainly nothing to do with religion, simply the logic of evolutionary theory.
lewisrain 11 months ago
@lewisrain Probably more important for you to consider is that she says memes are both the thing copied and the mechanism of copying - she in fact insists in this video that memes are 'only that which is copied' - and then insitst that they are actually the means or mechanism of copying. Astonishingly, no one seems to recognise that this is a fallacy caused by thinking of memes as genes - which are both copied and copier. It's a schoolyard philosophy level error.
Thimbledunk 10 months ago
Think - do memes really 'get copied if they can'? Think how fuzzy that statement is, how unscientific. The reason, as always in poor social philosophy, is to try and cover a flaw in the fundamental logic of the proposition. You always have to revert to 'well what she means by that is...' and then you re-state something equally fuzzy. T rolls in no way 'get copied if they can' - that implies some form of intent in the roll. What you might mean is that we are pre-disposed to coy certain things.
Thimbledunk 10 months ago
'Copy', rather. In which case, you, and Susan, need to go back and read 150 years worth of anthropological discussion on how culture spreads. E.g., why don't we all have the same culture? Why don't we all copy the same things? And think how political this theory is. Coca cola 'wants' to be drunk. Where is the awareness of cultural manipulation to create the desire to buy certain goods, think certain ways? Meme theory eliminates deliberate manipulation by powerful social players.
Thimbledunk 10 months ago
I was wandering along the seashore today and page 52 from the Webster Dictionary had naturally selected itself in the sand. Evolution MUST be true! I'm always amazed when information just appears. You just can't stop information arising on its own I suppose. I guess it's possible someone may have put it there but that's highly unlikely.
88tuner 1 year ago
@88tuner You said that you were "always amazed when information just appears", then used the example of a dictionary in the sand. Who among those who understand evolution ever claimed that? "Selected itself"? No. Environmental conditions did. Who knows, maybe God did? Seems unlikely to me. But anyway, disproving natural abiogenesis would NOT disprove evolution. At all. Soz bud.
lewisrain 11 months ago
If robot would speak once by own idea, people nature would think, that is broken robot, accident, virus software, sorry, that is truth about human nature. What memes would make people able to see machines as a life?
TheNataliaRR 1 year ago
Viruses are not alive form in discuss, that doesnt make them not able to be and even more: copy, attack, destroy, mutate, change, take production in own 'hands'. Machines by memetic are very powerfull and we have to speak with them and see, what they want really.
TheNataliaRR 1 year ago
@11:50 "All other species on this planet are gene machines only then don't imitate at all well..."
What about Vervet Monkeys that appear to have a fairly complicated series of signals to alert their fellows in case of attack? They make different sounds depending upon the predator.
see - 3lsF83rHKFc
Sounds like a Meme to me...
DavrosFromSkaro 1 year ago
Really, the biggest load of shit i have watched in a long time. I would prefer to establish the existence of memes first before detailing their functions. Then this kind of theoretical psuedo-science might have some kind of basis.
klindred 1 year ago
@klindred Amen. I think the levels of reification, fallacy, anthopmorphic fantasy, lack of awareness of social science methodology, involved in her thinking are just so complex that it is, ironically, simpler for people to believe this nonsense.
Thimbledunk 1 year ago
@Thimbledunk I decided to check her out a few years ago since i saw she was a big name in parapsychology and skepticism. Her work struck me as simplistic garbage not at a level of professionalism at all. But armchair scientists seem to get a lot out of her. Bless their silly brains.
klindred 1 year ago
A meme is philosophy not science. Popular science maybe but definitely not a fact. More like a theory without any basis. A virus of the mind? Come on! This is L Ron Hubbard on LSD!
klindred 1 year ago
@klindred, memetics belongs to the Platonic tradition, not Aristotelian tradition of hard science. Other things from Platonic tradition: Hegelian dialectics, Freudian and Jungian psychology, Levi-Strauss's structuralism, semiotics, and even Richard Dawkins's selfish gene.
I am not sure where to put Darwinism itself. Perhaps it spans across Platonic-Aristotelian division.
You can call it philosophy, of course. But what does that change?
Kurtlane 1 year ago
@Kurtlane Are you sure you can associate someone who did not consider experiment necessary with "hard science"?
noobyfromhell 1 year ago
@noobyfromhell, sorry, who didn't consider experiment necessary? Aristotel? He's the founder of this approach, so he has to be excused for a lot of things. All sorts of things we now take for granted in science: Occam's razor, control of outside conditions, repeatability of experiments, etc. appeared in the Middle Ages or later.
Kurtlane 1 year ago
@Kurtlane AFAIK Aristotle favored pure thought as the method of inquiry, which was later heavily criticized by Bacon.
If you want to trace the origin of modern science (which is an endeavor of questionable value IMO), Ancient Greeks will disappoint you. Look at Enlightenment or Medieval Islamic thinkers instead.
noobyfromhell 1 year ago
@noobyfromhell, the origins are still in the Greeks. Erastothenes measured the size of the earth, distance to the sun was measured, Archimedes discoveres all sorts of things, including integrals. These are tremendous achievements. Why should I be disappointed?
Kurtlane 1 year ago
@Kurtlane I didn't say Greeks aren't influential, but I don't think what they were doing can be considered "hard science", because they did not consider experiment necessary for the development of a theory.
noobyfromhell 1 year ago
@noobyfromhell, I agree Greeks didn't do hard science. But they stand at its foundations.
I guess like the ancestor of whales didn't swim in the sea, but it's still the ancestor of whales.
Obviously, Greeks did experiments and developed theories from them. Erastothenes measuring the size of the earth was an experiment. Archimedes law is theory based on experiments.
(cont.)
Kurtlane 1 year ago
It's not hard science, because the full mechanism of requirements for hard science wasn't there. But the basic attitude and the direction is there.
Kurtlane 1 year ago
@Kurtlane Did Erastothenes measured the size of the Earth experimentally and then compared the result with theoretical computations? LOL
noobyfromhell 1 year ago
@noobyfromhell, sorry, there were no other computations available. He had nothing but the length of his measuring stick, the length of shadow it made on summer solstice and the distance from Alexandria to Sienna (now Aswan) to rely on.
Kurtlane 1 year ago
@Kurtlane Do you even know what the word 'experiment' means? What he did was calculation based on a mathematical model, which is as far from experiment as you can get.
noobyfromhell 1 year ago
@noobyfromhell, what he did was great. Whatever you call it.
I hate these "theoreticians of science" (not to confuse with theoretical physicists, etc.) which never discover anything themselves but are ready to criticize the hell out of those who do. All they do is stifle real science.
Just go on and search for truth.
Kurtlane 1 year ago
@Kurtlane I'm merely pointing out that Ancient Greeks didn't do 'hard science'. To me your reaction seems blown out of proportion.
noobyfromhell 1 year ago
Comment removed
BRussellspouts 1 year ago
Nice talk. Couple of things though. Memetics also occur with other animals. For instance, the songs of birds. Meme could indeed be equivalent to idea. Genes imitate each other, and they aren't memes. Memes ang genes aren't the only replicators on this planet. You can see replication taking place in the phenomena of emergence. Snow flakes, crystals, clouds and fractals in general.
Aldelirium 1 year ago
@Aldelirium she did actually mention that some animals do have memes, but it's really very limited. Most animals can't think about the meme's and cause variation in them, therefore they wouldn't really be considered memes because they wouldn't "evolve". I must disagree with your second point, emergence is just physical laws shaping the formation of something, there's no replication and no selection at all.
ShiftyMcSly 1 year ago
@ShiftyMcSly I think it was on The Selfish Gene that Dawkins speaks of witnessing the creation of new songbird songs due to "errors" in the interpretation. These "errors" were passed from bird to bird. Thus, the bird memes are evolving.
There is replication and selection in emergence. Think of fractals. The smaller levels replicate the bigger ones, or viceversa. If this replication is useful (e.g. more surface area), it is preserved by natural selection.
Aldelirium 1 year ago
This quite explains why I hate FASHION and stupid people...
I do not particularly like art, music or even religion (11:20), especially when they are fashionable.
I think therefore I am.
The memes are not using us, we are allowing them to use us. It is a choice some of us are aware of, but many are not.
Fear mongering? Another fashionable meme?
WE HAVE HEARD FROM ANYBODY OUT THERE!
I have had a close encounter with a "living UFO"...
LiteWaiter 1 year ago
There is a truly engaging concept expressed here regarding the logistics of what in essence is another means of human consciousness expressed, yet there is also a very troubling tendency which constitutes a dangerous meme in itself. In that she personifies temes as expressing their own volition (as if 'using' us for their own purposes), she is promoting the separation of responsibility from cognizance, a similar fault as misinterpreting a deistic religion (i.e. "the devil made me do it").
harleynanda 1 year ago
god is an old meme
rectril 1 year ago
Ever hear monkey see monkey do? Chimpanzees too get infected by memes.
abdishtar 1 year ago
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm not a fan.
shadling21 1 year ago
WTF is this NUT talking about...???
leeroynaggins 1 year ago
@leeroynaggins
Who? ur mum perhaps
S2Cents 1 year ago
ty mickeleh
benben829 1 year ago
Temes are using humans....
Wtf....
We MAKE the technology.....
WE use it. wtf :S
wei00007 1 year ago
@wei00007 You are working for your genes and memes bitch.
S2Cents 1 year ago
@S2Cents
What??
Also, that was a month old comment, good one -__-
wei00007 1 year ago
@wei00007
That's what she's getting at mate. You work for them. It is like the genes and memes are the Owners and You are the a prole. But there will be no revolutionary struggle. The Genes and Memes are your god.
S2Cents 1 year ago
@S2Cents
Ok, I'm lost at this point, so, ok : D
wei00007 1 year ago
@S2Cents Memes & genes will either be preserved or go extinct over time based on their usefulness to the replicators. It's not the other way round. Genes are useful and therefore continue to survive only because they make gene products that are useful to us. If those products don't serve us, the genes die out over time. Only genes that help the species can survive over time.
This whole concept is rather circular. "We define memes thus, therefore they MUST behave as we predict."
dcs002 1 year ago
This "de-stabilization of the plannets climate" is completely unfounded bullshit
Galv140577 1 year ago
The memes in TV soaps & commercial radio stations, even the lyrics in songs are put there by design by people who know what they are doing. Notice how TV soap people don't question authority? Notice how the same old shit gets played? They don't want people to think for themselves. Memes are what shape behaviour & they use them ALL the time. Most people are completely unaware of this. The NWO is using memetics to guide their sheeple into stupidity & unquestioning blind submission right now.
Galv140577 1 year ago
i dont think the audience really cared for her much
JimmyJoyce77 1 year ago
@JimmyJoyce77 this isn't a fucking stand up show
zahropit 1 year ago
This is one of the most awesome lectures I have ever heard on so many levels. The humor and style of the speech itself, the energy of the speaker, and the depth of the concepts being presented. What a remarkable role model to inspire people about science again. We need more of this!
McDaidUSA 2 years ago 28
@McDaidUSA It's actually prettu shallow stuff.
Thimbledunk 1 year ago
@McDaidUSA - wow you must be of the "small brains" that somehow mysteriously survives to this day... humor, style, and energy can make for an ENTERTAINING but NOT EDUCATING speech. and considering her ranting mentions zero science we DON'T need more of this... craptacular overmasticated bollus of b.s...
admiraliggz 10 months ago
The origin of the species is subtitled the preservation of favored races in the struggle of life
daizee106 2 years ago
Yeah Dennet and all them folks, but does our Sue actually realise how much she owes to Lewis Mumford?
Well Mumford got his memes out that is for sure.
inregionecaecorum 2 years ago
Temes remind me of that particular von Newman's rectal infestation from Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, you know, the one where "shit ticks build more shit ticks, that build more shit ticks, that build more shit ticks".
Kolajer 2 years ago
excellent!
genesisplan 2 years ago
@naturalpreservation
A third thing - sorry... I just want to add that I wasn't too impressed by this speach generally, and I'm often sceptical to using the meme concept. I'm not against the idea, I just think it hasn't been worked out nearly enough to be put to use. At this point, the only books that makes use of the meme should be books on the theory itself, in my view. In the future; who knows.
Blodhosta 2 years ago
@naturalpreservation
Oh, one more thing... :) Of course the word 'selection' is a metaphor since it's an anthropomorphist concept, but that is just getting stuck on words. Call it whatever you like and the phenomenon remains the same. It doesn't matter if it's actually selected (as in artificial selection) or 'selected' in the metaphorical sense - it still does it's job within the algorithm. I know it's controversial, but as far as I can see it's not crazy.
Blodhosta 2 years ago
@naturalpreservation
No offence, but I get the feeling you do not quite understand what either an algorithm or a meme is. There is nothing weird about an algorithm involving an element of randomness. And a meme is really a 'type' and not a 'token', to put it in a philosophical language. Even if the concept is kind of useful I agree that it is vague, but 'gene' is really just as abstract. That too is a type and not a token, so it's all metaphores in a sense and needs to be understood as such.
Blodhosta 2 years ago
Susan Blackmore rocks.
firesnakepodcast 2 years ago 13
Her book MEME MACHINE blew me away.
ChopstickBrando 2 years ago
This is 'cut and paste' pseudo-science and nothing can gloss over it. They've taken their crude and rather vulgar view of evolution and dropped it into the realm of culture.
From this point it becomes an exercise in presentation and filling all numer of gaps with evolutionary language and metaphor. This is not the way that science should be done. It's lazy, shoddy and don't be easily seduced by it
Darwin's theory is good in organic nature, it breaks down in culture. We need to keep on working
naturalpreservation 2 years ago
The entire reasoning here is to try and inflate the narrow gene-centrism within evolutionary thought, from the kind of people who would crush and cram all nature's grandeur and diversity into gene frequency. The 'DNAologists' as Richard Lewontin has said.
They denied earth systems science for decades, and groupd selection because they want everyone to believe in gene-centrism and now this drivel, meme-centrism.
naturalpreservation 2 years ago
Check out the you tube video 'The Purpose of Purpose' (2009) where Dawkins now states that cultural evolution is "only superficially similar" to genetic evolution.
Dennett wrote in 1995 that memes matched genes "quite exactly". Total garbageplex.
All this crowd have are weak analogy, metaphor, literary prose and sprinkled with evolutionary language.
Not only is there no Journal of Memetics, but no online Journal of Memetics. This is all driven by Universal Darwinian dogma.
Sadplex.
naturalpreservation 2 years ago
Mankind is inherently evil? Sorry. That's not science, and I don't even buy that argument from Christians, Jews or Muslims.
wrb1957 2 years ago
This is tangential but:
I agree that human babies' brain size makes giving birth difficult (not from personal experience) but the posture assumed when giving birth also factors in. Lying on the back is not a practical position for anyone other than the doctor and observers trying to get a good view. Squatting, kneeling, standing -- positions that let gravity help rather than hinder are optimal. Many women aren't even capable of squatting long because they don't do it in everyday life.
Awedree 2 years ago
Wisdom can stop memes? I can't think of a piece of Wisdom which isn't a meme or combination of them.
Truer to say memes compete for space in our minds. The ones we call 'wisdom' are just successful.
duncan5680 2 years ago
Memes exist when people are anchored or conditioned. There are unconditioned people. I don't know why I'm compelled to write all this. DNA are just a form or class of memes, not different from them, according to neo-darwism, but I am not necessarily a neodarwist. I'm an evolutionary agnostic. I DON'T KNOW and I'm not afraid to say it! I'm free to go either way. But according to NeoDarwin, genes ARE memes. But I think mind exists and spirit exists, never dies!
peacewalker7 2 years ago
even consciousness can guide evolution. Natural genetic engineering. I admire blackmore's intelligence and her going with this theory. I'm sure it will get us thinking about new things. But think about what she's saying, and ASSUMING!
I reject all memes unless they serve. Even language- I like being silent than speaking, and when I speak or write, it's the spirit behind the letter that I'm going for! Even language! Memes made me do it. that will be used in the court someday, mark my words! :)
peacewalker7 2 years ago
we imitate people, but we CHOOSE to imitate them. We choose to imitate our parents as children, and not to imitate others. We choose to emulate teachers or authorities. Think! The problem is people are passing and don't think. They surrender their freedom! Mind is REAL. MIND EXiSTS. It's hard to believe I have to argue this! Alas, helpless zombies. Memes work when one surrenders.
I wear logos sometimes- when I can buy a shirt at the thrift store. I don't buy the shirt because of the logos.
peacewalker7 2 years ago
The only thing that exists is consciousness. Our bodies are just a vehicle for consciousness and when we "die" we don't really "die" rather our consciousness just leaves the body vehicle to another frequency range... "Mind" is just consciousness combined with the effects of the brain.
People like David Icke cover this stuff and people like Blackmore and Dawkins just dismiss these things without even looking at them. The real meme is denying anything out of the ordinary like they're doing.
camreeno360 2 years ago
wisdom can SHUT DOWN these so called replicators. Wisdom and understanding can stop memes. People say that advertising made them drink coke or certain symbols and signs makes them think or do things. They disempower themselves. Wisdom and turning inward can DELETE all the BS that exists in the mind. u don't forget them. u just inactivate them. That's why people go to nature to meditate. In nature there are no 'memes'. We are given a choice. We always have a choice. There is a deeper truth!!!
peacewalker7 2 years ago
Her problem is, she is far ahead of her time!
No wonder she has so many detractors!
magua73 2 years ago 2
So far ahead of her time? That's funny.
Go read 'The Social Construction of Reality' by Berger & Luckmann from 1966 where this is all explained far more powerfully than evolutionary could ever do.
She has her detractors because there is not a shred of evidence in Universal Darwinism. Darwin didn't work out culture in his day and despite numerous attempts (Social Darwinism, eugenics, Sociobiology, memetics, cultural ethology, evolutionary psychology, etc) that remains the case today.
naturalpreservation 2 years ago
Whether you like or not, evolutionary psychology and memetics are gathering more momentum and increasing relevance among the social sciences and there are here to stay.
The explanatory models they provide were never meant to be an alternative but a complement. They provide the" why" question while, like your, social construction models provide the "how" questions. There is no competition that you should be afraid of.
magua73 2 years ago
To Magua, I'm sorry but your reading of memes/memetics is a sheer as the would be theory of culture itself.
W