Richard Dawkins Faith In Memes Is As Blind As A Christian's to God

[Scented Nectar]

Philosopher John Gray:

...on Richard Dawkins's theory of memes - units of information whose competition somehow explains the development of thought. One problem with memes is that, unlike genes, they are not identifiable physical structures. Ideas are elusive things - think of the ways in which artistic styles emerge and develop. It shows a sorry lack of cultural understanding to imagine that the baroque, say, can be reduced to a few simple structures.

Who says they have to be physical? And who says they are too simple to represent complex artistic ideas/categories? Someone is not understanding the basics.

In a postscript, Dennett defends memes against the criticism that they lack the clear identity of genes, but the real objection is that it is not a theory at all, as it fails to identify anything like a mechanism of cultural evolution. This is hardly surprising, given that there is nothing in the history of ideas that resembles natural selection in biology.

The mechanism is popularity. All the ways ideas catch on are the mechanisms. If he doesn't see the structural, analogous resemblence, he does not understand anything about the topic.

Some ideas seem to be more contagious than others, but those which prevail are often the ones that have power on their side. Pagan religion did not disappear from the ancient world because it lost out in competition with non-pagan memes but because, following the conversion of Constantine, it was repressed. Like other evolutionist ideologies, the theory of memes passes over the role of power in history.

That conversion WAS that competition win. Does he think it has to happen by sexual combining of physical genes or something? What a moron!

The appeal of the theory is that it reduces the fertile chaos of human thought to objects that can be manipulated, and seems to open up the prospect of memetic engineering - consciously directing the intellectual evolution of the species by disseminating some memes and discouraging others. In previous books Dennett has hinted that human evolution could be directed in this way, with his own ideas helping to guide the process, but happily the possibilities of memetic engineering are rather limited. Ideas can be suppressed, but they cannot be controlled. They have too many unexpected consequences, and always slip out of the hands of their authors. Like history as a whole, the history of ideas will always be partly a matter of chance. An attempt to defeat this contingency, the theory of memes is at bottom an expression of magical thinking and as remote from genuine science as "intelligent design".

Of course memes can be controlled. Anyone who understands basic marketing knows that. No one is claiming that the control is perfect or absolute in some way either. Where is this guy getting all the extra stuff he's reading into it?

Hey.... wait a minute, you ARE John, aren't you Cecco?