Why 90% of biological science is stuck in the dark age.

[chaz wyman]

It's much worse. Susan Blackmore is convinced that what she calls memes and temes (things like wearing baseball hats on backwards, and folding the ends of toilet paper in a certain way) , Are "using you to replicate themselves because they want to survive"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ_9-Qx5Hz4

She obviously doesn't mean that literally, any more than Dawkins ever meant that genes are consciously selfish.

Then why does she say that again and again. At what point does lazy language become belief. And if she is incapable, as she seems, of expressing herself with language that accurately represents the case as it is, then is what she is saying meaningful in any sense at all?
I have seen here present several of the TED meeting, and her gibberish is unrelenting!

[chaz wyman]

I should have looked harder.

I assume this is the bit: "So think of it this way. Imagine a world full of brains and far more memes than can possibly find homes. The memes are all trying to get copied, trying, in inverted commas, i.e., that's the shorthand for, if they can get copied they will. They're using you and me as their propagating copying machinery, and we are the meme machines."

I'll need to watch the full thing but I think I'd probably forgive her as she makes it clear that she's using shorthand.

But even her revision is teleological. "if they WILL". what does that means? It implies they have a "will"
It is all gibberish.
Were you to revise what she says by replacing it with the correct non purposeful language, you would find that she has nothing of any interest to say, and that the status of a 'meme' is nothing more than a fantasy.
Let's face it the idea of a 'meme' is an hypostatisation of a non-empirical concept.
To really understand how and why these 'things' multiply and propagate, memetics has no predictive value. You have to address humans as selective agents NOT assume an autonomous intensional existence for whatever 'memes' are supposed to be.
It's like trying to understand the destination by looking at the engine of the car.

[Notvacka]

And if she is incapable, as she seems, of expressing herself with language that accurately represents the case as it is, then is what she is saying meaningful in any sense at all?

Perhaps it's not all that meaningful, and quite possibly even less useful, but I still find it fascinating. If nothing else, she pulls you out of the usual anthropocentric rut and gives you a fresh perspective on things. And I do have a soft spot for speculative hypothesising.

[chaz wyman]

And if she is incapable, as she seems, of expressing herself with language that accurately represents the case as it is, then is what she is saying meaningful in any sense at all?

Perhaps it's not all that meaningful, and quite possibly even less useful, but I still find it fascinating. If nothing else, she pulls you out of the usual anthropocentric rut and gives you a fresh perspective on things. And I do have a soft spot for speculative hypothesising.

I agree that it is annoyingly compelling!! At worst, though I think this sort of error encourages intelligent design thinking, as it is rather more common in evolutionary studies than it ought to be.
Add to this the tendency that every trait, biological or otherwise has to be put through the "is it selectively useful" mill, as if ET had a duty to explain everything, and you get a pseudo-teleological universe, whose purpose is to survive.
Darwin never intended his theory be used to construct such a monster; evolution is an effect, not a cause.

[Notvacka]

I agree that it is annoyingly compelling!! At worst, though I think this sort of error encourages intelligent design thinking, as it is rather more common in evolutionary studies than it ought to be.

I wouldn't worry. Where is the intelligence behind putting a baseball cap on backwards, for instance? It seems more like stupid design to me.

While I find the notion that our ideas are using us as means to reproduce themselves quite refreshing, it's just another perspective; it doesn't actually change anything. We could of course interfer with this evolutionary process by trying to spread good ideas and weed out bad ideas. But isn't that what we are doing anyway, in this forum for instance? In a similar perspective, tomatoes are using humans in their quest for world domination, luring us to grow them, by being tasty and nourishing. Yes, it's true. Crops are taking over the world, using humans to literally weed out the competition. And there is nothing we can do about it, because we need to eat...

[chaz wyman]

I agree that it is annoyingly compelling!! At worst, though I think this sort of error encourages intelligent design thinking, as it is rather more common in evolutionary studies than it ought to be.

I wouldn't worry. Where is the intelligence behind putting a baseball cap on backwards, for instance? It seems more like stupid design to me.

While I find the notion that our ideas are using us as means to reproduce themselves quite refreshing, it's just another perspective; it doesn't actually change anything. We could of course interfer with this evolutionary process by trying to spread good ideas and weed out bad ideas. But isn't that what we are doing anyway, in this forum for instance? In a similar perspective, tomatoes are using humans in their quest for world domination, luring us to grow them, by being tasty and nourishing. Yes, it's true. Crops are taking over the world, using humans to literally weed out the competition. And there is nothing we can do about it, because we need to eat...

Thing is meme theory is not discriminate. Wearing a tie, science, philosophy, twinkies, religion, -- er everything conceivable my humans - all are memes. That basically renders the whole (ahem!) 'science' of memetics empty.- Oh memetics is also a meme!!!