Richard Dawkins: Memes | AI Podcast Clips

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in your book Selfish Gene, the gene centered view of evolution allows us to think of the physical organisms as just the medium through which the software of our genetics and the ideas sort of propagate. So maybe can we start just with the basics? What in this context does the word meme mean?

It would mean the cultural equivalent of a gene. Cultural equivalent in the sense of that which plays the same role as the gene in the transmission of culture, in the transmission of ideas, in the broadest sense. And it's only a useful word if there's something Darwinian going on. Obviously culture is transmitted, but is there anything Darwinian going on? And if there is, that means there has to be something like a gene which becomes more numerous or less numerous in the population.

So it can replicate.

It can replicate. Well, it clearly does replicate, there's no question about that. The question is, does it replicate in a sort of differential way, in a Darwinian fashion? Could you say that certain ideas propagate because they're successful in the meme pool? In a sort of trivial sense you can. Would you wish to say though, that in the same way as an animal body is modified, adapted to serve as a machine for propagating genes, is it also a machine for propagating memes? Could you actually say that something about the way a human is, is modified, adapted for the function of meme propagation?

That's such a fascinating possibility if that's true, if that, that it's not just about the genes, which seems somehow more compre. Comprehensible like these things of biology, the idea that culture, or maybe ideas, you can really broadly define it, yes, operates.

Under these mechanisms, even morphology, even anatomy, does evolve by mimetic means. I mean things like hairstyles, styles of makeup, circumcision, these things are actual changes in the body form which are non genetic and which get passed on from generation to generation or sideways, like a virus in a quasi genetic way.

But the moment you start drifting away from the physical, it becomes interesting because the space of ideas, ideologies, political systems, of course, yes. So what's. What in your, what's your sense is. Are memes or metaphor more. Or are they really. Is there something fundamental, almost physical presence of memes?

Well, I think they're a bit more than a metaphor. And, and I think that, I mean, I mentioned the physical bodily characteristics which are a bit cripple in a way, but when things like the propagation of religious ideas both longitudinally down generations and transversely, as in a sort of Epidemiology of ideas. When a charismatic preacher converts people, that resembles viral transmission. Whereas the longitudinal transmission from people, grandparent to parent to child, et cetera, is more like conventional genetic transmission.

That's such a beautiful, especially in the modern day idea. Do you think about this implication in social networks where the propagation of ideas, the viral propagation of ideas, and hence the new use of the word meme.

To describe the Internet, of course provides extremely rapid method of crowd ambition. Before, when I first coined the word, the Internet didn't exist. And so I was thinking then in terms of books, newspapers, broadband radio, television, that kind of thing. Now an idea can just leap around the world in all directions instantly. And so the Internet provides a step change in the facility of propagation of memes.

How does that make you feel? Isn't it fascinating, that sort of ideas. It's like you have Galapagos Islands or something, is the 70s and the Internet allowed all these species to just like globalize. And in a matter of seconds you can spread a message to millions of people. And these ideas, these memes can breed, can evolve, can mutate, can. There's a selection and there's like different, I guess, groups that evolve. Like there's a dynamics. That's fascinating here. Do you think? Yes, basically. Do you think your work in this direction, while fundamentally was focused on life on Earth? Do you think it should continue? Like.

Well, yes, I mean, I do think it would probably be a good idea to think in a Darwinian way about things, this sort of thing. We conventionally think of the transmission of ideas from an evolutionary context as being limited to in our ancestors, people living in villages, living in small bands where everybody knew each other and ideas could propagate within the village and they might hop to a neighboring village occasionally and maybe even to a neighboring continent eventually. And that was a slow process. Nowadays villages are international. I mean you have people, it's been called echo chambers, where people are in a sort of Internet village, where the other members of the village may be geographically distributed all over the world, but they just happen to be interested in the same things, use the same terminology, the same jargon, have the same enthusiasms. People like the Flat Earth Society, they don't all live in one place. They find each other and they talk the same language to each other, they talk the same nonsense to each other and they. But so this is a kind of distributed version of the primitive idea of people living in villages and propagating their ideas in a local way.

Is there Darwinist parallel here? So is there evolutionary purpose of villages or, or is that just a. I.

Wouldn'T use a word like evolutionary purpose in that, that case. But villages or villages would be something that just emerge. That's the way people happen to live.

And it's just the same kind of way the flat earth society, societies of ideas emerge in the same kind of way in this digital space.

Yes. Yes.

Is there something interesting to say about the. I guess from a perspective of Darwin, could we fully interpret the dynamics of social interaction in these social networks? Or is there or some much more complicated thing need to be developed? What's your sense?

Well, a Darwinian selection idea would involve investigating which ideas spread and which don't. So some ideas don't have the ability to spread. I mean flat Earthism is. There are. A few people believe in it, but it's not going to spread because it's obvious nonsense. But other ideas, even if they are wrong, can spread because they are attractive in some sense.

So the spreading and the selection in the Darwinian context is. It just has to be attractive in some sense. Like we don't have to define like it doesn't have to be attractive in the way that animals attract each other. It could be attractive in some other way.

Yes. It's all that matters is all it's needed is that it should spread and it doesn't have to be true to spread in truth is one criterion which might help an idea to spread, but there are other criteria which might help it to spread. As you say, attraction in animals is not necessarily valuable for survival. Celebrated the famous peacock's tale. Yeah. Doesn't help the peacock to survive, it helps it to pass on its genes. Similarly, an idea which is actually rubbish but which people don't know is rubbish and think is very attractive will spread in the same way as a peacock's.

Genes spread as a small sidestep. I remember reading somewhere, I think recently that in some species of birds, sort of the idea that beauty may have its own purpose and the idea that some, some birds, I'm being ineloquent here, but there is some aspects of their feathers and so on that serve no evolutionary purpose whatsoever. There's somebody making an argument that there are some things about beauty that animals do that may be its own purpose. Does that ring a bell for you? Does that sound ridiculous?

I think it's rather distorted bell. Darwin, when he coined the phrase sexual selection, didn't feel the need to suggest that what was attractive to females usually is males attracting females. That what females found attractive had to be useful. He said it didn't have to be useful it was enough that females found it attractive and so it could be completely useless. Probably was completely useless in the conventional sense but was not at all useless in the sense of passing on. John Darwin didn't call them genes but instead of reproducing others starting with Wallace the co discoverer of natural selection didn't like that idea and they wanted sexually selected characteristics like peacock's tails to be in some sense useful. It's a bit of a stretch to think of a peacock's tail as being useful but in the sense of survival but others have run with that idea and have brought it up to date and so there's a kind of There are two schools of thought on sexual selection which are still active and about equally supported now those who follow Darwin in thinking that it's just enough to say it's attractive and those who follow Wallace and say that it has to be in some sense useful.

Do you fall into one category or the other?

No, I'm open minded. I think they both could be correct in different cases. I mean they've both been made sophisticated in a mathematical sense more so than when Darwin and Wallace first started talking about it.

I'm Russian, I romanticize things so I prefer the former where the beauty in itself is a powerful attraction is a powerful force in evolution.

Sam.