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Cars move down paths, run on energy transport molecules, and carry other objects. Therefore cars are the same thing as cell transport proteins and roads are the

by api 6y ago

Cars move down paths, run on energy transport molecules, and carry other objects. Therefore cars are the same thing as cell transport proteins and roads are the same thing as cellular cytoskeletons. The coarse structure of known space resembles brain tissue when rendered in a certain way, therefore the universe is a giant brain. I could go on forever. Reason from first principles, not by analogy.

ethanbond 6y ago
Maybe you ought to re-read The Selfish Gene. It first distills evolution down to first principles: there are classes of chemicals that tend to construct copies or near-copies of themselves; the chemicals that do not do this but consume raw material from the same finite pool will gradually decrease in frequency; meaning over time chemical variants/combinations that are more successful at duplicating themselves propagate while those who fail to secure resources do not propagate. At a certain degree of chemical complexity, things start behaving like organisms, and in fact soon thereafter we just call those groupings/combinations of chemicals “organisms.” The distillation to first principles is: anything that reproduces with some error then must compete for finite resources, where failure precludes propagation, will “evolve” toward higher fitness (given the particular context/environment). This first principles explanation of evolution can be readily applied to ideas, thus: memetics. Memetics was not arrived at by analogy to genetics. Both were derived from the same first principles of replication and selection.
- api 6y ago
  I have read that book. His first principles explanation of evolution is not bad. Then he just takes that template and moves it over to ideas because analogy. You can't just glibly do that. What he does there is only a few steps above stoners saying space time looks like a big brain maaaaaaaan. Duuuuude... (bubble bubble) it's like a reflection of the mind of god (bubble bubble). To really do that you would have to show that the brain works like a genetic/evolutionary system, and that does not appear to be the case (or at least we do not know enough to say that). There is so much context there. You can't just do superficial pattern recognition and then force fit an entire theoretical model. It's lazy. I am not saying ideas are nothing like genes, just that they are not the same thing. You can't just steal theory from another field without context. Seriously... name one case in science where that has worked. Things are what they are, and not necessarily what they superficially look like when viewed from a certain angle and lots of details are ignored. Also as I said the pop understanding of memes is far less interesting than Dawkins speculation and basically reduces ideas to isolated grunts. It's a form of "conceptual thought denialism."

by api 6y ago

ethanbond 6y ago

Maybe you ought to re-read The Selfish Gene. It first distills evolution down to first principles: there are classes of chemicals that tend to construct copies or near-copies of themselves; the chemicals that do not do this but consume raw material from the same finite pool will gradually decrease in frequency; meaning over time chemical variants/combinations that are more successful at duplicating themselves propagate while those who fail to secure resources do not propagate. At a certain degree of chemical complexity, things start behaving like organisms, and in fact soon thereafter we just call those groupings/combinations of chemicals “organisms.” The distillation to first principles is: anything that reproduces with some error then must compete for finite resources, where failure precludes propagation, will “evolve” toward higher fitness (given the particular context/environment). This first principles explanation of evolution can be readily applied to ideas, thus: memetics. Memetics was not arrived at by analogy to genetics. Both were derived from the same first principles of replication and selection.

api 6y ago
I have read that book. His first principles explanation of evolution is not bad. Then he just takes that template and moves it over to ideas because analogy. You can't just glibly do that. What he does there is only a few steps above stoners saying space time looks like a big brain maaaaaaaan. Duuuuude... (bubble bubble) it's like a reflection of the mind of god (bubble bubble). To really do that you would have to show that the brain works like a genetic/evolutionary system, and that does not appear to be the case (or at least we do not know enough to say that). There is so much context there. You can't just do superficial pattern recognition and then force fit an entire theoretical model. It's lazy. I am not saying ideas are nothing like genes, just that they are not the same thing. You can't just steal theory from another field without context. Seriously... name one case in science where that has worked. Things are what they are, and not necessarily what they superficially look like when viewed from a certain angle and lots of details are ignored. Also as I said the pop understanding of memes is far less interesting than Dawkins speculation and basically reduces ideas to isolated grunts. It's a form of "conceptual thought denialism."