From: Camp, Christopher (CCamp@omm.com)
Date: Thu Nov 21 2002 - 14:00:38 MST
JBS Haldane promoted a similar view of an organisms genetic
interest/obligation to its relatives. Kin selection, as the theory is
labeled, has been taken as standard in many circles. For quite a while I
have been looking for an investigation of Memetic Kin Selection because the
rules of kin selection (and the genetic motivators behind it) do not seem
able to accurately predict the full range of human behavior. Howard Bloom
and other 'group selectionists' touch on the failings of kin selection but,
from the little I've read, their work does not incorporate the idea of
memetic kin selection to the degree I wish it did.
Memetic kin would constitute groups of individuals that share the same
meme(s) - i.e. transhumanists/extropians share a number of memes in common
and to some extent transhumanists may favor the survival of their own kind
over those groups that subscribe to other meme sets. The power of memetic
selection may be more easily seen in the extreme scenarios of fascist and
totalitarian regimes - where memetic dissent is extremely costly. An
individual or group may be willing to protect/favor other groups or
individuals to the extent that their meme sets overlap. (It should be said
that the degree of overlap may not be the only factor that determines the
level of favoritism. It is possible that certain memes would be weighted
more heavily than others such that entities sharing a couple heavily
weighted memes may favor each other over those who share a very large number
of relatively low weighted memes (where "I like cheeseburgers" is a low
weighted meme and "All entities have a right to freedom of speech" is a
highly weighted meme) This weighting may prove itself to be important in the
area of genetic kin selection as well - there may be certain genes which are
viewed as more important although I haven't seen any work done in this
area).
When the two (memetic and genetic) kin selections are combined a fuller
understanding of how decision making in living organisms may be at hand.
The work of combining genetic and memetic kin selection is mirrored in the
work of those that are attempting to map the various human -omes : human
genome, human proteome and the human memeome which will lead to the full
mapping of human experiential possibilities in the human phenome....
One last issue to consider - What role does diversity play in this? If
homogeneity is favored too strongly populations would steadily lose
diversity and this loss of diversity may subject the entire population to a
greater risk of extinction. In order to avoid this increased risk of
extinction organisms may have an interest in perpetuating diversity on a
species/group/expertiential level simply to ensure the continued existence
of life in some form (or in a more extreme version something vs. nothing).
Chris
>>>Richard Dawkins has a very plaussible explanations for this. It is a
question about what risk your genes should expose themself to to save
themself :-s
Your parents and your children all shares 50% of your genes each.
Your siblings shares 25% of your genes. Cousins, nephews and nieces all
share 12.5%
Those genes that tends to survive, are those that takes best care of
themself.
So genetically speaking you are at break-even if you save 2 of your own
children, even if it cost you your life.
If you save 3 children, 5 brothers or 9 cousins your genes are still
ahead even if it costs you your life. More of your genes will survive
this way.
Genes that would make you act this way would thus have a better chance
of survival.
I find it highly likely that this theory is right. But I find it
extremely difficult to make any kind of moral system based on this. Just
like survival of the fittest make for a poor moral system so does this.
We can certainly get inspiration and ideas from many parts of nature,
but we must remember not to be fatalistic about it.
Or elkse we would be just as well of making a moral system based on the
movement of a pair of planets in orbit :-/
regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark
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