RE: virus: Meme, the Underlying Cause

Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Mon, 29 Sep 1997 20:26:41 +0100


> From: Tadeusz Niwinski[SMTP:tad@teta.ai]
>
> >why does the information
> >that living organisms are preserving seem to you to be
> >"more important" than life itself?
>
> The information stored in DNA survives much, much longer than we do.
>
To see that as meaning such information is "more important"
than us is to project intention/purpose onto the process. See
below.

> In
> fact genes even kill us in order to evolve (aging and death are
> programmed
> in our genes). The selfish gene is now approaching a new opportunity
> --
> computers and the Web.
>
Isn't it our memes, rather than our genes, that propagate
via the Internet?

> This may appear to be a much better way of
> replication of information than living organisms. So we may soon
> become
> obsolete, probably not completely, "they" may still need us the same
> way as
> we need mitochondria or bacteria, so we may co-exist quite nicely.
> This is
> why I think a meme may be called the "underlying cause".
>
All this seems based on the notion that the replicating
information is "more important" than us. If that was
true, then it would explain *why* it should make us
obsolete -- but even then, it would not make that
inevitable. As it is, the "more important" thing is
meaningless, so even the "why" is empty.

> >Or you might like to focus on this more general one: don't
> >most serious modern thinkers disparage the sort of
> >teleology displayed in your "evolutionary project" concept,
> >and the general implication of fate that such writing reeks
> >of?
>
> You lost me here. Can you explain what you mean?
>
Teleological: end-oriented, purposeful. Evolution has no
end in mind (because no mind), no purpose, no
intention. To suggest otherwise is to import creator-God-
stuff into science. To suggest that we are "fated" to
to be made obsolete by information propagating via
our artifacts is superstitious nonsense.

Robin