Re: virus: Interesting online debate

Brett Lane Robertson (unameit@tctc.com)
Tue, 06 Jan 1998 01:55:04 -0500


At 10:07 AM 1/5/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Alan Wolfe vs. Stephen Pinker on the merits of evolutionary psychology:
><http://www.slate.com/Code/DDD/DDD.asp?file=Brain&iMsg=0>

>David McFadzean

Read it.

Wolfe was simplifying the "humanistic" position some for the sake of
argument. Pinker vacillated on the idea of Darwinian "survival of the
fittest" as being tripe. Wolfe wants distinctions/Pinker wants connections.
Seems many on the list would memetically engineer more Wolfes so that we
might all be different and thus open to memetic engineering. Wolf proclaims
he is a *social* scientist...I wonder why he insists in focusing on
differences?!?!

Pinker says he is not a reductionist. Too bad. I say all behavior from the
most complex to the most simple follow the same law(s). Neither (I would
say) are memeticists. Wolfe would see no basic process one might call
"meme" in common humanity/Pinker SEEMS to be too concerned with
contradiction...at least in his diplomatic word usage as regards humanism
(junk), sociology (fiction), and Darwin (wrong): Memetics is a unified
theory (not humanism), evolutionary (not sociological), and
cooperative--reducible to a unified theory (not Darwinian).

Not a bad argument between the two...but miles from memetics.

Brett

Returning,
rBERTS%n
http://members.tripod.com/~Brettman35/index.html

Bureaucrat, n.:
A politician who has tenure.