Richard Dawkins is actually not the right person to question for information about memes. He stated the concept and coined the term as a sidebar to discussion of replicators (as the quotes made clear). He has explicitly stated that the further implications are completely outside his expertise and in...

Quote:I hope that the author of the "Open Letter" joins us to air his concerns.Why thank you. . . I plan to be there. Quote:The movement of humans into social groups, the tendency of one social organism to swallow another, the rise of the meme, the increase in cooperation

A few days ago, I committed to Chris that I would definitely be in the chat with Dr. Bloom. I've finished The Lucifer Principle and am not sure my attendance is such a good idea. To put it bluntly, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain are teleological garbage. We

I recommend the current movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf, to readers of The Lucifer Principle. If it were a true story it could have been a chapter from the book. Disturbing and enlightening.

Quote:Generally speaking, a law does not have any explanatory power even when it is a 'hard' law, e.g. the inverse square law of gravity. That's simply an observation of a phenomenon that always occurs, but it in no way explains why gravity or why its strength falls off at that ratio with distance, ...

It sounds like a review of why homeopathy is nonsense is not required. The term for the (faulty) reasoning, I think, is "Post Modern". I understood the chapter to assert that both approaches to medicine were equally valid, just because... because why? I don't get that part. Because they ar...

Chapter POETRY AND THE LUST FOR POWER (anyone noticed lack of chapter numbers?) has got to be hands-down one of the dumbest things I've read in a looooong time

Quote: that replicating/reproducing processes will inevitably dominate is a statistical law, not an actual forceI don't get the distinctionQuote: or "motive" driving genes to use the system of which they are a constituent. Of course genes don't have motives! The processes you have so neatl...

Personally, I consider virii alive, although I understand the argument that they are not. I also have my own, simple definition of life: "Life is that which is capable of evolution by natural selection, and the products of evolution by natural selection".

I would like to offer Dawkins' definition of 'organism', but first, share a fascinating question: why organism at all?Quote:We do not at present appreciate the organism for the remarkable phenomenon it is. We are accustomed to asking, of any widespread biological phenomenon, 'what is its survival va...