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Culture and memes are the software side of evolution? What is the hardware side?

Your body and genetics, it takes a really long time to evolve a different body (thousands of generations), but it takes very little time to update culture (couple of generations).

There is evidence that single generation evolution can happen with strong enough shocks. Nothing immediately obvious, just detectable DNA changes that lead to changes in risk for certain conditions.

https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/study-of-hol...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96verkalix_study

Epigenetics and Genetics (DNA). Epigenetics allows for changes within an organism's lifetime, and include the ability to pass along environmental stressors to the next generation.

There is a great book from MIT press [Evolution in Four Dimensions](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/evolution-four-dimensions) that goes into how Genetics, Epigenetics, behavior and symbolic transmission of data between generations guide evolution.

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