Lately I have wondered about the "arms race" as Susan Blackmore calls it, between the gene and the meme. The genes want us to have small, efficient brains, capable of survival but not much else, whereas the meme wants us to have big brains because the bigger the brain, the more memes can get into it. This study, if confirmed, would seem to provide an interesting example of how bigger brains do not necessarily correspond to greater survival advantage. When viewed from the gene/meme perspective, this makes sense. The mortality associated with bigger brains is good for the gene, albeit bad for the meme, but not all that bad, because memes are not dependent on their host's surviving to make offspring. In short, memes don't care so much about our survival, only genes do. Genes, in turn, don't care so much about big brains, only memes do. Accordingly, that a bigger brain seems not to afford survival advantage in warfare is no surprise. When the war is finished, there will be plenty of smaller brain people out there left to continue to copy the gene. And as for the meme, as long as they were written down/persisted somewhere, they will get copied along too.