Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

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Atheism is more loaded & prone to dumb attacks & dumb counter attacks. So sure, his pure biology writings are less baity then his atheism writing. However, he has contributed to the atheism discussion in the same way.

Much of it stems from his work on evolution by natural selection as a metaphysical (rather then a biological) theory, a definitely worthwhile "philosophy of science" contribution to the atheism debate.

This allows you to take fluff level stuff (eg Seth Godin, "ideavirus") & put it in to a serious framework, the subject of this article. Memes, Memoplexes, whatever is to organism as meme is to gene (is there a word for this?) It also gives you a framework for evolution as an example of non-god creation. This has to me been a real eye opener. If you want a modern contributor to the discussion who has contributed tangibly, Richard Dawkins is one of the top candidates.

This article is not just mindless, it uses provocative (and perhaps shrill) analogies, but it is argued.

The subject of this article is an area where Dawkins has made more novel contributions & is more qualified than "Ancestor's Tale," which is not based (according to me recollection) on his own work and is written intentionally as a popular science book.

In my opinion, you either you exclude the whole topic as inherently shrill or you admit Dawkins.

#Now we are the ones being shrill.

[edit] I don't want to sound like too much of a fan. I am not advocating that Dawkins be unchallenged. I am advocating that he has earned a hearing. There is all sorts of stuff in this article I am not satisfied with. EG "4 Is Science a Virus"

The meme idea is interesting, but it has been discussed elsewhere in more depth with less intention of starting a flamewar (Mr. Dawkins is a consumate troll). If you've already heard of that idea, I don't see what this adds. If you haven't, there are better sources.

I note that Mr. Dawkins does not compare language to a "virus" though he admits it as memetic, saving the words with harsher connotations for his ultimate target. He then takes a one-sided view, accentuates the bad, ignores the good, focuses on the least reasonable religious people he can find, and calls it a day. On the internet, we call this "flaming". But hey, at least he didn't bring up Hitler.

Bach? The University? Keeping alive European scholarship during the dark ages? Providing a center for community cohesion and services to the disadvantaged? Not mentioned, of course.

I would even be willing to bet that our beloved secular modern egalitarianism owes its root to Christian philosophy, but that is speculation.

No dispassionate exposition on the concept of memes, this. Mr. Dawkins clearly has an axe to grind.

1. He starts by giving us a loose, abstract definition of malicious DNA (virus): "``Legitimate'' host DNA is just DNA that aspires to pass into the next generation via the orthodox route of sperm or egg. ``Outlaw'' or parasitic DNA is just DNA that looks to a quicker, less cooperative route to the future, via a squeezed droplet or a smear of blood, rather than via a sperm or egg. "

2. He then tries to establish a connection to computer viruses. This is is aid of constructing 'virus' as an abstract concept that can exist outside of it's physical form as a piece of DNA. He points out some characteristics of computer viruses.

3. He then suggests that religious memes are viruses, that they exhibit virus characteristics etc.

*This is still analogy, not evidence. But this is clearly not fluff. Being contrarian, provocative or the like is not necessarily bad.

Like I said, I am not 100% satisfied with everything. I think that he hasn't defined for themes the same distinction between code/malicious code, DNA/Malicious DNA. The whole section dealing with that is not good enough. I am not at all convinced that all memes are not viruses

But if that is your reason for objecting to this article being on HN, that's not good enough. That's a reason to remain unconvinced, not a reason to dismiss.

This is an interesting approach to an interesting question (flammable or not) written by the person most qualified to argue it.

Well, you are right in some respect. The conversation here is interesting in spots, even if Dawkins' own knee-jerk reactions to religion are tiresome.

HN is one of the few places on the internet where agreement can be reached on the 6th or 7th tab. I forget that it's unique until I read comments on Techcrunch or Youtube.

Maybe we can handle Atheism here. Maybe we can even handle text editors.

I find Dawkins' remarks on religion tiresome because they usually seem so obvious that I can predict what he's going to say before he says it. When he gets interviewed about religion, he sounds like someone playing Tetris at a moderate difficulty level: mostly acting on reflex, because what else is there to do? My heart goes out to him.

someone has to do it

"The meme idea is interesting, but it has been discussed elsewhere in more depth with less intention of starting a flamewar" - While this is true. Dawkins did INVENT the concept (or at least the name) meme so this article surely has relevance if you are interested in memes. I agree with you on his religion bashing. He created this concept mainly to attack religions by equating them with viruses. It is interesting though that he overplays the beneficial part of computer viruses while downplaying the beneficial part of religion. The line between parasite and symbiosis is fuzzy. Even organisms like dwarf tapeworms can help people by reducing allergies so surely religion has done some good.

>>[Dawkins] created [memes] mainly to attack religions by equating them with viruses.

Huh, it was quite a few years since I read "Selfish Gene" last, but that isn't how I remember it? Where did he state that? (AFAIK, Dawkins has never been a big fan of meme-ism, the theoretical research.)

>>The line between parasite and symbiosis is fuzzy.

A bit, but I definitely remember Dawkins arguing for a simple test of this in evolutionary biology.

>>Even organisms like dwarf tapeworms can help people by reducing allergies so surely religion has done some good.

Parasites like tapeworms was so common that our immune system wasn't optimized for being without them. Does that really qualify as symbiosis?

But sure, religion might not have caused more suffering than tapeworms... :-)

"He then takes a one-sided view, accentuates the bad, ignores the good, focuses on the least reasonable religious people he can find, and calls it a day."

The flaw in his arguments is actually deeper: he takes a two-sided view, falling into the fallacy of the excluded middle. If we posit (1) the existence of his memetic engine, and (2) its apparent propensity to self activate, then a good scientist must ask what results from self activation when a basic subsistence meme is not available or needed. In other words, what is the nature of the memetic engine's idle task (to extend his computer metaphor)? Moreover, what type of memetic idle task might be designed by a community of rational minds whose basic survival needs are being met?

We might reasonably predict that the non-subsistence meme pool would fall into a stable pattern that is self-consistent, simply for the sake of having a stable self-consistent framework upon which other social activities can be installed. I would expect it to look like a typical computer programming framework, with a great deal of intricate structure, much of which is not susceptible to trivial performance analysis.

We can even amuse ourselves by looking for other religion-software analogies. Are there any religious patterns analogous to a fixed-point combinator? Introspection? Debugging?

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