Here’s an interesting article by Susan Blackmore. While there are parts of Susan’s article I might disagree with, the general idea opens up a whole new set of memes, for me – the third replicators. So, the first replicators are our genes. The second replicators are memes – ideas, the basis of cultural evolution. Using the machinery of the second replicators (human minds), we have have built the third replicators.
Evolution’s third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what?
By Susan Blackmore, writing in New Scientist
WE HUMANS have let loose something extraordinary on our planet – a third replicator – the consequences of which are unpredictable and possibly dangerous.
What do I mean by "third replicator"? …
About 4 billion years after the appearance of the first replicator, something extraordinary happened. Members of one species of lumbering robot began to imitate one another. Imitation is a kind of copying, and so a new evolutionary process was born. Instead of cellular chemistry copying the order of bases on DNA, a sociable species of bipedal ape began to use its big brain to copy gestures, sounds and other behaviours. This copying might not have been very accurate, but it was enough to start a new evolutionary process. Dawkins called the new replicators "memes". A living creature, once just a vehicle of the first replicator, was now the copying machinery for the next…
Memes are a new kind of information – behaviours rather than DNA – copied by a new kind of machinery – brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages – copying, varying and selection – are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology?
There is a new kind of information: electronically processed binary information rather than memes. There is also a new kind of copying machinery: computers and servers rather than brains. But are all three critical stages carried out by that machinery?
Machines now copy information to other machines without human intervention…
Read the entire article here. >>
