Underestimating long-term consequences of cryptoanarchy

[Tim May]

On Saturday, May 17, 2003, at 12:31  PM, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

> At 09:47 AM 5/17/03 -0700, Tim May wrote:
> You mention Darwin but not Richard Dawkins author
> of _Selfish Gene_ and later meme theories.  Memes
> are basically ideas.  They can replicate, compete,
> cooperate, etc.  Brains are the medium in which they
> grow.
>
> Memes like "believe me or believers kill you" are
> particularly cancerous.
>
> If you haven't read Dawkins, you should, and he's
> quite an enjoyable read.

I first met Dawkins at the Artificial Life Conference in 1987 in Los 
Alamos. I had of course already read "The Selfish Gene" and, as I 
recall, "The Extended Phenotype" (at or around that time).

(That was just about the best conference I ever attended. Only about 
100-125 of us, and a lot of interesting people. I hear the followup 
conferences, which I never attended, were much larger and with fewer of 
the interesting luminaries.)

As for who I mentioned, I didn't mention a _lot_ of related names. I'm 
not as convinced as some that Dawkins has rewritten our understanding 
of things. The ideas of replication of things, companies, sets of 
ideas, empires, etc. has been around for a long time. "The Nature of 
the Firm" said much the same thing several decades ago.

A friend of mine, Keith Henson, takes "memetics" much more seriously, 
though.

--Tim May
"You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher 
moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know 
that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." - -Michael 
Shirley