Re: Memes, genes and evolution

Luis Rocha (rocha@LANL.GOV)
Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:53:02 -0700

Norman K. McPhail wrote:
>
> FRANCIS WROTE:
>
> > This "second-order", long-term fitness is what Alexei proposed to call
> > "adaptability". This is a term I should perhaps also adopt, to avoid
> > confusion with the more traditional usage of "fitness".
> >
>
> Note that general short term fitness is often at odds with long term
> adaptability. Thus we humans are slow afoot, poor swimmers and divers,
> poor tree climbers, not very strong and have no fangs or claws.
> Generally, without each other and all the weapons and defenses we've
> learned to dream up, make and use, we would be sitting ducks for any
> self respecting fit predators. So how can we explain our apparent
> success?
>
> Adaptability!
>

As Alexei mentioned earlier, this idea was defended by Michael Conrad.
Also, note that many bacteria, being simpler, can have higher
adaptability to changing environments. They can withstand conditions
that no other life forms could.

> To me, this means that for some reason our forebears found a way to
> change their genetic changing problems into thought problems. In other
> words, their genes couldn't keep up with all the changing problems they
> faced in their environment and ecosystems. So they changed this gene
> changing problem into a thought problem. Thought enabled them to keep
> up with all the changes around them.

I had suggested a similar point in an earlier message (so did Jesper).
Brains, language, and culture, gave humans a more efficient mechanism
for problem solving and adaptability, which depends on a different kind
of cultural evolution: the driven/active kind.

Cheers,
Luis

_________________________________________________
Luis Rocha (Postdoctoral Associate)
Computer Research and Applications Group (CIC-3)
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mail Stop P990
Los Alamos, NM 87545
e-mail: rocha@lanl.gov or rocha@santafe.edu
http://www.c3.lanl.gov/~rocha