Richard Dawkins: Memes | AI Podcast Clips
00:00:00.000 | - Correct me if I'm wrong, but in your book, Selfish Gene,
00:00:04.480 | the gene-centered view of evolution allows us to think
00:00:08.320 | of the physical organisms as just the medium
00:00:11.240 | through which the software of our genetics
00:00:14.480 | and the ideas sort of propagate.
00:00:16.640 | So maybe can we start just with the basics?
00:00:22.240 | What in this context does the word meme mean?
00:00:25.680 | - It would mean the cultural equivalent of a gene.
00:00:29.920 | Cultural equivalent in the sense of that which plays
00:00:33.120 | the same role as the gene in the transmission of culture,
00:00:36.280 | in the transmission of ideas in the broadest sense.
00:00:39.760 | And it's only a useful word
00:00:41.640 | if there's something Darwinian going on.
00:00:44.280 | Obviously culture is transmitted,
00:00:46.520 | but is there anything Darwinian going on?
00:00:48.800 | And if there is, that means there has to be something
00:00:50.880 | like a gene which becomes more numerous
00:00:54.880 | or less numerous in the population.
00:00:57.760 | - So it can replicate?
00:00:59.600 | It can replicate?
00:01:00.600 | Well, it clearly does replicate.
00:01:01.920 | There's no question about that.
00:01:03.800 | The question is, does it replicate
00:01:05.280 | in a sort of differential way in a Darwinian fashion?
00:01:08.440 | Could you say that certain ideas propagate
00:01:10.840 | because they're successful in the meme pool?
00:01:13.080 | In a sort of trivial sense, you can.
00:01:16.400 | Would you wish to say though that in the same way
00:01:20.160 | as an animal body is modified, adapted to serve
00:01:25.160 | as a machine for propagating genes,
00:01:29.080 | is it also a machine for propagating memes?
00:01:31.120 | Could you actually say that something
00:01:32.480 | about the way a human is, is modified, adapted
00:01:37.440 | for the function of meme propagation?
00:01:42.560 | - That's such a fascinating possibility, if that's true.
00:01:46.680 | That it's not just about the genes,
00:01:48.280 | which seem somehow more comprehensible
00:01:51.560 | as like these things of biology.
00:01:53.560 | The idea that culture or maybe ideas,
00:01:58.320 | you can really broadly define it,
00:02:00.600 | operates under these mechanisms.
00:02:03.360 | - Even morphology, even anatomy,
00:02:06.040 | does evolve by memetic means.
00:02:09.320 | I mean, things like hairstyles,
00:02:10.920 | styles of makeup, circumcision,
00:02:15.480 | these things are actual changes in the body form
00:02:19.440 | which are non-genetic and which get passed on
00:02:21.680 | from generation to generation or sideways like a virus
00:02:27.120 | in a quasi-genetic way.
00:02:29.320 | - But the moment you start drifting away from the physical,
00:02:33.480 | it becomes interesting 'cause the space of ideas,
00:02:36.960 | ideologies, political systems.
00:02:39.600 | - Of course, yes.
00:02:40.520 | - So what's your sense?
00:02:44.040 | Are memes a metaphor more or are they really,
00:02:50.200 | is there something fundamental,
00:02:52.120 | almost physical presence of memes?
00:02:54.240 | - Well, I think they're a bit more than a metaphor
00:02:56.080 | and I think that, I mean, I mentioned
00:02:58.880 | that physical bodily characteristics
00:03:01.800 | which are a bit trivial in a way,
00:03:03.040 | but when things like the propagation of religious ideas,
00:03:06.600 | both longitudinally down generations and transversely
00:03:11.600 | as in a sort of epidemiology of ideas
00:03:16.600 | when a charismatic preacher converts people,
00:03:20.520 | that resembles viral transmission.
00:03:26.400 | Whereas the longitudinal transmission
00:03:29.040 | from grandparent to parent, to child, et cetera,
00:03:32.600 | is more like conventional genetic transmission.
00:03:37.080 | - That's such a beautiful,
00:03:38.800 | especially in the modern day idea.
00:03:41.240 | Do you think about this implication in social networks
00:03:43.800 | where the propagation of ideas,
00:03:45.400 | the viral propagation of ideas,
00:03:47.360 | and hence the new use of the word meme to describe--
00:03:51.640 | - The internet, of course, provides extremely rapid method
00:03:56.520 | of transmission.
00:03:57.600 | Before, when I first coined the word,
00:04:00.080 | the internet didn't exist.
00:04:01.120 | And so I was thinking then in terms of books, newspapers,
00:04:04.760 | broad radio, television, that kind of thing.
00:04:09.480 | Now an idea can just leap around the world
00:04:13.520 | in all directions instantly.
00:04:16.320 | And so the internet provides a step change
00:04:20.880 | in the facility of propagation of memes.
00:04:25.080 | - How does that make you feel?
00:04:26.520 | Isn't it fascinating that sort of ideas,
00:04:29.000 | it's like you have Galapagos Islands or something,
00:04:31.920 | it's the '70s, and the internet allowed all these species
00:04:35.800 | to just like globalize.
00:04:38.200 | And in a matter of seconds,
00:04:40.240 | you could spread a message to millions of people.
00:04:43.080 | And these ideas, these memes can breed,
00:04:47.600 | can evolve, can mutate, there's a selection,
00:04:52.040 | and there's like different, I guess, groups that evolve.
00:04:55.120 | Like there's a dynamics that's fascinating here.
00:04:57.400 | Do you think-- - Yes.
00:04:58.480 | - Basically, do you think your work in this direction,
00:05:02.400 | while fundamentally it was focused on life on earth,
00:05:05.560 | do you think it should continue to be taken further?
00:05:09.120 | - I mean, I do think it would probably be a good idea
00:05:11.160 | to think in a Darwinian way about this sort of thing.
00:05:15.320 | We conventionally think of the transmission of ideas
00:05:18.920 | in evolutionary context as being limited to,
00:05:22.480 | in our ancestors, people living in villages,
00:05:27.040 | living in small bands where everybody knew each other
00:05:30.320 | and ideas could propagate within the village,
00:05:33.160 | and they might hop to a neighboring village occasionally,
00:05:37.000 | and maybe even to a neighboring continent eventually.
00:05:40.080 | And that was a slow process.
00:05:42.120 | Nowadays, villages are international.
00:05:45.720 | I mean, you have people, it's been called echo chambers,
00:05:50.280 | where people are in a sort of internet village,
00:05:53.880 | where the other members of the village
00:05:56.440 | may be geographically distributed all over the world,
00:05:59.280 | but they just happen to be interested in the same things,
00:06:01.760 | use the same terminology, the same jargon,
00:06:05.520 | have the same enthusiasm.
00:06:06.840 | So people like the Flat Earth Society,
00:06:10.960 | they don't all live in one place.
00:06:12.440 | They find each other,
00:06:13.560 | and they talk the same language to each other,
00:06:15.120 | talk the same nonsense to each other.
00:06:16.920 | But so this is a kind of distributed version
00:06:21.560 | of the primitive idea of people living in villages
00:06:26.040 | and propagating their ideas in a local way.
00:06:28.560 | - Is there a Darwinist parallel here?
00:06:32.320 | So is there evolutionary purpose of villages,
00:06:35.840 | or is that just a-
00:06:37.160 | - Oh, I wouldn't use a word like evolutionary purpose
00:06:38.960 | in that case,
00:06:39.840 | but villages will be something that just emerged.
00:06:43.440 | That's the way people happen to live.
00:06:45.680 | - And in just the same kind of way,
00:06:49.880 | the Flat Earth Society, societies of ideas
00:06:52.840 | emerge in the same kind of way in this digital space.
00:06:56.480 | - Yes, yes.
00:06:57.880 | - Is there something interesting to say about the,
00:07:00.920 | I guess, from a perspective of Darwin,
00:07:04.840 | could we fully interpret the dynamics
00:07:08.440 | of social interaction in these social networks?
00:07:13.240 | Or is there some much more complicated thing
00:07:16.720 | need to be developed?
00:07:18.200 | Like, what's your sense?
00:07:19.160 | - Well, a Darwinian selection idea
00:07:21.360 | would involve investigating which ideas spread
00:07:25.200 | and which don't.
00:07:26.560 | So some ideas don't have the ability to spread.
00:07:31.840 | I mean, flat earthism is,
00:07:35.280 | there are a few people believe in it,
00:07:36.280 | but it's not gonna spread
00:07:37.240 | because it's obvious nonsense.
00:07:38.760 | But other ideas, even if they are wrong,
00:07:42.160 | can spread because they are attractive in some sense.
00:07:46.360 | - So the spreading and the selection
00:07:49.400 | in the Darwinian context,
00:07:52.080 | it just has to be attractive in some sense.
00:07:54.680 | Like, we don't have to define,
00:07:56.200 | like, it doesn't have to be attractive
00:07:57.520 | in the way that animals attract each other.
00:08:00.480 | It could be attractive in some other way.
00:08:02.080 | - Yes, all that matters is,
00:08:05.000 | all that is needed is that it should spread.
00:08:07.640 | And it doesn't have to be true to spread.
00:08:09.520 | In truth is one criterion
00:08:11.280 | which might help an idea to spread.
00:08:13.520 | But there are other criteria
00:08:14.960 | which might help it to spread.
00:08:15.880 | As you say, attraction in animals
00:08:19.320 | is not necessarily valuable for survival.
00:08:21.760 | The famous peacock's tail
00:08:25.280 | doesn't help the peacock to survive.
00:08:27.320 | It helps it to pass on its genes.
00:08:29.160 | Similarly, an idea which is actually rubbish,
00:08:33.200 | but which people don't know is rubbish
00:08:34.800 | and think is very attractive will spread
00:08:36.920 | in the same way as a peacock's genes spread.
00:08:40.200 | - As a small sidestep,
00:08:41.320 | I remember reading somewhere,
00:08:43.000 | I think recently, that in some species of birds,
00:08:48.080 | sort of the idea that beauty may have its own purpose
00:08:51.840 | and the idea that some birds,
00:08:55.960 | I'm being ineloquent here,
00:08:58.960 | but there is some aspects of their feathers and so on
00:09:02.240 | that serve no evolutionary purpose whatsoever.
00:09:05.360 | There's somebody making an argument
00:09:07.280 | that there are some things about beauty that animals do
00:09:10.080 | that may be its own purpose.
00:09:12.480 | Does that ring a bell for you?
00:09:15.320 | Does it sound ridiculous?
00:09:16.840 | - I think it's a rather distorted bell.
00:09:18.800 | Darwin, when he coined the phrase sexual selection,
00:09:25.080 | didn't feel the need to suggest
00:09:30.440 | that what was attractive to females,
00:09:33.600 | usually it's males attracting females,
00:09:35.680 | that what females found attractive had to be useful.
00:09:38.000 | He said it didn't have to be useful.
00:09:39.840 | It was enough that females found it attractive.
00:09:42.520 | And so it could be completely useless,
00:09:44.160 | probably was completely useless in the conventional sense,
00:09:47.280 | but was not at all useless in the sense of passing on,
00:09:50.520 | well, Darwin didn't call them genes,
00:09:51.720 | but in the sense of reproducing.
00:09:53.320 | Others, starting with Wallace,
00:09:57.120 | the co-discoverer of natural selection,
00:10:00.200 | didn't like that idea.
00:10:01.360 | And they wanted sexually selected characteristics
00:10:06.120 | like peacock's tails to be in some sense useful.
00:10:09.320 | It's a bit of a stretch to think of a peacock's tail
00:10:11.080 | as being useful, but in the sense of survival,
00:10:13.800 | but others have run with that idea
00:10:16.280 | and have brought it up to date.
00:10:18.400 | And so there's a kind of,
00:10:20.320 | there are two schools of thought on sexual selection,
00:10:22.360 | which are still active and about equally supported now.
00:10:25.880 | Those who follow Darwin in thinking that it's just enough
00:10:28.680 | to say it's attractive.
00:10:29.640 | And those who follow Wallace and say that
00:10:33.920 | it has to be in some sense useful.
00:10:37.160 | - Do you fall into one category or the other?
00:10:40.480 | - No, I'm open-minded.
00:10:41.760 | I think they both could be correct in different cases.
00:10:44.440 | - Oh.
00:10:46.360 | - I mean, they've both been made sophisticated
00:10:47.720 | in a mathematical sense,
00:10:49.200 | more so than when Darwin and Wallace
00:10:50.760 | first started talking about it.
00:10:52.480 | - I'm Russian, I romanticize things,
00:10:54.680 | so I prefer the former.
00:10:57.440 | - Yes.
00:10:58.280 | - Where the beauty in itself is a powerful,
00:11:01.200 | so attraction is a powerful force in evolution.
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