About Susan Blackmore's memes and t(r)emes...

I attended this Sunday a lecture given by Susan Blackmore on genes, memes, and tremes. 

Here are in a nutshell my thoughts about it:

The lecture was very entertaining and interesting. Susan appeared as a jovial, youthful and clever woman. Furthermore, she shares many of my interests (consciousness, free will, genes, memes, meditation, out of body experiences, near death experiences, ..).

Here is what I understand about genes, memes, and tremes after having reflected on Susan's lecture:

1/The earth is the environment that enabled the first replicator (gene) to arise. It happened because the earth had what it takes a) to create replicating entities, b) to allow modifications of these replicators, and c) to select amongst these various replicators.  These replicators first simply freely floated around, then they started having phenotypes that helped them catalyzing their own reproduction (e.g. serving as template to the formation of enzymes,...) and ultimately they created gene survival machines (living organisms). In this process, the replicators maybe migrated from RNA to DNA. These organisms are sub-environments that carry out all three processes of copying, varying and selecting (via e.g sexual selection) genes while part of the selection is still performed by its environment, the earth.

2/One of these organisms (humans) became the environment that enabled the second replicator (meme) to arise. It happened because the human mind can a) create and replicate ideas, b) modify them, and c) select them. Memes first simply floated around from one mind to another, then they started having phenotypes that helped them catalyzing their own reproduction (e.g. writing, paper, ...) and ultimately they created meme survival machines (e.g. computers, internet,...). In this process, the meme migrated from neural patterns to binary codes. Computers are sub-environments that carry out all three processes of copying, varying and selecting memes while part of the selection is still performed by its environment, the human mind. 

Susan appeared to have a slightly different opinion, she argues that humans are meme machines. I first arrived at another conclusion. I considered that we are the meme's environment, just like the earth is the original replicator's environment. I considered that we are not meme machines because memes did not create us, let alone create us to propagate themselves. Not like genes, that indeed created organisms to propagate themselves. If the earth was a conscious Gaia, before the appearance of living organisms, she could mistakenly have thought that she was a gene machine since she creates, modify, and select replicators. However, after having further thought about it, I can see how we can indeed be considered meme machines since we perform the tasks of copying, varying, storing and selecting memes.  

3/ Well, yet another replicator (treme) might arise within these new meme machines that are the computers, internet, ... but I do not think it arose yet. I think we are still at the level of the meme. However, I share Susan's view that a major change occurred: (Technological) Meme Survival Machines recently appeared and they will evolve to better serve their masters (the technological memes). The memes might indeed ultimately not need us anymore. 

If Susan Blackmore give a lecture in your neighborhood, I can safely recommend it to you.

Misadventures of a novice meditator

I received a book about meditation and decided to give it a try. As an exercise, I was asked to sit straight for 3 minutes and to … (I just spilled my alcohol-free beer on my desk, sorry for the interruption) … just observe what is going in my mind, without interfering. So I decided to do just that. Since the weather was nice and the entrance door was ajar I thought I would give it a try on the front porch. I left the house, closed the entrance door, sit on the stairs, straighten my spin, closed my eyes, heard the wind whistling, the birds singing, footsteps approaching, the door opening wide and my wife saying “Please don’t close the door, I opened it for fresh air!”. I opened my eye and replied “ok”. I then re-started from scratch. I closed my eyes, heard the wind singing, the birds whistling, a feminine attenuated voice saying “kids, go to have a look at what your father is doing!”. l opened my eyes, opened my book and pretended I was reading. My son opened the door, then closed it and shouted “he’s reading!”. Right, the front porch was maybe not the best place to meditate. Maybe I should go in the forest and sit against a tree like the Buddha did? I stood up and while I ruminated about how hard it was to find even one minute of calm around that house, I headed to the fields and the closest wood. On my way, I briefly considered doing my exercise while walking but then realized that walking three minutes without opening my eyes would be way too dangerous with all these silent bicycles around. Arrived at the wood, I was welcomed by two dogs, barking aggressively from behind a fence facing the wood. The wood being tiny, there was no way I could find a spot out of sights from these two monsters. Next time, I’ll try in the toilets.

Some thoughts about morality

We are machines programmed by our genes to reproduce them. Our ability to feel good or bad is equally programmed by our genes. We will feel good when we behave in the way that would have promoted our genes reproduction in our evolutionary history. I can’t conceive of a more logical choice for such a machine than to try to feel good as much as possible for the longer part possible of its lifespan.


That’s certainly what all animals do, including us. We know however that humans can come up with a large variety of strategies to achieve this goal and that these strategies are not all equally valid. The best guide I can come with for a human is: what course of actions would make the highest contribution to your happiness integrated over your lifespan.


This technically selfish morality does not necessarily translate into asocial behaviors.


Since we are social animals, our happiness directly depends on the quality of our relationship with others.


Which “others” will have the highest influence on your happiness? 1) your kin and 2) your peers. Our natural empathy for our kin, naturally extends to our peers (because in our evolutionary past, your peers were usually exactly the same as your kin). So your happiness will at least depend on your relationships with your kin and your peers.


Now, in our multimedia society, our empathy also gets triggered by other stimuli. For instance, we see suffering people on TV and we feel off course bad (in our evolutionary past, this would have been adaptive). A problem with that, is that your power to do good is not great enough to erase these sad pictures of suffering people from your TV. Hence, whatever you do to help them, you will not increase your happiness a bit. Indeed, there will still always be sad pictures on your screens and the people you helped not being your peers (you have no interaction with them), the quality of your relationship with them will not improve (since there is no relationship to speak of).


Our empathy also extends to anthropomorphic animals. Examples of such animals are those we artificially selected to increase their compatibility with us (dogs, cats, horses,…) as well as baby animals which look similar to baby human (big eyes…). This is a side effect of our natural ability to feel empathy for kin and peers. This side effect is not necessarily contra-productive with respect to happiness. The way you treat your dog/horse will have an impact on your actually existing relationship with him. This side effect might however also be contra-productive with respect to happiness once it extends to all animals, despite the fact that you have no relationship with them. This for the same reasons as discussed above for humans on TV.


The question “which others” requires another answer as above if you become a public person. Since you are known from everybody you better not do things that would have a negative impact on your relationship with everybody. By the way, this includes rat lovers, so you better not do things that would harm rats either. If you are a politician, it is even worse because your impact on others is much larger. In that case, you must be even more careful with the “others” at large (at least within the circle where you are known/active).