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Cultural evolution is a dangerous child
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for any species to let loose on its planet.
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By the time you realize what's happening, the child is a toddler,
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up and causing havoc, and it's too late to put it back.
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We humans are Earth's Pandoran species.
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We're the ones who let the second replicator out of its box,
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and we can't push it back in.
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We're seeing the consequences all around us.
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Now that, I suggest, is the view that
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comes out of taking memetics seriously.
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And it gives us a new way of thinking about
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not only what's going on on our planet,
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but what might be going on elsewhere in the cosmos.
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So first of all, I'd like to say something about memetics
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and the theory of memes,
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and secondly, how this might answer questions about who's out there,
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if indeed anyone is.
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So, memetics:
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memetics is founded on the principle of Universal Darwinism.
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Darwin had this amazing idea.
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Indeed, some people say
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it's the best idea anybody ever had.
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Isn't that a wonderful thought, that there could be such a thing
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as a best idea anybody ever had?
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Do you think there could?
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Audience: No.
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(Laughter)
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Susan Blackmore: Someone says no, very loudly, from over there.
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Well, I say yes, and if there is, I give the prize to Darwin.
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Why?
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Because the idea was so simple,
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and yet it explains all design in the universe.
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I would say not just biological design,
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but all of the design that we think of as human design.
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It's all just the same thing happening.
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What did Darwin say?
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I know you know the idea, natural selection,
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but let me just paraphrase "The Origin of Species," 1859,
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in a few sentences.
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What Darwin said was something like this:
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if you have creatures that vary, and that can't be doubted --
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I've been to the Galapagos, and I've measured the size of the beaks
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and the size of the turtle shells and so on, and so on.
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And 100 pages later.
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(Laughter)
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And if there is a struggle for life,
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such that nearly all of these creatures die --
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and this can't be doubted, I've read Malthus
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and I've calculated how long it would take for elephants
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to cover the whole world if they bred unrestricted, and so on and so on.
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And another 100 pages later.
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And if the very few that survive pass onto their offspring
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whatever it was that helped them survive,
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then those offspring must be better adapted
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to the circumstances in which all this happened
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than their parents were.
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You see the idea?
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If, if, if, then.
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He had no concept of the idea of an algorithm,
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but that's what he described in that book,
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and this is what we now know as the evolutionary algorithm.
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The principle is you just need those three things --
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variation, selection and heredity.
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And as Dan Dennett puts it, if you have those,
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then you must get evolution.
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Or design out of chaos, without the aid of mind.
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There's one word I love on that slide.
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What do you think my favorite word is?
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Audience: Chaos.
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SB: Chaos? No. What? Mind? No.
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Audience: Without.
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SB: No, not without.
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(Laughter)
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You try them all in order: Mmm...?
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Audience: Must.
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SB: Must, at must. Must, must.
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This is what makes it so amazing.
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You don't need a designer,
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or a plan, or foresight, or anything else.
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If there's something that is copied with variation
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and it's selected, then you must get design appearing out of nowhere.
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You can't stop it.
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Must is my favorite word there.
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Now, what's this to do with memes?
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Well, the principle here applies to anything
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that is copied with variation and selection.
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We're so used to thinking in terms of biology,
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we think about genes this way.
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Darwin didn't, of course; he didn't know about genes.
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He talked mostly about animals and plants,
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but also about languages evolving and becoming extinct.
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But the principle of Universal Darwinism
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is that any information that is varied and selected
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will produce design.
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And this is what Richard Dawkins was on about
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in his 1976 bestseller, "The Selfish Gene."
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The information that is copied, he called the replicator.
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It selfishly copies.
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Not meaning it kind of sits around inside cells going, "I want to get copied."
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But that it will get copied if it can,
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regardless of the consequences.
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It doesn't care about the consequences because it can't,
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because it's just information being copied.
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And he wanted to get away
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from everybody thinking all the time about genes,
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and so he said, "Is there another replicator out there on the planet?"
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Ah, yes, there is.
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Look around you -- here will do, in this room.
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All around us, still clumsily drifting about
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in its primeval soup of culture, is another replicator.
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Information that we copy from person to person, by imitation,
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by language, by talking, by telling stories,
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by wearing clothes, by doing things.
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This is information copied with variation and selection.
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This is design process going on.
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He wanted a name for the new replicator.
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So, he took the Greek word "mimeme," which means that which is imitated.
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Remember that, that's the core definition:
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that which is imitated.
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And abbreviated it to meme, just because it sounds good
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and made a good meme, an effective spreading meme.
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So that's how the idea came about.
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It's important to stick with that definition.
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The whole science of memetics is much maligned,
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much misunderstood, much feared.
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But a lot of these problems can be avoided
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by remembering the definition.
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A meme is not equivalent to an idea.
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It's not an idea. It's not equivalent to anything else, really.
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Stick with the definition.
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It's that which is imitated,
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or information which is copied from person to person.
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So, let's see some memes.
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Well, you sir, you've got those glasses hung around your neck
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in that particularly fetching way.
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I wonder whether you invented that idea for yourself,
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or copied it from someone else?
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If you copied it from someone else, it's a meme.
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And what about, oh, I can't see any interesting memes here.
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All right everyone, who's got some interesting memes for me?
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Oh, well, your earrings,
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I don't suppose you invented the idea of earrings.
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You probably went out and bought them.
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There are plenty more in the shops.
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That's something that's passed on from person to person.
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All the stories that we're telling -- well, of course,
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TED is a great meme-fest, masses of memes.
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The way to think about memes, though,
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is to think, why do they spread?
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They're selfish information, they will get copied, if they can.
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But some of them will be copied because they're good,
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or true, or useful, or beautiful.
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Some of them will be copied even though they're not.
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Some, it's quite hard to tell why.
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There's one particular curious meme which I rather enjoy.
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And I'm glad to say, as I expected, I found it when I came here,
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and I'm sure all of you found it, too.
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You go to your nice, posh, international hotel somewhere,
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and you come in and you put down your clothes
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and you go to the bathroom, and what do you see?
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Audience: Bathroom soap.
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SB: Pardon?
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Audience: Soap.
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SB: Soap, yeah. What else do you see?
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Audience: (Inaudible)
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SB: Mmm mmm.
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Audience: Sink, toilet!
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SB: Sink, toilet, yes, these are all memes, they're all memes,
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but they're sort of useful ones, and then there's this one.
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(Laughter)
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What is this one doing?
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(Laughter)
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This has spread all over the world.
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It's not surprising that you all found it
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when you arrived in your bathrooms here.
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But I took this photograph in a toilet at the back of a tent
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in the eco-camp in the jungle in Assam.
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(Laughter)
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Who folded that thing up there, and why?
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(Laughter)
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Some people get carried away.
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(Laughter)
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Other people are just lazy and make mistakes.
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Some hotels exploit the opportunity to put even more memes
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with a little sticker.
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(Laughter)
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What is this all about?
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I suppose it's there to tell you that somebody's
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cleaned the place, and it's all lovely.
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And you know, actually, all it tells you is that another person
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has potentially spread germs from place to place.
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(Laughter)
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So, think of it this way.
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Imagine a world full of brains
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and far more memes than can possibly find homes.
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The memes are all trying to get copied --
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trying, in inverted commas -- i.e.,
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that's the shorthand for, if they can get copied, they will.
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They're using you and me as their propagating, copying machinery,
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and we are the meme machines.
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Now, why is this important?
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Why is this useful, or what does it tell us?
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It gives us a completely new view of human origins
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and what it means to be human,
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all conventional theories of cultural evolution,
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of the origin of humans,
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and what makes us so different from other species.
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All other theories explaining the big brain, and language, and tool use
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and all these things that make us unique,
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are based upon genes.
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Language must have been useful for the genes.
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Tool use must have enhanced our survival, mating and so on.
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It always comes back, as Richard Dawkins complained
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all that long time ago, it always comes back to genes.
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The point of memetics is to say, "Oh no, it doesn't."
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There are two replicators now on this planet.
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From the moment that our ancestors,
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perhaps two and a half million years ago or so,
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began imitating, there was a new copying process.
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Copying with variation and selection.
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A new replicator was let loose, and it could never be --
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right from the start -- it could never be
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that human beings who let loose this new creature,
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could just copy the useful, beautiful, true things,
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and not copy the other things.
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While their brains were having an advantage from being able to copy --
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lighting fires, keeping fires going, new techniques of hunting,
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these kinds of things --
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inevitably they were also copying putting feathers in their hair,
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or wearing strange clothes, or painting their faces,
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or whatever.
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So, you get an arms race between the genes
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which are trying to get the humans to have small economical brains
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and not waste their time copying all this stuff,
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and the memes themselves, like the sounds that people made and copied --
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in other words, what turned out to be language --
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competing to get the brains to get bigger and bigger.
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So, the big brain, on this theory, is driven by the memes.
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This is why, in "The Meme Machine," I called it memetic drive.
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As the memes evolve, as they inevitably must,
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they drive a bigger brain that is better at copying the memes
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that are doing the driving.
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This is why we've ended up with such peculiar brains,
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that we like religion, and music, and art.
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Language is a parasite that we've adapted to,
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not something that was there originally for our genes,
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on this view.