This is bloody awesome! I've been reading a book called Sensory Exotica about the senses of other animals... it discusses sensitivity to polarized light, but I had no idea humans could do this.
It says that the protein Lutein in our maculas is what likely enables us to do this. I wonder if it's also what's at play in bees and other animals that orient themselves by light polarization? There's probably a very interesting evolutionary story to be told here.
I thought: they'd better have something from Final Destination in there. Best death scenes ever! And they did, but the worst one in the movie. Such a shame.
More gripes: it is absolutely remiss that the wood chipper scene from Fargo is not in here. Pulp Fiction and Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood are noticeably missing. I also nominate the fat guy at the beginning of Se7en. Although Johnny Depp's is the most famous of the Nightmare on Elm Street killings, the puppeteering death in Nightmare III is much more chilling. Laura Palmer's death in Fire Walk with Me is one of the most memorable I've seen, but I grant that the movie is only for die-hard Twin Peaks fans.
Those slide skates are hilarious... "designed to mimic the sensation of socks on a hardwood floor." Thank god all those sockless children can finally have the experience they've always dreamed of.
Wow. If they develop various cellular structures, I wonder if any of them have neurons? Maybe some of these cysts are sentient little bags of flesh waiting for someone to mercifully excise them.
On the other hand, maybe they don't want to be removed. Getting one of these things taken out is tantamount to abortion! After all, who can say when ensoulment occurs? Pro-life groups might want a heads-up on this.
The church air link you posted is pretty great! It's dangerous to be religious....
Anyway, I pretty much agree with you now - we're definitely on the same page. Most memeticists think that memes do model cultural inheritance pretty well, but it's not cultural inheritance in the standard sense. That kind of standard, casual understanding of cultural inheritance definitely is Lamarkian.
I'm still undecided about memes. The main problem, I think, is that even the "experts" have yet to figure out exactly how to talk about memes in a standardized way. Like you say, it's really difficult to clarify this stuff, and everyone seems to talk past one another when it comes to human evolution that's going on right now.
"Which brings us right back to the whole "creationism isn't a biologically inherited trait" thing. Yes (well, maybe) creationists breed more. But there is no guarantee, not even any fixed probability, that their offspring will be creationists."
Well, I don't think it's true that there's no fixed probability that their offspring will be creationists - surely most Hindus have Hindu parents. But you're right that it's unclear exactly what position this guy is taking.
He could be saying that religion is a bioligically inherited trait (probably false), he could have said that an disposiion to accept a higher power is selected for (the Baldwin effect), he could have a said we have biologically inherited traits to believe what our parents and institutions tell us (this is what Dawkins thinks), or he could have made a claim purely based on memetics.
Any of these would do; perhaps there's a little truth in all of them. FWIW, I think all you need to look at is the fact there's a higher probability that kids brought up in creationist homes will become creationist than those brought up in non-creationist homes... and if a belief in creationism makes me breed more , then there's bound to be a lot of creationism. That said, it's not certainly the case that society can't undo the beliefs that parents install in their kids, so it's not a losing battle we're fighting... just a very tough one.
About memes being Lamarckian - I've never quite understood the objection. Every time we recite a song in our heads, every draft of a poem we write - that's an instance of replication. It's not that there's this one democracy meme that's changing and getting shuffled around, it's that there are a whole bunch of slightly different conceptions of democracy, each one of which has slighly memetic structure. So, whenever someone slighly alters their views on democracy, it's an instance of memetic replication with mutation, not an instance of a memetic individual (democracy) gaining an environmentally acquired trait. It's much harder to think of memetics like this, and some would resist this move (Blackmore, for instance), but it seems to me to be the only workable way to think of memes (it's Dennett's position). And it avoids the Lamarckian charge.
flashboy, you're wildly far off the mark.
1 - This guy's argument can be made without any reference to memetics whatsoever. His point isn't that creationism *itself* is a successful replicator, it's that believing in creationism *makes one* a more successful replicator in our current environment. There's a huge difference between the two arguments; the latter is entirely explainable in terms of ordinary natural selection, and would predict that we would see more creationism in society than less. What's so contentious about that?
2 - Even if he were saying something about memetics (which isn't clear aside from the one "Cultures evolve as well as species" quote, and he could have just been using that as a metaphor), you're dismissing memetics for incorrect reasons. There's a remarkable degree of fidelity in concept transmission - how in the world could we understand anything from previous generations otherwise? The *only* person who has even come close to arguing otherwise is Dan Sperber, and Daniel Dennett has done an excellent job of dismantling his objections. There are reasons to be wary of memes, but citing lack of fidelity in cultural transmission is not going to do the job without some sort of argument that has yet to be given. If you want to try, be my guest. Moreover, natural selection is a biological process, it's true... but Darwin's great achievement was to identify an algorithm that is substrate neutral. There's no need to limit it to biology - wherever replication, variation, and selection occur, there it is. We're already doing great things with it in computer learning, and there's no biology at work there.
I'm Smiley Fluffy-Cheeks, and honestly, none of you could have possibly given me a more appropriate name.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
In "Acquire P-Ray Vision !"
This is bloody awesome! I've been reading a book called Sensory Exotica about the senses of other animals... it discusses sensitivity to polarized light, but I had no idea humans could do this. It says that the protein Lutein in our maculas is what likely enables us to do this. I wonder if it's also what's at play in bees and other animals that orient themselves by light polarization? There's probably a very interesting evolutionary story to be told here.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
In "50 Greatest Movie Deaths"
(Well, I guess the wood chipper isn't a death as much as it is body disposal. So its exclusion is justifiable.)
posted by painquale 19 years ago
I thought: they'd better have something from Final Destination in there. Best death scenes ever! And they did, but the worst one in the movie. Such a shame. More gripes: it is absolutely remiss that the wood chipper scene from Fargo is not in here. Pulp Fiction and Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood are noticeably missing. I also nominate the fat guy at the beginning of Se7en. Although Johnny Depp's is the most famous of the Nightmare on Elm Street killings, the puppeteering death in Nightmare III is much more chilling. Laura Palmer's death in Fire Walk with Me is one of the most memorable I've seen, but I grant that the movie is only for die-hard Twin Peaks fans.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
In "2004 "10 Worst Toys" List"
Those slide skates are hilarious... "designed to mimic the sensation of socks on a hardwood floor." Thank god all those sockless children can finally have the experience they've always dreamed of.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
In "It's disease-errific!"
Wow. If they develop various cellular structures, I wonder if any of them have neurons? Maybe some of these cysts are sentient little bags of flesh waiting for someone to mercifully excise them. On the other hand, maybe they don't want to be removed. Getting one of these things taken out is tantamount to abortion! After all, who can say when ensoulment occurs? Pro-life groups might want a heads-up on this.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
In "(How) To Kill A Mockingbird"
I guess he only read the book up to page 50 or so. And then dramironically improved it! The music was killer.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
In "Creationists will breed themselves into the majority."
The church air link you posted is pretty great! It's dangerous to be religious.... Anyway, I pretty much agree with you now - we're definitely on the same page. Most memeticists think that memes do model cultural inheritance pretty well, but it's not cultural inheritance in the standard sense. That kind of standard, casual understanding of cultural inheritance definitely is Lamarkian. I'm still undecided about memes. The main problem, I think, is that even the "experts" have yet to figure out exactly how to talk about memes in a standardized way. Like you say, it's really difficult to clarify this stuff, and everyone seems to talk past one another when it comes to human evolution that's going on right now.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
"Which brings us right back to the whole "creationism isn't a biologically inherited trait" thing. Yes (well, maybe) creationists breed more. But there is no guarantee, not even any fixed probability, that their offspring will be creationists." Well, I don't think it's true that there's no fixed probability that their offspring will be creationists - surely most Hindus have Hindu parents. But you're right that it's unclear exactly what position this guy is taking. He could be saying that religion is a bioligically inherited trait (probably false), he could have said that an disposiion to accept a higher power is selected for (the Baldwin effect), he could have a said we have biologically inherited traits to believe what our parents and institutions tell us (this is what Dawkins thinks), or he could have made a claim purely based on memetics. Any of these would do; perhaps there's a little truth in all of them. FWIW, I think all you need to look at is the fact there's a higher probability that kids brought up in creationist homes will become creationist than those brought up in non-creationist homes... and if a belief in creationism makes me breed more , then there's bound to be a lot of creationism. That said, it's not certainly the case that society can't undo the beliefs that parents install in their kids, so it's not a losing battle we're fighting... just a very tough one. About memes being Lamarckian - I've never quite understood the objection. Every time we recite a song in our heads, every draft of a poem we write - that's an instance of replication. It's not that there's this one democracy meme that's changing and getting shuffled around, it's that there are a whole bunch of slightly different conceptions of democracy, each one of which has slighly memetic structure. So, whenever someone slighly alters their views on democracy, it's an instance of memetic replication with mutation, not an instance of a memetic individual (democracy) gaining an environmentally acquired trait. It's much harder to think of memetics like this, and some would resist this move (Blackmore, for instance), but it seems to me to be the only workable way to think of memes (it's Dennett's position). And it avoids the Lamarckian charge.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
flashboy, you're wildly far off the mark. 1 - This guy's argument can be made without any reference to memetics whatsoever. His point isn't that creationism *itself* is a successful replicator, it's that believing in creationism *makes one* a more successful replicator in our current environment. There's a huge difference between the two arguments; the latter is entirely explainable in terms of ordinary natural selection, and would predict that we would see more creationism in society than less. What's so contentious about that? 2 - Even if he were saying something about memetics (which isn't clear aside from the one "Cultures evolve as well as species" quote, and he could have just been using that as a metaphor), you're dismissing memetics for incorrect reasons. There's a remarkable degree of fidelity in concept transmission - how in the world could we understand anything from previous generations otherwise? The *only* person who has even come close to arguing otherwise is Dan Sperber, and Daniel Dennett has done an excellent job of dismantling his objections. There are reasons to be wary of memes, but citing lack of fidelity in cultural transmission is not going to do the job without some sort of argument that has yet to be given. If you want to try, be my guest. Moreover, natural selection is a biological process, it's true... but Darwin's great achievement was to identify an algorithm that is substrate neutral. There's no need to limit it to biology - wherever replication, variation, and selection occur, there it is. We're already doing great things with it in computer learning, and there's no biology at work there.
posted by painquale 19 years ago
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