[This is a comment I left on a post at D5GW, responding to PurpleSlog there, which I'm cross-posting here, for archiving it as nearly a post in its own right. Another piece of the puzzle I've been studying, that is. For context, see that other post.]
PSlog,
Generally, I leave 6GW and 7GW and 8GW....etc., to the future. Let
future generations worry about those future generations. On the other
hand, I recently had occasion to answer a colleague's question about
whether 5GW will be the last generation of warfare: "Yes". (But total-destruction warfare falls outside xGW and could clean the slate.) My link to Shlok was tongue-in-cheek.
Is this taking the Selfish Gene concept and crossing it with Network Science?
Interesting way of putting it. No, I think rather that Network
Science, in its conventional form, needs to be left to slink into the
past where it belongs. Or fade away. Bar-Yam's article is really
interesting for me in the way it points up the possibility that
thinking in terms of networks is old-hat. Lo! and Behold!:
the "central nodes" of Network Theory are not so central; so he and
others look for new dynamics to keep Network Theory alive. But the
reason the shifting was found is simply that Net Theory is quite wrong
for thinking about these things.
However, terminology has a way of evolving, so we might discuss
gene-based networks or meme-based networks while retaining the word
"network" -- They don't need to be networks in the conventional sense;
i.e., "networks" can be used to describe a general relativity (or,
relationship, or relationshipping) without keeping the baggage of the old Net Theory.
Is a Gene-Based Network (GBN) a family or Kin-based network?
Nope, I think not, or not necessarily. Dan even goes to some lengths
to consider race-based characteristics that, imo, might influence the
creation of MBNs. Let's say, that any time procreative isolationism and
procreative insularity operate -- even between cultural sects, as in
Iraq perhaps -- there may be the development of common gene-plexes
which in turn may have a great influence on the memes that form, if
subtle.
My thought on the gene-based influence is a bit broader than that,
however. For instance, the vast majority of individual humans will feel
hunger if they have eaten very, very little or nothing for long
periods: this, among many other things, shows how the great similarity
in genetic features among all humans may push all, regardless of race,
kin, and family, toward very similar meme-plexes. One might even
postulate that humanity as a whole is operating in a limited and
limiting "time zone" (heh)
that is common to all. Or a system-zone, a meme-zone. Within which, the
subtle variations on genetic features play a major role in tweaking
meme-plexes this way or that. (Naturally, Shlok's prognostications
could bear on this whole issue; so could genetic variation caused by
various applications of genetic engineering, positive and negative.)
There are, however, some interesting considerations to be perused
even if small variations in gene-plexing only tweak the paradigms. For
instance, if homosexuality is some day found to be a result of genetic
features, even if only in collusion with certain other environmental
(concrete) features as well, then you may have the result that gays in all nations and all cultures
may have some particular meme-plexes tweaked in identical ways across
the broad spectrum -- ways that will not occur for heterosexuals across
the broad spectrum. (Of course, there is the sex distinction as well:
between men and women.) Another temporary gene-meme-based tweaking may
occur between the young and the old; it's temporary for the fact that
youth is fleeting.
Then, also, there are the genetic influences directly on cognition, such as that hypothesized recently by Thomas Barnett:
the halting (when I speak normally vice broadcast mode,
where I conquer and bury the tendency) way I speak reflects that
ADHD-like tendency of good horizontal thinkers to constantly get
distracted, circle back, loop around and so forth. [TPMB]
When geographic and national borders operate less as an influence on
isolationism and insularity -- i.e., when the "openness" in the title
of this post occurs -- MBNs based on habits and styles of thinking,
perhaps greatly influenced by genetic features, may form. Oddly enough,
this has me wondering if the many "new" disorders identified by
psychologists are analogous or somehow related to Bar-Yam's discovery
that hubs shift, requiring a reassessment of linear cause & effect
"chaining" to explain things...I.e., that although the psychology
profession is much further along in contemplating the genetic features
of cognition, perhaps the multiplying of so-called "disorders" can be
thought of as a round-about-way of discovering the bases behind MBNing?
Is a GBN below the level of human consciousness?
Hmmm. Or is it really so encompassing, it is rarely noticed and
considered on a day-to-day basis by most people? So we skip to
analyzing and studying media and ideologies.
I'm going to have to put off responding to your 8 features of my own
ideology. ;) I'll give them more thought before I address them.
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