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konniecanread 's review for:
The Meme Machine
by Susan Blackmore
informative
fast-paced
I have some fondness for Susan Blackmore - she wrote probably the best introductory text on Consciousness and we bonded about Acid dosing over dinner when she came to talk to Philsoc.
That being said, I don't think she is the most serious scholar, she tends to get quite swept away by ideas that are really not as good as she wants them to be. This time: memes.
I think there is validity to the theory. Cultural evolution is real, and some features of memetics make useful predictions. In the last few days, I've thought particularly much about how infectious certain internet knowledge has become - particularly political information, where the virtue of being informed and of spreading your opinion makes the meme nearly religious in its infectiveness. Memetics then offers a really good explanation of why we have become so politicised in the last few years.
That being said - it's also somewhat limited. Yes, the fact that the unit and method of reproduction are unclear in the case of memetics do not invalidate it as a theory - however, they make it much less useful. Susan herself seems kind of unclear on both of these, and it comes out again and again. Most troubling is how far she pushes it - while yes, religions can be explained well by memetics, I am much less convinced by its explanatory power when it comes to the evolution of language, brain size, and consciousness. The book would be much better if she relaxed a lil.
It's a shame when the introduction of a book does more work than the book itself, I guess.
That being said, I don't think she is the most serious scholar, she tends to get quite swept away by ideas that are really not as good as she wants them to be. This time: memes.
I think there is validity to the theory. Cultural evolution is real, and some features of memetics make useful predictions. In the last few days, I've thought particularly much about how infectious certain internet knowledge has become - particularly political information, where the virtue of being informed and of spreading your opinion makes the meme nearly religious in its infectiveness. Memetics then offers a really good explanation of why we have become so politicised in the last few years.
That being said - it's also somewhat limited. Yes, the fact that the unit and method of reproduction are unclear in the case of memetics do not invalidate it as a theory - however, they make it much less useful. Susan herself seems kind of unclear on both of these, and it comes out again and again. Most troubling is how far she pushes it - while yes, religions can be explained well by memetics, I am much less convinced by its explanatory power when it comes to the evolution of language, brain size, and consciousness. The book would be much better if she relaxed a lil.
It's a shame when the introduction of a book does more work than the book itself, I guess.