Reply To: Toshiba's "Micro Nuclear Reactor" – it's not fusion, but it's here now

[TimS]

What Rezwan just said points out a distinction between genes and memes. Successful memes take many forms and evolve in many interesting ways, that I have not thought about much. This is the same for genes, however for genes evolution requires a very large amount of variation. If a small number of organisms has its connection severed with the larger population, that is very bad for the evolutionary potention of those organisms by the nature of genetic evolution and how individual variation is more a function of genetic variation than mutation. Genetic mutation is usually fatal, memetic mutation is a new religion. Genetic evolution has a much stronger pressure for altruism than memetic evolution. One would think there might be some feedback in this, that genetic mechanisms that encouraged genetic mechanisms that encouraged … diversity would be more successful, since diversity is such a basic part of evolution.

In other words, is it the genes leveraging the memes to sever the connection between individuals, or memes with maybe a slight influence on genes through short term evolution? And which is stronger? And when She finally decides we’re making too much of a mess of things, will She just knock us all off and try a different social experiment where memes propagate in another way that is more in line with genetic evolution?