Today's Darwin Day for some reason. I don't get the hero worship
myself by some but whatever. A common myth that still seems to
circulate far and wide is that of natural selection and survival
of the fittest, both of life and memes (see Dawkins). Horizontal
gene transfer seems to be more the proper explanation for both.
In short, the whole mess of life and memes alike is a darned
complicated thing. Just like your IQ can be affected by the
pollen count the day of testing if you have allergies, the "bush
of life" (it's not a tree), is complicated, interconnected, with
many hidden networks that aren't the least bit simple to decode.
I was taught that genes mutated via stray gamma rays from the
sun going through the atmosphere. I believed it too, mostly
because it sounded really really cool. But even as a kid, I
didn't like the "survival of the fittest" and tree of life
stuff, people obsessing over missing links and stuff. It all
just seemed too cut and dry and, once they spliced the genes
better and realized that things like the bacteria ingested by an
organism helped shape things (heck, perhaps even MOSQUITOES
biting transferring things horizontally rather than vertically)
- THAT made much more sense. So, I'm sure Darwin was fine for
his time but I don't understand the hero worship.
http://on-memetics.blogspot.com/2014/10/horizontal-meme-transfer.html
