Dennett's Lancet Fluke Analogy: discuss

[uberllama42]

For my 1000th DU post, I want to try to get away from the disruptive flame war that has recently dominated R/T (and by extension, commend others who have tried to do the same). I'd like to discuss the opening of Dan Dennett's Breaking the Spell, in which he makes his first stab at explaining why humans expend resources on religion, which at first would seem to believers to have no direct benefit.

You watch an ant in a meadow, laboriously climbing up a blade of grass, higher and higher until it falls, and climbs up again, and again, like Sisyphus rolling his rock, always striving to reach the top.... Its brain has been commandeering by a tiny parasite, a lancet fluke, that needs to get itself into the stomach of a sheep or a cow in order to complete its reproductive cycle. This little brain worm is driving the ant into position to benefit its progeny, not the ant's.

Dennett then says that ideas are like lancet flukes, entering the brains of their hosts and encouraging them do work for the continuance of the idea rather than the host or his/her progeny. On the other hand, some ideas doubtless make their hosts more fit to survive and propagate, at least through this one mechanism, in a way similar to genes. Ideas are also modified by their hosts, syncretized with other ideas, and translated between languages. By that process, they are bred like domesticated animals to benefit their hosts. The relationship between ideas and their hosts, Dennett says, is symbiotic. Each has an effect on the other's development and ability to proliferate. Ideas which encourage the expenditure of resources for their preservation are more likely to survive.

Not having read much further into Dennett than this, I can't comment on where he takes this idea, but it seems more or less sound to me.

[uberllama42]

1. Damn right, no one cares what I think

Half an hour and no responses. That's what I get for trying to compete with flame wars.

[trotsky]

2. Aw, I wouldn't take it personally.

I think it's more that even the people who claim they want deep theological discussion aren't really interested in it, but more in trying to use that point to bash others.

The fluke comparison ties in very well with the idea of a celibate clergy, though. You couldn't have a more perfect example of an idea forcing its own propagation over the DNA of its host. It's an interesting and illustrative analogy.

[Meshuga]

3. Not contraversial enough = no activity

Here goes a kick. :-)

And welcome to the 1000+ club!

[uberllama42]

6. I've been bouncing around these forums since 2003

and IIRC, I've been reading the Top Ten since very close to the beginning. I'm amazed that it took me this long to get to 1000. I'd like to think an aversion to flame wars has had something to do with that, though I can't completely disavow involvement in the occasional shouting match.

[TZ]

4. I care

But I'm too frazzled to think about this right now. I'll give it a look see tomorrow.

[Random_Australian]

13. Hey, some of us are awake and around at very disimilar times to you.

:)

My thread is sinking as well. :(

But I already have another question that I want to ask...

[pscot]

5. Dennett thinks about ideas

for a living. He's always interesting, but difficult. I believe he came up with the concept of the "meme".

[uberllama42]

7. I've always heard the meme attributed to Dawkins

which makes sense because he is an evolutionary biologist. Dawkins credits Dennett with the term 'sky-hook', as opposed to a crane. A sky-hook is an idea that doesn't explain anything but serves to fill space and terminate discussion. A crane is a series of useful ideas that makes logical sense and facilitates understanding.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Richard Dawkins did

using that word, anyway:

Historically, the notion of a unit of social evolution, and a similar term (from Greek mneme, meaning "memory"), first appeared in 1904 in a work by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon titled Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (loosely translated as "Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings"). According to the OED, the word mneme appears in English in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: The Mneme.

According to Dawkins, who coined the word "meme" without knowing about mnemes, meme represents a shortened form of mimeme (from Greek mimos, "mimic"). Dawkins said he wanted "a monosyllable word that sounds a bit like gene".<4>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

[uberllama42]

9. I just want to kick this back above the

"DU should enforce my personal grudges" thread.

[John Gauger]

10. Ideas experience natural selection just like organisms.

If the idea has an aspect that is favored by nature, it will survive over one that does not. Think of the Roman Catholic Church. One of their doctrines is that birth control is sinful (go forth and multiply, etc.) This increases their adherents because those new children (the ones that survive) are then raised Catholic. However, this greatly increases the suffering experienced by the believers. The Church also holds that suffering has a redemptive quality (think Mother Teresa) which is further adaptive to for the idea.

[uberllama42]

11. Certain ideas are more fit to survive within their meme pool

Some are more likely to propagate in a given environment, populated as it is by other memes. Some survive by making their hosts more fit to survive, while some survive do to fitness in the "marketplace of ideas." This does not speak to their veracity, of course. Memes encompassing false ideas might be fit survive in a given meme pool.

[Random_Australian]

12. Hey, that person believes similar things to what I do!

At least with respect to ideas having statistical selective pressure, at any rate.

Yes, I do believe *some* ideas are like that.

Specifically, the mechanism for selecting ideas like that is reproduction with attrition, so we need some way for the ideas to be passed on (that is, they are communicable) and we need for there to be something that acts like a limit on the total number of ideas held*, like for instance ideas that compete (say, capitalism vs communism - it is unlikely that a person will hold both).

So ideas that fit into those two categories will have a selectivity toward self-reproduction. I believe that is the main mechanism for which religions survive - those that propogate remain, as it were.


*Specifically, we need the sum of all (idea * number of people who have that idea) to be finite, for a given group of related ideas. Ideas are considered related if it is difficult for people to hold both of them.