It's true that most of the left is sadly ignorant of such concepts, but the reason my own praxis has developed so far beyond the typical left is because I've been exposed to them.
Leftists won't phrase things in terms of memetics either, but that's what they're actually optimizing for, and I thought HN would both understand the term and appreciate the specificity, so I used it.
This also recapitulates much of what is theorized in "The Selfish Gene" (Richard Dawkins, 1976). So much so it's a bit surprising that the article doesn't make a single reference to that work.
I imagine the universe as a bunch of disparate pieces that can combine in myriad ways.
Some of those ways create the conditions for other pieces to combine in a similar way. Once those pieces exist they actually change the world around them toward their own existence - sometimes in concert with other ways that promote mutual survival. Life is a very powerful version of this that actually converts other matter into itself.
This happens at all levels of the universe - from quarks to humans to stars.
6 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 26.7 ms ] threadIt's true that most of the left is sadly ignorant of such concepts, but the reason my own praxis has developed so far beyond the typical left is because I've been exposed to them.
Leftists won't phrase things in terms of memetics either, but that's what they're actually optimizing for, and I thought HN would both understand the term and appreciate the specificity, so I used it.
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/sicact.pdf
Cool to see further work done on this.
Some of those ways create the conditions for other pieces to combine in a similar way. Once those pieces exist they actually change the world around them toward their own existence - sometimes in concert with other ways that promote mutual survival. Life is a very powerful version of this that actually converts other matter into itself.
This happens at all levels of the universe - from quarks to humans to stars.
Refers to the Avida evolution simulator: https://github.com/devosoft/avida/wiki