Genes, Memes and Tremes: The Future of Artificial Intelligence | Susan Blackmore
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- Опубликовано: 11 ноя 2018
- It´s hard to get a good meme out of your head - and it spreads like wildfire among all your friends. The eccentric psychologist and physiologist Susan Blackmore contends that Darwin´s theory of evolution can be applied not only to memes, but also to technological 'tremes'. According to her, apps, tools and digital systems have their own reproductive urge and survival instinct. A warning against technology that uses and abuses us and may one day even destroy us
"Universal Darwinism is the principle that when any kind of information is copied with variation and selection an evolutionary process inevitably begins. Genes are Earth’s best-known replicator, giving rise to biological evolution, but there may be others. Dawkins coined the term ‘meme’ to apply to a second replicator that emerged when our ancestors became capable of imitation. Their memes - the sounds, actions and ways of doing things that they copied - spread and evolved, competing to use human bodies and brains, and creating human culture in the process. We became meme machines. Memetics differs from other theories of cultural evolution in being based on two selfish replicators not one and, arguably, can better understand our fast-changing culture. Could a third replicator emerge from the culture created by the second? I believe that this is already happening. Digital information is now being copied, varied and selected ever faster by the silicon-based technology that we have provided for it. I will end with speculation that this means that a third replicator, tremes, is already emerging, is evolving new types of intelligence, and we need to consider how our own role is inevitably changing."
Susan Blackmore is a psychologist, lecturer, writer and a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth (UK). She researches consciousness, memes, and anomalous experiences. She is best known for The Meme Machine (1999). In her 2008 TED-talk she introduced the idea that aside from genes and memes we are now witnessing the dawn of a third replicator: tremes. Her latest publications are Seeing Myself. The new science of out of body experiences (2017) and Consciousness: An Introduction, 3rd Edition (2018).
On the question of whether tremes make sense and their difference from memes - it is where and how the replication and selection happens. Evolution is about selection for fitness in the *environment*. The environment of memes is the human mind/brain/etc. So, the way a meme becomes more successful is by having a nature to it that makes it more likely to be remembered and repeated by human beings. So, it is the way the memes come up against human psychology. Tremes, on the other hand, are data which are replicated and selected in different environments, which is the automated computer algorithms. These digital environments (though originally designed by humans) can operate independently of human choices and psychology. So, what it takes for a meme to be remembered by a human might be that it is 'emotionally intense' (to name just one example). But what it takes for a treme to be stored, not filtered out, etc. might be something like 'has more links' or 'more efficient to store' etc. That isn't to say that ALL digital environments have these independent and uniquely non-human algorithms - but some are emerging which certainly do.
The tricky part is when a meme becomes a treme or vice versa - and what you say about obviously identical memes and tremes. Perhaps it really is all memes, and it is simply the case that sometimes memes are in human environments, and sometimes digital - and the most successful will be those which can thrive in both environments. I'm not sure.
If Temes emerge as a subset of memes --a special kind of memes that not only are copied, but also that do their own fair share of copying [of memes]-- then we've got a model that demonstrates how humans may be in trouble. Once memes can get copied without any part of their life cycle involving human brains, then it seems that the capacity of memes to confer potential benefits upon their hosts suddenly start to evolve much more rapidly. Memes (perhaps in the form of computer code about whose meaning or purpose most of us would have absolutely no clue) can co-evolve with temes only -- not with humans. We are not relevant to these memes. Temes, on the other hand, also get to evolve, because they co-evolve primarily with these symbiotic memes. This is true because as long as there's variation, selection and heredity -- even if they all exist outside human brains -- then there must be evolution. This is why I think this approach with temes as being something functionally and categorically different from ordinary memes is so fascinating, and it's why I think Susan Blackmore's proposed way of looking at AI may turn out to be informative for us for many years to come.
With the internet as a replicator, we get InfoWars. The key is to manage the selection pressure.
very good meme
here is the best of gods creation, the rejected, the envious.
P
Wow, what a waste of time.
A very instructive and informative "waste of time"
She is so arrogant and she think she can explain everything. U call all people liars,
and all of their experiences are just illusions nothing more. Did you make the universe, did you make the humanity are you the creator of all this i dont think so, so dont say you can explain everything because you cant, we are humans and you are not God ,you are not the creator . For example if someone make a car he can explain everything because he knows what is inside how it works thats it. But what you saying its just a theory, that is your personal opinion you can not speak for all people.
This is a very unfair comment. She doesn't call anyone a "liar", she doesn't say that she can "explain everything" neither does she tries to explain everything. Just on the contrary, she states that we need to find ways to quantitatively measure the concepts she speaks about.
Scientific claims are all born from "personal opinions", as, until this day, only people made science. The difference is the ability to test those "personal opinions" against others, maybe more generalizable ones, and make experiments to see if they hold true. Also, scientific claims enable us to make predictions about what can happen under certain circunstances.
stay mad lol