Dawkins in London

I've just got myself tickets (available here) to see Dawkins read from his new book "The Devil's Chaplain" next week.Does anyone here have any specific questions they'd like to see him asked?PE[This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 02-04-2003]

PE,Thanks for the heads up, I was going to be kicking my heels next thursday, so I got myself a ticket.See you there!Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Does he think there is any "meme-ic" difference of discussing correaltions from the linear relations of genes too a PLANAR reprentation of genetic data (any causation) as to any difference different than a database constructed with a "3-D" model in mind??In other words if domains are extended purely on units of arithmetization (by math or mendel algebra etc either applied genomically)does the perimeter of the congruent neighboorhoods (any topology of group selection vs Dawkins etc etc)have a purely projective geometry or is it rather an axiomatic "thing" only having to do with prejudice to some incidence and philosophy of math without repect to any gene for all memes??????

Ask him what he thinks of the findings on Konrad Lorenz work for the Nazi's as exposed in Ute Deichmann's "Biologist under Hitler" and other historians.He is the public relations manager for science after all, and he also mentions Konrad Lorenz in his book.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

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Does he think there is any "meme-ic" difference of discussing correaltions from the linear relations of genes too a PLANAR reprentation of genetic data (any causation) as to any difference different than a database constructed with a "3-D" model in mind??
In other words if domains are extended purely on units of arithmetization (by math or mendel algebra etc either applied genomically)does the perimeter of the congruent neighboorhoods (any topology of group selection vs Dawkins etc etc)have a purely projective geometry or is it rather an axiomatic "thing" only having to do with prejudice to some incidence and philosophy of math without repect to any gene for all memes??????

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Sorry Brad, but I don't know enough about either genetics or English to understand what this means. For all I know, you could be insulting his mother Maybe you could explain again?PE

Thanks to Brad, I've learnt something new today. What a 'meme' is:
Dawkins [1976] coined the term "meme" to describe information copied from person to person by imitation.
Memes vary, are selected, and are inherited (i.e. copied by imitation); they therefore fit the evolutionary algorithm
and can be considered as a replicator [Dennett 1995]. Most theories of human evolution, including sociobiological
theories, assume that natural selection has operated on only one replicator, the genes. However, humans are adept
at imitation almost from birth [Meltzoff 1996] and therefore live in an environment pervaded by memes. We should
therefore consider human evolution to be a product of two replicators - memes and genes.
'Meme-Gene Coevolution' - Larry Bull, Owen Holland and Susan Blackmore

Memes are a fantastic concept. Unfortunately, they lack the rigour to be considered properly scientific as yet, but they do have great explanatory powers (esp. in the advertising industry).It is said that religion itself is a meme, or "mind-virus".The replicator = religious idea, God, say.
Reproduction - parent to child (Lamarckian)
Mutation - difficulties in word of mouth transmission
variation - obvious - "fittest" religion becomes the biggest - almost by definition.Dawkins & Blackmore explain it far better than me though:Center for the Study of Complex Systems | U-M LSA(can't find the Blackmore article on Google, but it was called "Religions as memeplexes" and was a chapter in her book "The Meme Machine")Blackmore actually argues that consciousness itself somehow arises from the interaction of memes competing in our thought space, though I haven't yet read the book.(More links here:Links on Evolutionary Theory and Memetics )PE

PE,Susanblackmore.co.uk seems to have a lot of papers online if you didn't already know.

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Ask him what he thinks of the findings on Konrad Lorenz work for the Nazi's as exposed in Ute Deichmann's "Biologist under Hitler" and other historians.

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What were these findings?PE

Ok- we all can know then (see threading above) what a meme was...is....let me try the re-phrase WITHOUT this hook which was the only way I could think then of approaching Dawkins, to begin with...What I am getting at is data presentations of genomics which may be warehoused in planar (spread sheet) form or cubical (3-d"euclidean") as to how this faciliates or does not [the search for] correlations on which statements of causation can be gleanded (or not (with statistical testing etc)). I was seeking to know if Dawkins with his fundamental genomic perspective has this kind of ordination notion in his data analysis (which parenthetically as per our prior...had to show up in a meme somewhere as to the confidence/fidelity of his(Dawkins' own lexos) for any grammer one may talk over with him)which may indeed be synthesized otherwise by a Gould architect of the parrallels at the tripod ... but that diverges to a different evolutionary thinking...There are ways of thinking of real number domains that transfrom whooly linearly such that I would guess all bioinformatic platforms *could* be ordinated to *any* correlation preference in a spread sheet but I am thinking and I do not know if Dawkins thinks likewise that no matter the any organismal position on the whole and the parts (not the Devil...)transfinite numbers might better organize genic data such that even Dawkins claim on evolution is futher supported. I however hold RATHER and by preference to Wright's first linearlization but Dawkins has conceptually gone beyond. I want to know if he supports the techonology necessary to carry in his claim further...There exist no datawarehouing methods for transfinites that I know of so it may be that if done this way other levels of organization may gain say the funding in more effienct ways. ..This is starting to sound even harder to understand so I dont know if this clarifies. I have not even tried to explain how i think this from acutally existing Cantor scholarhip so why seems even further in the memeic out of reach space. Sorry.. I probably would have just stuck with the meme in query and taken what ever I could from what he said as I generally in the past have found that I do not agree with him.[This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 02-05-2003]

Konrad Lorenz directly participated in ethnic cleansing (Germanization) in Posen, on a group of about 800 people.
He was employed in a Nazi office for racial theory.
His work is slanted towards a sort of Nazi ideology to the point of being factually untrue sometimes in a way that suits his ideology.
He advertised Nazism using his "science".
His main regret about his Nazi-past, which he largely hid, was that he brought eugenics into disrepute. He was still a fanatical eugenicist after all what happened.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

So can your question to Dawkins be fairly generalised to:"What do you think about the fact that the Nazis used Darwinism for their own ends?"PE

Brad - trouble is, I probably understand about 90% of the words you're using, but not when you put them in the order you do. You've a habit of allowing your thoughts to dance about as you write, like anoverflowingtechnicalstreamofconsciousness.Step by step (a numbered list?) might be best if you want to continue to explain to me what your question is (was?), resisting the temptation to digress.All I got from your posts was that it was something to do with a mapping between a 2d and a 3d set of data (not sure of what) and that it somehow involved memes (I don't know who Gould's architect is either).PE

No I don't think so, at the least the answer wouldn't interest me. It becomes too generic then without specifically referring to Konrad Lorenz.You can ask him in stead if or not Natural Selection applies without any variation present, such as with a population of identical asexually reproducing bacteria. The context to the question being a dispute over the definition of Natural Selection. I think it would be pretty hard though to make such a question understood.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Thanks again Primordial EggYou indeed *did* get the gist/thrust, of the content I had intended to communicate. God Bless.. It seems to me... any non-religious angle must involve/devolve some *dimension* of data that, that is either arranged in a warehouse between 2 and 3 dim#s Hausdorff. That would be in some scientific creationism when not also any otherwise. Let's drop the Gould issue for now and assume that then eating meat for dinner is ok, OK? I think that this (...) would be the price of the ticket anyway...::Genes are arranged linearly on chromosomes and the Human Genomic Project with every docTOR would love to know how, the know how (not the need to know) this sequence of base par as knowable and being known as to if it can be used to benefit mankind. I take it that it is Dawkins' contribution to society to contribute to *any* health benefits we ma be able to academically derive from this information and any theory he may evolutionarily be ablt to cobble together IS important (see our NRM discussion interalia).The *data* thus aside; put aside from transpositions, linkage group dynamics, etc. and the like standard genetics (is), thus {IN} a linear arrangment, no matter the recombination (Olby's Mendel etc) but it is not clear to me that we may need indeed no matter the sound of "no indeed", some means to handle this data in other dimensions than any mapping continuity from this line BUT IN-LINE WITH; THE NATURE OF THE GENE not its mere expression to which I had so far alluded in/to.My intial reading of THE SELFISH GENE which I bought back in the 70s on allowance in the TORONTO MUSEUM, did not lend me think of anthing but linear relations from Dawkins and since Provine (as I paid $ to find this out) was criticized by Wright for looking for something Wright's linear relationsns did not apriori encode already, I have subsequently doubted that Dawkins had anything to offer than Betrund Russel's class philosophy ^on top of any linear harmony in emprical protenomic space he may wish to mention. That is what I would have thought before I asked the question.Now the question really has to do with the kinds of numbers a computer system is enable(d) to compute//with [etc] and leaving aside my indication that now and than I think there is transfinite need to know and be included one to one and onto in the answer from ()()() him could be simply made)(}{well the system or me deleted the important stuff- your on your own.1) was something like- as to if the logic of his evolution was any other than can come from classes in Russel's philosophical math
2)what does he really think is the relation between transmission genetics and physiological genetics.It seems to me that pure math enables one to correct some of Russel's statments (about ...es not justify deleting peoples' web content neting a gross error...I dont think I deleted it. I will not use symbols {}etc next time.[This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 02-06-2003]it appeared the L^- "brace' was the culprit pitting out that . It indeed was not me!![This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 02-06-2003]