The Evolution of Memes

Alas, there is little probablity that an expert hadn't considered the conclusion a non-expert does. Richard Dawkins, now I know he is a famous scholar, concluded the culturral evolution as well, and have give it a name, Memes. Why I didn't think of this name? :)

I guess I need buy his book at some point.

The Gene Evolution and Knowledge Evolution

I browsed through the new book shelf in my local public library and picked a book -- Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene". I am currently half way through the book.

The book basicaly says that evolution is on the individual gene level, rather on the species level. The gene is in fact "immortal" via the way of replication, and the long path of evolution is essentially a survival competition of individual genes. Say there is two genes, one gives you blue eyes and one gives you green eyes. They are deadly competing with each other since one would have either blue eyes or green eyes. If always the green-eye gene get replicated at higher probablity, the blue eye gene will quickly reduce its "population" to extinction, at which point, the "immortal" gene "dies".

We, human, at the end of evolution path, did not win the evolution by beating other species. In fact, some of the genes in our dna is likely the exact gene exists at the very beginning of life. Those genes suvives the evolution and keeps "living".

The book is celebrating its 30 years anniversary and I wish I had picked up this book sooner.

I agree with the book's view. So apparently there is a will of the genes, and the will of the gene is selfish. The gene doesn't care the survival of your other species member. The survival of other species member that carries the competing genes are in fact, lowers the survivalship of this gene iteself. Interesting.

Now I think about it, apparently, we, human species, created a new era of biology evolution. Before human, genes essentially dictates the behaviors, life patterns, most aspects of the animal body -- gene's survival machine. Try this thought experiment: given two group of baby animals, one group grows with their parents and their elder societies, and the other group was raised up on their own. If they eventually were live in a very similar environment, they would pretty much live their life, mate and raise their second generation about the same way, and it may be difficult to tell two animals apart that which was grown with their parents and which was not. If that is so, then the genes pretty much determins every thing.

Now the remarkable new phoenomena for human is, we created languages and created way of documenting ideas. So given two babies, one grown up in one culture (say African Tribe), and the other one grown up in another very difficult culture (say American Family), they will have a quite different life patterns, even if they are facing the same environment. If that is so, then we human, creates another line of evolution besides the gene evolution, the evolution of knowledge and philosophy. I think this evolution is often called civilization.

In this new era, genes only has so much role to play. As long a body built by the genes have the capability to grasp the new knowledge and have the ability to explore new knowledge at a favorable rate, this gene will survive. Now the evolution of knowledges will take over the path of gene evolution, and start controling the major part of our life pattern.

Birth contronl, for example, there is no way in gene evolution can reach a state that the body want to limit its own replication oppotunity and thus increasing the rivals suvivalships. But knowledge will achieve this. When the idea of limiting births become as established knowledge as 1+1=2, people will do that. Since this knowldege is irrelavant to which exact genes one is holding as long as the gene as a whole is capable grasping the knowledge and implement the knowledge, this knowledge evolves.

There is no way the evolution of our genes can stop the global warming before we go over the cliff, but our knowledge evolution will make that happen. Have that faith! :)

How to get hold of my motivations

When I wrote my resumes, motivated is often the first word jumps into my mind and always lands on the paper. I thought of the jobs I was applying, and imagined how I would perform in the new company, or even in the new field, then I felt nothing but motivation. Then someone's blog hits me -- it is not wise to list motivated as a quality to be seeked in writing a job requirement. People are always motivated when he starts the job, and that motivation is always going to slide as time goes on, and at some point, one will gets filled with all but motivation.

So what happened?

What happened is the drop of one's expectation. When one first steps into a new company or a new field, one holds many expectaions -- the expectaion that he will do well. Where do the expectaions come from? Expectations come from the many plans he had for his new job and new career. These plans, or sometime strategies are often very coarse, and often very naive. When you don't have much experience in a new field, you can't have much realistic plans. However, these simplistic plans pumps up our expectations and motivations. Then, as time goes by, our experience grows, and we run out of plans, and our expectations drops, so away goes our motivation.

So here is some tips on how to get hold of our emotions.

1. Change career. Change into a new career that you don't have much experience yet, and still you can formulate a rich plan during your 5 minute day-dreaming.

2. Changing career needs much of cowboy sprit, and may not be able to afford the 10-year experience build-up time, so rather than changing career, we can change jobs. Formulate a rich plan to dominate the company based on the experience minus the limit of your current job.

3. Well, finding a new job may be quite chanllenging, so one more thing we can play is to mentally change your job. From all the possible functions that your current job involves and tring to move your focus to a different set of functions than you currently has. Of course, you need formulate plans and pump up expectaions, naturally.

4. Even we are stuck in the same old same old, we still can change our views. My approach is zoom out and zoom in. Every object in this world is as rich as the world itself; and as a matter, we often only see one smalle portion of it, then our mind plays trick tells us what we see is the whole thing. By zoom out, the object become atom, and is very simplistic, thus we can formulate all kinds of naive plans to attack it, thus pumps up our expectations. Then by zoom in again, chances are, because the object itself is so vast in reality, we often can't zoom back into the spot where we used to see. Thus, by zooming out and zooming in, we created a totaly new meaning of the old job, along with the new motivation.

5. Forget all the above rubbish, we just need simplify the problem, formulate naive plans, and pumps up our expectations. Our motivations will follow. :)