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Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, The God Delusion, The Magic of Reality, The Greatest Show on Earth, and his latest Outgrowing God. He is the originator and popularizer of a lot of fascinating ideas in evolutionary biology and science in general, including funny enough the introduction of the word meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which in the context of a gene-centered view of evolution is an exceptionally powerful idea. He is outspoken, bold, and often fearless in his defense of science and reason, and in this way, is one of the most influential thinkers of our time.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but in your book Selfish Gene, the gene-centered view of evolution allows us to think of the physical organisms as just the medium through which the software of our genetics and the ideas sort of propagate.

So maybe can we start just with the basics?

What in this context does the word meme mean?

It would mean the cultural equivalent of a gene, cultural equivalent in the sense of that which plays the same role as the gene in the transmission of culture, in the transmission of ideas in the broadest sense.

And it's only a useful word if there's something Darwinian going on.

Obviously culture is transmitted, but is there anything Darwinian going on?

And if there is, that means there has to be something like a gene, which becomes more numerous or less numerous in the population.

It can replicate, well it clearly does replicate, there's no question about that.

The question is, does it replicate in a sort of differential way in a Darwinian fashion?

Could you say that certain ideas propagate because they're successful in the meme pool?

Would you wish to say though that in the same way as an animal body is modified, adapted to serve as a machine for propagating genes, is it also a machine for propagating memes?

Could you actually say that something about the way a human is, is modified, adapted for the function of meme propagation?

That's such a fascinating possibility, if that's true.

If that it's not just about the genes which seem somehow more comprehensible as like these things of biology.

The idea that culture or maybe ideas, you can really broadly define it, operates

Even morphology, even anatomy, does evolve by mimetic means.

I mean, things like hairstyles, styles of makeup, circumcision, these things are actual changes in the body form which are non-genetic and which get passed on from generation to generation or sideways like a virus

But the moment you start drifting away from the physical, it becomes interesting, because the space of ideas, ideologies, political systems.

Is our memes a metaphor more, or are they really, is there something fundamental, almost physical presence of memes?

Well, I think they're a bit more than a metaphor and I think that, I mean, I mentioned that physical bodily characteristics, which are a bit trivial in a way, but when things like the propagation of religious ideas, both longitudinally down generations and transversely, as in a sort of epidemiology of ideas, when a charismatic preacher converts people, that resembles viral transmission.

Whereas the longitudinal transmission from grandparent to parent to child, et cetera, is more like conventional genetic transmission.

That's such a beautiful, especially in the modern day, idea.

Do you think about this implication in social networks where the propagation of ideas, the viral propagation of ideas, and hence the new use of the word meme to describe-

Well, the internet, of course, provides extremely rapid method of transmission.

Before, when I first coined the word, the internet didn't exist.

And so I was thinking then in terms of books, newspapers, broad radio, television, that kind of thing.

Now an idea can just leap around the world in all directions instantly.

And so the internet provides a step change in the facility of propagation of memes.

Isn't it fascinating that sort of ideas, it's like you have Galapagos Islands or something, it's the 70s, And the internet allowed all these species to just like globalize.

And in a matter of seconds, you could spread a message to millions of people.

And these ideas, these memes can breed, can evolve, can mutate, and there's a selection, and there's like different, I guess, groups that have all, like there's a dynamics that's fascinating here.

Basically, Do you think your work in this direction, while fundamentally it was focused on life on earth, do you think it should continue, like to be

I mean, I do think it would probably be a good idea to think in a Darwinian way about this sort of thing.

We conventionally think of the transmission of ideas in evolutionary context as being limited to, in our ancestors, people living in villages, living in small bands where everybody knew each other and ideas could propagate within the village, and they might hop to a neighboring village occasionally, and maybe even to a neighboring continent eventually.

I mean, you have people, it's been called echo chambers, where people are in a sort of internet village, where the other members of the village may be geographically distributed all over the world, but they just happen to be interested in the same things, use the same terminology, the same jargon, have the same enthusiasm.

So people like the Flat Earth Society, they don't all live in 1 place, they find each other and they talk the same language to each other, they talk the same nonsense to each other.

And they, but so this is a kind of distributed version of the primitive idea of people living in villages and propagating their ideas in a local

So is there evolutionary purpose of villages?

I wouldn't use a word like evolutionary purpose in that case, but villages will be something that just emerged, that's the way people happen to live.

And in just the same kind of way, the Flat Earth Society, societies of ideas emerge in the same kind of way in this digital space.

Is there something interesting to say about the, I guess, from a perspective of Darwin, could we fully interpret the dynamics of social interaction in these social networks?

Or is there some much more complicated thing need to be developed.

Well, a Darwinian selection idea would involve investigating which ideas spread and which don't.

So, in some ideas don't have the ability to spread.

I mean, flat earthism is, there are a few people believe in it, but it's not gonna spread because it's obvious nonsense.

But other ideas, even if they are wrong, can spread because they are attractive in some sense.

So the spreading and the selection in the Darwinian context, it just has to be attractive in some sense.

Like we don't have to define, like it doesn't have to be attractive in the way that animals attract each other.

It could be attractive in some other way.

all that matters is all it's needed is that it should spread.

And it doesn't have to be true to spread.

In truth is 1 criterion which might help an idea to spread.

But there are other criteria which might help it to spread.

As you say, attraction in animals is not necessarily valuable for survival.

The famous peacock's tail doesn't help the peacock to survive, it helps it to pass on its genes.

Similarly, an idea which is actually rubbish, but which people don't know is rubbish and think is very attractive will spread in the same way as a peacock's gene spread.

I remember reading somewhere, I think recently, that in some species of birds, sort of the idea that beauty may have its own purpose and the idea that some birds, I'm being ineloquent here, but there is some aspects of their feathers and so on that serve no evolutionary purpose whatsoever.

There's somebody making an argument that there are some things about beauty that animals do that may be its own purpose.

Darwin, when he coined the phrase sexual selection, didn't feel the need to suggest that what was attractive to females, usually is males attracting females, that what females found attractive had to be useful.

It was enough that females found it attractive.

And so it could be completely useless, probably was completely useless in the conventional sense, but was not at all useless in the sense of passing on John Darwin didn't call them genes, but in the sense of reproducing.

Others, starting with Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, didn't like that idea and they wanted sexually selected characteristics like peacock's tails to be in some sense useful.

It's a bit of a stretch to think of a peacock's tail as being useful, in the sense of survival, but others have run with that idea and have brought it up to date.

And so there's a kind of, there are 2 schools of thought on sexual selection which are still active and about equally supported now.

Those who follow Darwin in thinking that it's just enough to say it's attractive and those who follow Wallace and say that it has to be in some sense useful.

Do you fall into 1 category or the other?

I think they both could be correct in different cases.

I mean, they've both been made sophisticated in a mathematical sense, more so than when Darwin and Wallace first started talking about it.

I'm Russian, I romanticize things, so I prefer the former, where the beauty in itself is a powerful, so the attraction is a powerful force in evolution.


Speaker 0: Correct me if I'm wrong, but in your book Selfish Gene, the gene-centered view of evolution allows us to think of the physical organisms as just the medium through which the software of our genetics and the ideas sort of propagate. So maybe can we start just with the basics? What in this context does the word meme mean?

Speaker 1: It would mean the cultural equivalent of a gene, cultural equivalent in the sense of that which plays the same role as the gene in the transmission of culture, in the transmission of ideas in the broadest sense. And it's only a useful word if there's something Darwinian going on. Obviously culture is transmitted, but is there anything Darwinian going on? And if there is, that means there has to be something like a gene, which becomes more numerous or less numerous in the population. So it can replicate?

It can replicate, well it clearly does replicate, there's no question about that. The question is, does it replicate in a sort of differential way in a Darwinian fashion? Could you say that certain ideas propagate because they're successful in the meme pool? In a sort of trivial sense, you can. Would you wish to say though that in the same way as an animal body is modified, adapted to serve as a machine for propagating genes, is it also a machine for propagating memes?

Could you actually say that something about the way a human is, is modified, adapted for the function of meme propagation?

Speaker 0: That's such a fascinating possibility, if that's true. If that it's not just about the genes which seem somehow more comprehensible as like these things of biology. The idea that culture or maybe ideas, you can really broadly define it, operates

Speaker 1: under these mechanisms. Even morphology, even anatomy, does evolve by mimetic means. I mean, things like hairstyles, styles of makeup, circumcision, these things are actual changes in the body form which are non-genetic and which get passed on from generation to generation or sideways like a virus

Speaker 0: in a quasi-genetic way. But the moment you start drifting away from the physical, it becomes interesting, because the space of ideas, ideologies, political systems.

Speaker 1: Of course, yes.

Speaker 0: So what's your sense? Is our memes a metaphor more, or are they really, is there something fundamental, almost physical presence of memes?

Speaker 1: Well, I think they're a bit more than a metaphor and I think that, I mean, I mentioned that physical bodily characteristics, which are a bit trivial in a way, but when things like the propagation of religious ideas, both longitudinally down generations and transversely, as in a sort of epidemiology of ideas, when a charismatic preacher converts people, that resembles viral transmission. Whereas the longitudinal transmission from grandparent to parent to child, et cetera, is more like conventional genetic transmission.

Speaker 0: That's such a beautiful, especially in the modern day, idea. Do you think about this implication in social networks where the propagation of ideas, the viral propagation of ideas, and hence the new use of the word meme to describe-

Speaker 1: Well, the internet, of course, provides extremely rapid method of transmission. Before, when I first coined the word, the internet didn't exist. And so I was thinking then in terms of books, newspapers, broad radio, television, that kind of thing. Now an idea can just leap around the world in all directions instantly. And so the internet provides a step change in the facility of propagation of memes.

Speaker 0: How does that make you feel? Isn't it fascinating that sort of ideas, it's like you have Galapagos Islands or something, it's the 70s, And the internet allowed all these species to just like globalize. And in a matter of seconds, you could spread a message to millions of people. And these ideas, these memes can breed, can evolve, can mutate, and there's a selection, and there's like different, I guess, groups that have all, like there's a dynamics that's fascinating here. Do you think- Yes.

Basically, Do you think your work in this direction, while fundamentally it was focused on life on earth, do you think it should continue, like to be

Speaker 1: taken further? I mean, I do think it would probably be a good idea to think in a Darwinian way about this sort of thing. We conventionally think of the transmission of ideas in evolutionary context as being limited to, in our ancestors, people living in villages, living in small bands where everybody knew each other and ideas could propagate within the village, and they might hop to a neighboring village occasionally, and maybe even to a neighboring continent eventually. And that was a slow process. Nowadays, villages are international.

I mean, you have people, it's been called echo chambers, where people are in a sort of internet village, where the other members of the village may be geographically distributed all over the world, but they just happen to be interested in the same things, use the same terminology, the same jargon, have the same enthusiasm. So people like the Flat Earth Society, they don't all live in 1 place, they find each other and they talk the same language to each other, they talk the same nonsense to each other. And they, but so this is a kind of distributed version of the primitive idea of people living in villages and propagating their ideas in a local

Speaker 0: way. Is there Darwinist parallel here? So is there evolutionary purpose of villages? Or is that just a-

Speaker 1: I wouldn't use a word like evolutionary purpose in that case, but villages will be something that just emerged, that's the way people happen to live.

Speaker 0: And in just the same kind of way, the Flat Earth Society, societies of ideas emerge in the same kind of way in this digital space.

Speaker 1: Yes, yes.

Speaker 0: Is there something interesting to say about the, I guess, from a perspective of Darwin, could we fully interpret the dynamics of social interaction in these social networks? Or is there some much more complicated thing need to be developed. Like what's your sense?

Speaker 1: Well, a Darwinian selection idea would involve investigating which ideas spread and which don't. So, in some ideas don't have the ability to spread. I mean, flat earthism is, there are a few people believe in it, but it's not gonna spread because it's obvious nonsense. But other ideas, even if they are wrong, can spread because they are attractive in some sense.

Speaker 0: So the spreading and the selection in the Darwinian context, it just has to be attractive in some sense. Like we don't have to define, like it doesn't have to be attractive in the way that animals attract each other. It could be attractive in some other way. Yes, it's

Speaker 1: all that matters is all it's needed is that it should spread. And it doesn't have to be true to spread. In truth is 1 criterion which might help an idea to spread. But there are other criteria which might help it to spread. As you say, attraction in animals is not necessarily valuable for survival.

The famous peacock's tail doesn't help the peacock to survive, it helps it to pass on its genes. Similarly, an idea which is actually rubbish, but which people don't know is rubbish and think is very attractive will spread in the same way as a peacock's gene spread.

Speaker 0: It's a small sidestep. I remember reading somewhere, I think recently, that in some species of birds, sort of the idea that beauty may have its own purpose and the idea that some birds, I'm being ineloquent here, but there is some aspects of their feathers and so on that serve no evolutionary purpose whatsoever. There's somebody making an argument that there are some things about beauty that animals do that may be its own purpose. Does that ring a bell for you? Does it sound ridiculous?

Speaker 1: I think it's a rather distorted bell. Darwin, when he coined the phrase sexual selection, didn't feel the need to suggest that what was attractive to females, usually is males attracting females, that what females found attractive had to be useful. He said it didn't have to be useful. It was enough that females found it attractive. And so it could be completely useless, probably was completely useless in the conventional sense, but was not at all useless in the sense of passing on John Darwin didn't call them genes, but in the sense of reproducing.

Others, starting with Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, didn't like that idea and they wanted sexually selected characteristics like peacock's tails to be in some sense useful. It's a bit of a stretch to think of a peacock's tail as being useful, in the sense of survival, but others have run with that idea and have brought it up to date. And so there's a kind of, there are 2 schools of thought on sexual selection which are still active and about equally supported now. Those who follow Darwin in thinking that it's just enough to say it's attractive and those who follow Wallace and say that it has to be in some sense useful.

Speaker 0: Do you fall into 1 category or the other?

Speaker 1: No, I'm open-minded. I think they both could be correct in different cases. I mean, they've both been made sophisticated in a mathematical sense, more so than when Darwin and Wallace first started talking about it.

Speaker 0: I'm Russian, I romanticize things, so I prefer the former, where the beauty in itself is a powerful, so the attraction is a powerful force in evolution. You

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Richard Dawkins: Memes | AI Podcast Clips