Genes, Memes, Survival Machines

I didn't quite get which kind of meme Dawkins was talking about so I'll just leave this here.

Anyway, in chapter eleven Dawkins comes back with another concept of replication, this time not physical but cultural, memes. He doesn't emphasize on how dolphins or ants have tea time or how eagles play more and more video games as the years go by but he focuses on us humans.

He starts by stating we humans have many memes that have changed through time but one specific that continues to this day after many years is the famous, Does God Exist? “God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or ineffective power, in the environment provided by human culture.” (page 193) This is a controversial matter that has been disputed for many years leading to wars and changes in world history. Though, how can people believe in something that has barely any evidence to support its existence? Faith, as Dawkins describes, is a meme for blind faith that can replicate it self. People can go on believing and spreading faith for as long as they want without any backing up.

Though the our physical characteristics have a limited amount of time until they don't show up anymore through passing generations, memes have a longer life spam than genes. This means that ideas, from genes' survival machines, surpasses what was ideally genes mission to fulfill its needs. 

Symbiosis

Completing the tenth chapter of The Selfish Gene, I feel as if I could ace the Biology exam at any moment. What Dawkins has taught me fascinates me. Especially in this chapter where he describes how fungi co-exist with termites for each others' benefits, which is called symbiosis. Sure, I already knew types of symbiosis as oxpeckers (birds), eat ticks off of zebras to feed themselves and help the zebras get free of parasites. Although, I had never heard of plants and insects helping each other out for their own benefits for survival. That really impressed me. 

Putting this chapter in practice, I can see how this may benefit humans if they use reciprocal altruism. Doing a favor for another can be useful when you need it, though you can't be so sure if you'll fall into a scheming trap of a cheater and you end up as a sucker. When people ask me for favors, I nervously ask what they need hoping it won't be a huge one. I find myself to be somewhere in between a Grudger and a Sucker. looks like my genes are not selfish enough to be a Cheat. 

Vocabulary used: 

Reciprocal altruism (P. 166): Doing a favor to another, expecting to later benefit from this.

Symbiosis (P. 181): Also known as mutualism, this is the “relationship of mutual benefit between members of different species.”

Sucker (P. 184): An animal that helps another even if the other won’t help in return, “indiscriminate altruists.”

Cheat (P. 184): “Gain benefits without paying the costs.”

Grudger (P. 185): Only help those who help them in return.

Blue Eyes for You, Blonde Hair for Me

DNA: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Deoxyribonucleic acid. Its billions year mission: To create strange new beings, to make out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

DNA is the what holds all of the genetic material that every living thing needs in order for its species to continue roaming the Earth. Though, we still haven't cracked open all of its mysteries in order to understand the fundamentals of its core. As genes inside the DNA control everything physical and the way a species evolves, it does not mainly affect the characteristics of it, like humans. I may have gotten my dad's eye color and my mom's hair color but I didn't necessarily inherit my parents's personality or skill. "No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch."(page 23)

I remember when once in class we discussed about what we inherit from our parents genes. Many said that both physical and characteristics were inherited. I on the other hand, opposed this theory saying only physical inheritance was affected when genes are passed on. Personality, skills and characteristics are all acquired by one's experience. I doubt that being funny, knowing how to dance and kiss well were around and evolved about one million years ago when the first modern humans were evolving. It couldn't of evolved after homo sapiens were around as human evolution takes a tremendous amount of time. Even though there is still a lot of things to discover and learn of DNA, Dawkins did his best to describe what is known from chromosomes. Cells being rooms of a building and nuclei bookshelves containing architect's plans of the building, it's as if though everything is being built to create their own survival machine, a physical, emotionless, dull machine.

Are Genes that Selfish?

It's been a while since I've read a good book. Suspense, mystery, action, comedy these genres fill my shelves. School textbooks are on my desk. Now with Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, it has me placing it somewhere in between. Now I'm eager to see who cracks open the famous Religion vs. Science debate in class. Though, from what was taught for almost a year now, I've learned more in just a few minutes of reading.

Richard Dawkins describes exceptionally well and interesting about the infamous subject of genes which many high-schoolers seem to avoid. "Survival of the fittest" just makes it the more exciting, seeing you can relate it to those movies or games where it's just killing and moving on to learning that penguins push their families and friends off cliffs for their own safety.

Stopping at chapter 2: The Replicator, it had many of my classmates questioning the author's, and Darwin's, reasoning over how could a mistake create perfection. "But now we must mention an important property of any copying process: it is not perfect."(page 16) There was bound to be a mistakes. If the Replicator was out there making millions of copies of itself, you wouldn't expect it to be 100% correct all the time. Not even the bible can handle writing the exact same thing hundreds of times without making mistranslations. "I suppose the scholars of the septuagint could at least be said to have started something big when they mistranslated the Hebrew word for 'young woman' into the Greek word for 'virgin', coming up with the prophecy: 'Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son...'"
Something can't become better without learning, or in this case adapting, from its own mistakes. Basically mistakes are what give evolution a reason: create a easier and safer life for the next generation. This is all part of Darwin's natural selection.
Therefore, genes are perfecting themselves for a better survival machine, us.