en.m.wikipedia.org
Yes, that's a nice book. Have seen a lot of Richard Dawkins' talks, always considered him a very bright mind, and loved his explanations and his arguments (talking about other materials than this book).
About "The Selfish Gene", would like to have a chat with him about some parts I see differently. Maybe I should read the book properly (was only listen to it as an audiobook, while driving, and that was many years ago), though I remember being upset about how the book was talking as if it were a goal/meaning in natural selection, when in fact the result of evolution is what is left after the filter of natural selection is applied.
Natural selection has no meaning or goals, it is a filter applied by the environment. It just happens.
Whoever/whatever survive (in terms of genes) did that out of trial and error + luck. Thinking that in terms of strategies seems off. There is no strategy, survival (of genes) is what is left after the filter was applied (the filter of natural environment). The "best fit" is nothing more than trial and error + enharitance + the filter of the environment, all repeated thousands of times. Thought, RD is certainly fully aware of all these, I could say he crystalized in my mind some of these aspects, so not sure why the selfish gene book was aproaced that way.
A strategy means conscious planning, genes don't do that, IMO.
Now, about conscious planning, you may ask what is consciousness, in the first place? I think I have found the answer here, thought it might be controversial, I think the consciousness and self awareness are going hand in hand, they are about the same feature, that feature being the ability to simulate/emulate reality in one's mind, to see in the future.
About this ability, to simulate internally and to see the outcome in advance:
- can be of many levels, I am convinced mammals are conscious, most other animals are conscious too, but a mosquito would have less simulation power than a dog, so I consider a mosquito to have less consciousness or self-awareness, but it has some of it. Not sure about plants. An interesting question is if AI can be self-aware, but that's a full can of worms, a very interesting one, though.
- thinking about the physical world as a very complex environment, out of which we only perceive a small slice, e.g. we can only hear certain sound, can only see a narrow spectrum, and assuming there are many, many other aspects we don't perceive at all (e.g. the magnetic field) life evolved to sense only the most important aspect of the reality (important in terms of survival)
- though, sensing the world is expensive, and the reaction time is critical, it would be of a great advantage to have some sort of lookup table with the situation and the most common situations and the future outcomes, then later, this lookup tables (which lookup-tables in terms of neurons, I think of being more like a direct path, e.g. unconditioned reflexes), tables that at first were only respond to a direct stimulus, later evolved to predict an outcome long before the stimulus.
This "prediction of the near future", the ability to simulate, happens now automatically, and all the time. We wouldn't be able to navigate a room if we were to wait for the tactile in the feet before making the next step. We predict all in advance and drive accordingly, and when the simulation fails, we trip and fall.
I think the ability to simulate a future outcome is the self-awareness or conscious mind.
By this definition, a horse is obviously a conscious been, and self-aware the same way we, humans, are.
Talking about genes as if they'll have a goal or they would practice some strategy seems more a metaphor, they don't simulate, they are not conscious or self-aware, I think genes only react to physics laws. Nothing more.
