Flying Shortbread

Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive Darwin's ideas explain all design, not just biological if, if, if, then - the evolutionary algorithm design must happen if there are algorithms, you don't need an original creator Darwin didn't know about genes Dawkins' the selfish gene gets copied and doesn't care about the consequences language is another replicator - another example - it has no conscious design, it just wanders meme - that which is copied from person to person the reason why they are copied is irrelevant, good, bad, intriguing, fun the pointy fold on a looroll memes use us as mememachines, copying machines genes are a kind of meme copy the useful things and the not-useful  mimetic drive - making a bigger brain that can copy more mem...

New research suggest that exposure to bizarre, surreal storylines such as Kafka's "The Country Doctor" can improve learning. Apparently, when your brain is presented with total absurdity or nonsense, it will work extra hard to find structure elsewhere. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns," said Travis Proulx in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science. Source: Science Daily