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schizotypal personality
Topic Started: Jun 8 2009, 12:48 AM (834 Views)
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Go to Evolution, religion, schizophrenia and the schizotypal personality and listen to the lecture by Stanford Anthropologist Robert Sapolsky.

It's a 90 minute lecture "on the evolutionary basis for literal religious belief, "metamagical thinking," schizotypal personality and so on, explaining how evolutionarily, the mild schizophrenic expression we called "schizotypal personality" have enjoyed increased reproductive opportunities."

But the heart of it is minutes 10 thru 19.
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ngc1514
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Just watched it... fascinating! Thanks for the link, Chris.
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I though the prof a little schizotypal with his pacing and monotonous voice! LOL, but the ideas are interesting, and seem to explain a lot.
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ngc1514
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Mentioned it to the wife and she pointed out one possible problem... Tay-Sachs, Cystic fibrosis and sickle cell are all genetic diseases. Schizophrenia has, as yet, no identified genetic component although one is suspected.

He may have covered this later on in the talk, I had to stop about 20 minutes into it. Will try to hear the whole thing when I have the time.
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Yeah, I'm 50 minutes into it and haven't heard him ground it in genetics. His argument seems to be ground more in what we might call social memes--as I recall you don't cotton to that theory, memes and all that. But I hear him repeatedly picking out social behavioral patterns, ritura practices, and such.
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ngc1514
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I suppose the argument can be made that schizotypal behavior isn't genetic, but ubiquitous enough that finding shamans, priests and witchdoctors isn't difficult. By not breeding true, it also explains why it hasn't been bred out of the human genome. Had it, the celibate priesthood would have gone extinct centuries ago!

About memes... I find the idea a gross oversimplification of a very complex process - that of transmitting what might be called "soft" knowledge around the world and between generations. Are memes real in any objective sense? I don't think so.



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Busy at work so haven't had free time to listen more.

God is a meme that has had profound affect on man. Kuhn's paradigm shifts in a way speak to the evolution of memes, or ideas, in science. To me the notion of memes is simply a useful metaphor.

There has to be more than just genes. Man is not just an animal, but a political animal.
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ngc1514
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Nope... man is just DNA. Same as any other living being on the planet. But, I'll accept meme as being a useful metaphor. Just bothers me when people talk about it as being something objective.
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There are no emergent properties, attributes, behaviors arising from the complex dynamic of genes interacting? What is, for example, government? Surely there can be no government without genes, yet genes are insufficient as an explanation.
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ngc1514
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Assuming you are accepting the meme concept... Where and how did the government meme start? WHY did it start?

Once man developed language beyond the hooting and hollering stage, why do we need the concept of a meme?

From the Wiki on Meme:
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a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, gets transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena.


How does one separate meme from those transmission capabilities and what information is being transmitted? Are the separate or is meme strictly a metaphor for all that?

As I say, it's an interesting idea, but I don't see it as being very useful.
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