[ExI] 'capitalism' genes was breeding cats

[Keith Henson]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 5:00 AM,  Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> On 6/9/2010 6:58 PM, Keith Henson wrote:
>
>> If behavior does not come ultimately
>> from genes, then were*does*  it come from?
>
>  From a complex interaction between genetic instructions, phenotypic
> expressions of those instructions in a given environment, and culture
> (call it an ensemble of memes or culturgens, although that might not be
> the right model).

There are few here who have done more re the memetic model for human
culture, Google "Keith Henson" memetics.  But in this case my thoughts
ran, no genes, no animal, no behavior.  Also, the memetic element in
mouse or snake behavior must be close to zero.

> example:
>
> "New Associations between Diabetes, Environmental Factors Found by Novel
> Analytic Technique"
> by
> Krista Conger

snip

I don't think behavior can be stretched to cover something like diabetes.

On the other hand, the _behavior_ of shooting extracted juice from
pigs (insulin) into your body to compensate for dead islet cells is
the consequence of some combination of genetic and environmental that
killed the cells plus the memetic (cultural) knowledge that this
behavior will stave off death.

Keith