From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Jan 08 2003 - 14:53:15 MST
Nathanael Allison wrote:
> I was rethinking and a society would only be dominant if it had a meme
> to do so. Take the religions for example. Those societies had memes
> which didn't allow them to conquer other societies (just because they
> could, other justification was required). In this way those memes
> allowed the sharing of other memes between societies giving both
> societies an advantage. The societies who had memes that allowed them to
> conquer other societies would be at a disadvantage because an equality
> of shared memes would be impossible between the conquered society and
> the society of the conquerors.
Nathanael:
"Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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