The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition (Oxford Landmark Science) — Memes: the new replicators

1. 1. All life everywhere in the universe evolves by Darwinian means through differential survival of replicating entities.
2. 2. Memes are self-replicating brain structures, actual patterns of neuronal wiring that reconstitute themselves in one brain after another.
3. 3. The mutation in 'Auld Lang Syne' from 'For auld lang syne' to 'For the sake of auld lang syne' spread because the sibilant 's' and hard 'k' sounds make the mutant form more audible and thus easier to learn.
4. 4. The spread of a scientific idea can be measured by counting citations in journals, as shown by the exponential growth of citations to Hamilton's 1964 papers on kin selection.
5. 5. The erroneous citation of Hamilton's paper as 'The genetical theory of social behaviour' instead of 'The genetical evolution of social behaviour' originated independently in both E. O. Wilson and Dawkins, likely due to the influence of Fisher's book title 'The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection'.
6. 6. Computer viruses are deliberate malicious memes that replicate in digital networks, and their creators are morally comparable to biological terrorists.
7. 7. Faith is belief in the total absence of evidence, making it a kind of mental illness that can drive people to kill and die without further justification.
8. 8. Humans can rebel against the tyranny of selfish replicators because our brains are separate and independent enough from our genes to override them, as we do with contraception.