Some time ago I was puzzled by the behaviour of ice cubes.
I could not fathom why sometimes I could turn the ice tray upside down and the cubes would fall out cleanly, yet on other occasions the ice cubes would break up and I could not get them out of the tray without whacking the tray vigorously on the side of the sink, or running hot water all over the tray until the half-melted shrunken cubes had no choice but to dribble out.
But now I have solved the problem. I can now get the ice cubes to fall out cleanly every time.
This week, I was reminded of this fairly inconsequential discovery by a couple of seemingly unrelated events: the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and the death of economist John Kenneth (Ken) Galbraith.
Dawkins put forward a theory that went one step beyond Darwin. He said that evolution was not about survival of species as a group, nor even the survival of individuals in a species, but rather the survival of individual genes.
Genes are ruthlessly selfish, so selfish, indeed, that on occasions they might work to kill individuals, provided the replicated genes lived on. For example, males of many species compete so madly to mate that they often get injured or killed in the contest. Such behaviour seems injurious to the species, but it is not to the gene, the strongest of which get replicated in such a process and live another day.
Dawkins argued that the processes of replication and the success of the most powerful genes are inevitable; they require no god and no intelligence. The idea is attractive, indeed compelling.
He went further. In The Selfish Gene he put forward the idea of “memes” – the social equivalent of genes. A meme is a behaviour that people replicate because it is useful. Useful behaviour gets copied, precisely because it is useful.
Dawkins never claimed the idea as his own, but when he put it in the context of evolution, it gained great force.
Indeed, the meme idea is so forceful, that I think my humble ice-cube solution might become a meme.
Some memes are obviously uselful. For example, a two-stroke lawnmower will start every time if after the previous mow you have turned off the fuel while the engine is running thereby buring all fuel in the fuel pipe and engine. If you don’t, the petrol evaporates and the remaining oil in the cylinder clogs the works and makes the next start attempt almost impossible.
On the other hand, the usefulness of some memes might not be immediately apparent. Why any rational man would wear a tie, for example, is beyond me. But the apparently irrational wearing of a tie might have the use of getting a job, a promotion, a sexual partner or even a bond rather than a jail term. On seeing this, other males will copy the seemingly irrational behaviour.
Maybe there are no “good” or “bad” memes – just ones that work and get replicated.
But overall, the tendency must be for worthwhile memes to be copied, so useful ways of doing things and useful designs are used and copied, and poor ways of doing things and poor designs are cast aside.
Dawkins wrote this in a lucid and persuasive way.
Galbraith, too, was lucid and persuasive.
He thought that markets are inherently unstable. He realised that there was a limit to to capacity of affluence to provide happiness. Up to a point a roof and food are essential to happiness. After that, consumption generated by advertising has nothing to do with happiness, Galbraith wrote in The Affluenct Society.
He pointed out that while people gained affluence privately, they were in public squalor with run-down parks, schools and hospitals.
Galbraith had something in common with Dawkins. Both hoped and advocated a better world in which humans would treat other humans more decently. But each saw a world dominated by a force which did not work to that end. In Dawkins’ case it was a replicating gene or meme which in their selfish ways cared nothing for human happiness. In Galbraith’s case it was market forces, which inevitably resulted in boom and bust and much intermittent human misery.
Galbraith saw a role for human government to ameliorate the excesses of the market. Dawkins hopes that by understanding the power of the selfish gene and memes we can at least understand how the world works and therefore better apply our altruism.
In short, two great optimistic rationalists.
Now seeing that you have got to nearly the end of this column, you should be rewarded with the solution to the ice-cube problem.
I stumbled on the solution by recalling on an occasion when the ice cubes snapped out cleanly that I had filled the ice tray with warmish water. I then tried with water as hot as the tap would run and the cubes snapped out even more cleanly.
I reasoned that it was not an energy waster to use hot water because you would use even more hot water trying to extract the ice cubes if they had stuck.
My guesss is that whatever your view of god, evolution or economics you will think that the ice-cube and two-stroke memes are well worth replicating.
Happy anniversary, Richard.Vale, Ken.