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kpreid comments on Open Thread: August 2009 - Less Wrong
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A very common belief here is that most human behaviour is based on Paleolithic genes, and only trivial variations are cultural (memetic), coming from fresh genes, or from some other sources.
But how strong is the evidence of Paleogenes vs memes vs fresh genes (vs everything else)?
Fresh genes are easy to test - different populations would have different levels of such genes, so we could test for that.
An obvious problem with Paleogenes is that there aren't really that many genes to work with. Also, do we know of any genetic variations that alter these behaviours? If preference for large breasts was genetic, surely there might be a family somewhere with some mutation which would prefer small breasts. Do we have any evidence of that?
So I suspect memes might be much more important relative to Paleogenes than we tend to assume.
Sure:
"All conventional theories of cultural evolution, of the origin of humans, and what makes us so different from other species. All other theories explaining the big brain, and language and tool use and all these things that make us unique, are based upon genes. Language must have been useful for the genes. Tool use must have enhanced our survival, mating and so on. It always comes back, as Richard Dawkins complained all that long time ago, it always comes back to genes.
The point of memetics is to say, "Oh no it doesn't." There are two replicators now on this planet. From the moment that our ancestors, perhaps two and a half million years ago or so, began imitating, there was a new copying process. Copying with variation and selection. A new replicator was let loose" [...] - Sue Blackmore.
There's very convincing evidence that ability to use language is genetic, up to specific kinds of brain damage and specific kinds of genetic diseases that cause very particular types of language impairment. Language itself is memetically built on top of that.
I've never seen such evidence for any other kind of behaviour.
I am not sure what you mean - or how it is relevant. Plenty of behaviour has a genetic basis. Eating behaviour and sexual behaviour, for instance. If you look at all the reflexes and instincts out there, you will see that many types of behaviour have a genetic basis.
Even if everything was learned (the "blank slate" hypothesis) - so what? How would that be relevant to the idea of cultural inheritance being significant?