Tim Tyler: Memes and the evolution of human ultrasociality
Channel: tmtyler
Date: 2011-09-29

This is a video about memes and the evolution of human ultrasociality.

Humans are ultrasocial creatures.  They live in large cities and and often congregate in huge numbers at social events of various kinds. Humans do not normally bristle with hostility on encountering other humans - and indeed are likely to engage in cooperative behaviour - even with strangers. Memetics offers an interesting explanation of human cooperation and ultrasociality.

The idea is that meme reproduction depends on social contact between humans.  Increased levels of social contact between their hosts are good for memes since this results in more reproductive opportunities for them. Memes that promote human ultrasociality have the effect of pushing humans into close proximity with each other, so the memes can infect new hosts.  All the memes in the host benefit from this - including the ultrasociality memes.

Transcript: http://on-memetics.blogspot.com/2011/06/memes-and-human-ultrasociality.html

Please buy my book on Memetics: http://memetics.timtyler.org/

"Memetics: Memes and the Science of Cultural Evolution."

Amazon.com link: http://amazon.com/dp/1461035260/