Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes 131plied. The process of improvement was cumulative. Ways of increasing stability and ofdecreasing rivals' stability became more elaborate and more efficient. Some of themmay even have "discovered" how to break u p molecules of rival varieties chemically,and to use the building blocks so released for making their own copies. These protocarnivoressimultaneously obtained food and removed competing rivals. Other replicatorsperhaps discovered how to protect themselves, either chemically or by building aphysical wall of protein around themselves. This may have been how the first living cellsappeared. Replicators began not merely to exist, but to construct for themselvescontainers, vehicles for their continued existence. The replicators which survived were theones which built survival machines for themselves to live in. The first survival machinesprobably consisted of nothing more than a protective coat. But making a living got steadilyharder as new rivals arose with better and more effective survival machines. Survivalmachines got bigger and more elaborate, and the process was cumulative andprogressive.Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artificesused by the replicators to ensure their own continuance in the world? There would beplenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would themillennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of theancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts.But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom longago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed offfrom the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes,manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and in me; they created us, body andmind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have comea long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survivalmachines.* * *Once upon a time, natural selection consisted of the differential survival of replicatorsfloating free in the primeval soup. Now natural selection favors replicators which are goodat building survival machines, genes which are skilled in the art of controlling embryonicdevelopment. In this, the replicators are no more conscious or purposeful than they everwere. The same old processes of automatic selection between rival molecules by reason oftheir longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity, still go on as blindly and as inevitably asthey did in the far-off days. Genes have no foresight. They do not plan ahead. Genes justare, some genes more so