First Blog

A story of the future, in four chapters Chapter 1 . It seems that Artificial Intelligence (AI), with amazing data analysis capacities and algorithms, is already making corporate decisions.  Certainly true for Wall Street with algorithmic trading, self-driving cars, algorithmic medical diagnosis.   Great, I think.   Chapter 2 . But then competitors will also use AI to determine what decisions will be made to make counter decisions. Chapter 3 . Such procedures can regress indefinitely and well beyond the reach of human understanding. Not so great, I think! Chapter 4 . Already, algorithms are adaptive, essentially rewriting themselves. Algorithms will be voted seats on the Board of Directors. Or else! By 2023, we will have the first algorithmic corporate CIO*. By 2025, the first COO. By 2030, the first CEO. End of Story. *Chief Information Officer

Reasoned by analogy, we present the theory of memes .   The modern theory of memetics (memes) is all about explaining why we behave as we do.   Based on a cultural analog of the biological gene, it has quite a large following among professional researchers – mostly in the social sciences. Let’s look at it more closely.   Warning: Be skeptical, knowing this is currently a big time theory. Yet no evidence and no observations!  For reason by analogy see http://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2012/07/rasoning-by-analogy.html ______________ The theory of memetics , or theory of memes, dating from the recent 1989 book, The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, proposes the rapid increase of social structure is a consequence of a culture or system (memes) of behaviors that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another.   They have been likened to biological genes.   In his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge , which elaborates upon the fundamental role of memes in uni