Stuff of <s>thought</s> Language

[TiddlyTweeter]

@TW_Tones

@CodaCoder

Selfish Gene

As long as you don’t misunderstand this term, I don’t think you do. As Richard Dawkins said recently, in a discussion, it is the gene that selfishly propagates itself that succeeds, but to do so, the phenotype it describes, and development, of the phenotype (us individuals), has an advantage, if it promotes the success of its relatives, and even can favor Altruism.

Would either of you care to comment on the role of Darwinism in the Evolution of TiddlyWiki?

TT

[TW_Tones]

Personaly I would not use the term Darwinism, although on wikipedia the definition seems harmless, this term is often used either by its detractors or people who use it to justify ill’s.

I would be more likely to Concider the evolution of tiddlywiki by unnatural selection however it is certianly a bundle of memes.

Like any, large, robust, explanatory theory with plenty of empirical evidence, the “theory of evolution” certainly can be used to throw light on other complex fields like design and software, which also have similar qualities. Including research and “development”.

Perhaps a full responce, can one day, come in an essay.

[jeremyruston]

Perhaps Darwinism did indeed have a role in the evolution of TiddlyWiki: I might have mentioned this before, but a formative experience for me was working on two BBC Horizon programmes with Richard Dawkins in the 1980s: Nice Guys Finish First and The Blind Watchmaker. The only copies online I can find are on Dailymotion and are linked below.

I worked quite closely with Dawkins, particularly for the second programme. He was kind and considerate to me and I enjoyed the experience very much.

Dawkins was already a well-known author, and was yet to become so broadly controversial. Nonetheless, the main impact on me was to make me see that I needed to look more widely than just science in my quest to understand the world.

For NGFF, I made a simple explanatory animation to demonstrate Dawkin’s idea that cooperation with other individuals could be an evolutionary advantage. I programmed the animation on the BBC Micro, working with a graphic designer on the design of the figures.

I also produced the end credits for the show:

For TBW, I made an implementation of Dawkin’s “biomorph” on the Commodore Amiga to illustrate evolution. Dawkins had already created the basic algorithm for drawing a pattern, I just made it slicker and added a user interface for selecting offspring and editing genes:

I also made a 3D animation of flying through a three dimensional projection of the multidimensional space containing all possible biomorphs which was also used during the opening sequence:

The crazy thing about making the animation was that the Amiga was nowhere near fast enough to render it in realtime. Instead we connected the Amiga up to an expensive videotape machine deep in BBC TV Centre, and recorded it a frame at a time, with the VT operator calling “next” and me pressing the space bar to trigger the next frame.

BBC - Horizon - 1986 - Nice Guys Finish First - video Dailymotion

BBC - Horizon - 1987 - The Blind Watch Maker - video Dailymotion

[TiddlyTweeter]

@jeremyruston

Darwinism did indeed have a role in the evolution of TiddlyWiki: I might have mentioned this before, but a formative experience for me was working on two BBC Horizon programmes with Richard Dawkins in the 1980s: Nice Guys Finish First and The Blind Watchmaker.

It is so nice to see this! The RUSTON (TiddlyWiki) deserves an personal history.

TT