this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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kinda. It's more that "center" of the universe can be picked completely arbitrarily. I can say I'm the center of the universe, and when I spin on my chair, the universe revolves around me. You can define the frame of reference however you wish to. The change of perspective does not change how orbits work.
by that short definition sure, but probably not how they mean. If you're active at night, the amount of ambient light is surely going to impact your behavior. Not so much in areas with artificial lighting.
Insofar as there are self-replicating ideas, and the ones more likely to self-replicate become more prevalent...sure. Not the whole story either, as ideas can also be pushed by people that don't believe those ideas.
IIRC there are still theories within the scientific community of the universe being non-homogenous and roughly geocentric. Usually (when I've come across them) presumed to be incorrect, but still possible in a, "huh, that would explain the data that we can't otherwise explain" way.
You are always the center of the observable universe.
Memetics is not really pseudoscience. It was science, there there were compelling evidence and arguemtns that ideas have no agency on their own, contrary to genes, and the whole field died for good.
Genes don't have agency either.
While genetic agency is often appropriated by reactionary politics, it's a quite established scientific perspective.
I'm guessing "agency" in this case is being used in a way that's very specific to that area of research and not exactly how people use it in normal conversation?
It's obviously an open topic of debate in philosophy, but genes have agency for some definition of agency.
In a cybernetic sense, they have agency in the sense that the information within them transforms the world way more than the world affects their information. They are more players than chessboard.
For people like Dennet, which I'm not necessarily a fan of, you can think of agency (and therefore freedom) as the ability of any unit of matter to prevent its dissolution in the face of threats. Life can be framed as a strategy of DNA to reproduce itself in the face of entropy. That is agency.
Does a grain of sand have agency? Does it want to be caught by a specific size of classification sieve?
Because that's exactly the level of agency that drives natural selection.
Agency is not will though. For sure genes have no will and neither does sand