Hi Bob,
LOLOL. I agree that it does look promising but, once you actually look at it, it still fails. BTW, that type of approach was taken in a lot of the management literature in the 1980's 1990's. The problem with it is that it assumes a teleological basis and proscriptive form. In effect, it isn't about adaptation so much as it is about a specific form of cultural engineering at the system level.
Actually, it is possible to define replication units (and systems) without going into individual details. That was the approach taken by the memetics crowd who defined the replication unit as a meme or "idea/perception" (not quite right, but close enough). Another way it could be defined is by environmental testing sequence, i.e. how does the organization process information from its environment. That sidesteps the individual unit of perception and looks at he development of perception systems instead - think of it as a parallel to the evolution of sensory systems in organisms.
There are other indicators that could be used as well, but you do have to have some type of unit, otherwise you have nothing to measure and you are back to prosciptive cultural engineering (aka Cultural Eugenics).
Marc
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