Memes (Deutsch)
Ideas that are replicators — they cause themselves to be copied from mind to mind. Originally coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, the concept is developed much further by david-deutsch in The Beginning of Infinity.
Key Distinction: Rational vs. Anti-Rational
Deutsch’s crucial contribution is splitting memes into two fundamentally different kinds:
Rational memes rely on the recipients’ critical faculties to replicate. They spread because people evaluate them, find them to be good explanations, and choose to adopt them. They can be improved through criticism. They are the basis of dynamic, progressing societies.
Anti-rational memes rely on disabling the recipients’ critical faculties. They survive by suppressing criticism — through taboos, social pressure, fear, or “because I say so.” They are the basis of static societies.
How Memes Replicate
A meme exists in two forms: brain form (the idea as understood) and behavior form (the idea as enacted). Each is copied to the other. But — critically — humans don’t replicate memes by imitation. They use creativity: conjecture, criticism, and experiment to reconstruct the underlying idea. “If we end up behaving like other people, it is because we have rediscovered the same idea.”
This is why creativity is both necessary and sufficient for human meme replication. Deaf, blind, and paralyzed people can still acquire and create ideas fully.
Static vs. Dynamic Societies
- Static societies have taboos that prevent memes from changing. They enforce existing memes, forbid variants, suppress criticism.
- Dynamic societies allow criticism and error-correction. Memes compete on explanatory merit.
- Western civilization is in an unstable transition between the two. Anti-rational subcultures persist within dynamic societies (e.g., bigotry, fashion norms, “because I say so” parenting).
The Scale of Memetic Evolution
Deutsch makes a striking claim: “A substantial proportion of all evolution on our planet to date has occurred in human brains.” Biological evolution was “but a preface to the main story of evolution, the evolution of memes.”
Connections
- fallibilism — Rational memes depend on fallibilist thinking; anti-rational memes are inherently justificationist
- behavioral-psychology — Cognitive biases could be understood as anti-rational memes that survive by exploiting evolved heuristics
- nudge-theory — Choice architecture can either enable rational or anti-rational meme propagation
- high-agency — Low agency traps resemble anti-rational memes: they persist by suppressing clear thinking
- densities-of-excellence — High-performing environments could be understood as rational-meme-rich ecosystems
- loss-aversion, endowment-effect, framing-effects — Cognitive biases that anti-rational memes exploit
Sources
- source—beginning-of-infinity — Chapters 15-16, the evolution of culture and creativity