If you keep the comparison to regular viruses, for a moment, would we not see a adaptation to these new forms of communication, through modification of other memes (hygene) and genetic selection towards living in this environment, by selecting against high openness and intelligence, and for memetic stability?
Historically, the great plagues always occured in times after parts of the world had been connected, that were not as connected before, and after population density increased a lot.
You got the black death after the mongols connected Europe and Asia properly with certain modifications of the existing silk road, smallpox after Europeans discovered America and so on.
But all these diseases were a one time thing. You do not have constant black deaths in Europe now, because we adapted to this crisis (mostly memetically, and with better tech). Would you not expect the same after leftism is finally dead? That we would then adapt new behaviours do deal with memetic viruses, digital hygene, so to speak? Do we really need the more radical solutions (going full uncle ted etc) in that light?
The problem described here is not new, it has always plagued cosmopolitan areas. The city of Rome in the Roman Empire suffered from this. The story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible warns of this problem. What modern technology has done is to make the world cosmopolitan.
Your proposed solution isn't the best one. The best solution is in the picture at the top of the article, namely the Amish solution. Let religions evolve to develop immunity to viral memes. The Amish are immune. So are Orthodox Jews who don't restrict technology like the Amish do. I think there are a variety of religious strategies to develop immunity. Government interference would only hurt the development of strong immune religions, not help.
Your meme and mind virus theories are excellent. I agree with you that these mind viruses will cause the outbreak of war and can have tremendous negative effects on humanity.
However, your application of these ideas to decry "wokeness" or "LGBT" movements is silly. There are 8 billion people on earth up from 2.5 billion fifty years ago. The idea that the "wokeness" meme will impact the success of the human race is laughable. Unfortunately, you too, have been influenced by a right-wing "morality" mind virus that uses these anti-progressive memes to galvanize support for their causes and to gain power. And once the memes take hold, they can force real humans into situations that are against their best interest...like cutting medical care or starting a war. These are much greater risks than the decline of the human race because a LGBT meme decreases the birth rate.
I don't think a new religion is coming, and a revival of old religion is much more likely. (Russia has had success with this.) Also, with the non-heterosexual identity, we don't see a big move towards homosexuality. I suspect what we're seeing instead is a lot of bisexual women (who only date men).
But how exactly is this achieved in reality? In software development, you cant do top down design because there's too much unpredictability in the problem space. You have to take an empirical approach, and shift the computation burden off your own brain, and onto the computer (run the code and see the result, i.e. run experiments). The problem space of mitochondrial memeplexes is certainly much less predictable, experiments would need to be run. Setting up these experiments (i.e. saving faith communities) seems like a hard problem, not one you can manufacture.
I have become disheartened and feel that "gradient pressures" rather than human agency that directs the course of history. Accumulating all this knowledge wont help us "defy gravity". Can we do anything with it other than get ahead of the "pack"?
There's a lot here to digest, and I agree with most of it. I will just add a few thoughts on non-heterosexual identities and reproduction.
In previous decades there was a cost to declaring yourself as someone with a non-heterosexual identity. As a result you probably did strongly desire this identity and were active within it (to the extent possible within your current society). Now the cost is much closer to zero, and among groups of Gen Y/Z the adoption of non-heterosexual identities may have in-group benefits.
The result of this is that a person who declares as bisexual/pansexual (tautologous terms, but nevermind) or gay has much lower need to have the norms of those terms enforced on their actual behavior. In many cases they may adopt these for a while, in the generational version of 'lesbian until graduation' or may simply use them while mostly adhering to more traditional actual sexual practices in line with their natural attractions.
Secondly, reproduction has been at least partly divorced from sexual identity. Women without male partners and who have functioning reproductive systems are able to utilize a system that was initially designed around allowing heterosexual couples to fulfil their reproductive desires. They will reproduce at a much lower rate on average (1 child is typical, 3 is rare), and this is likely to see them reproduce their ideology natally, while moderating the population decline in that generation. Men (gay/trans) and non-reproducing women are also able to coerce others to reproduce on their behalf, either using financial means and employing surrogates or relying on their friendships and/or misplaced obligation to help non-reproducing men and women.
When the children of these people are in social institutions (kindergarten, school etc.) their parents then have influence through their buy-in to these institutions. And as we have seen, they are willing to use that power and influence to shape the world in their direction.
All of this is to say that there are vertical/mitochondrial/biological and lateral/memetic pathways for the transmission of these ideas. I'm interested in thinking about this further and look forward to what you have to say.
Fantastic read, my friend.
If you keep the comparison to regular viruses, for a moment, would we not see a adaptation to these new forms of communication, through modification of other memes (hygene) and genetic selection towards living in this environment, by selecting against high openness and intelligence, and for memetic stability?
Historically, the great plagues always occured in times after parts of the world had been connected, that were not as connected before, and after population density increased a lot.
You got the black death after the mongols connected Europe and Asia properly with certain modifications of the existing silk road, smallpox after Europeans discovered America and so on.
But all these diseases were a one time thing. You do not have constant black deaths in Europe now, because we adapted to this crisis (mostly memetically, and with better tech). Would you not expect the same after leftism is finally dead? That we would then adapt new behaviours do deal with memetic viruses, digital hygene, so to speak? Do we really need the more radical solutions (going full uncle ted etc) in that light?
The problem described here is not new, it has always plagued cosmopolitan areas. The city of Rome in the Roman Empire suffered from this. The story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible warns of this problem. What modern technology has done is to make the world cosmopolitan.
Your proposed solution isn't the best one. The best solution is in the picture at the top of the article, namely the Amish solution. Let religions evolve to develop immunity to viral memes. The Amish are immune. So are Orthodox Jews who don't restrict technology like the Amish do. I think there are a variety of religious strategies to develop immunity. Government interference would only hurt the development of strong immune religions, not help.
Your meme and mind virus theories are excellent. I agree with you that these mind viruses will cause the outbreak of war and can have tremendous negative effects on humanity.
However, your application of these ideas to decry "wokeness" or "LGBT" movements is silly. There are 8 billion people on earth up from 2.5 billion fifty years ago. The idea that the "wokeness" meme will impact the success of the human race is laughable. Unfortunately, you too, have been influenced by a right-wing "morality" mind virus that uses these anti-progressive memes to galvanize support for their causes and to gain power. And once the memes take hold, they can force real humans into situations that are against their best interest...like cutting medical care or starting a war. These are much greater risks than the decline of the human race because a LGBT meme decreases the birth rate.
I don't think a new religion is coming, and a revival of old religion is much more likely. (Russia has had success with this.) Also, with the non-heterosexual identity, we don't see a big move towards homosexuality. I suspect what we're seeing instead is a lot of bisexual women (who only date men).
>We Need a New Religion
But how exactly is this achieved in reality? In software development, you cant do top down design because there's too much unpredictability in the problem space. You have to take an empirical approach, and shift the computation burden off your own brain, and onto the computer (run the code and see the result, i.e. run experiments). The problem space of mitochondrial memeplexes is certainly much less predictable, experiments would need to be run. Setting up these experiments (i.e. saving faith communities) seems like a hard problem, not one you can manufacture.
I have become disheartened and feel that "gradient pressures" rather than human agency that directs the course of history. Accumulating all this knowledge wont help us "defy gravity". Can we do anything with it other than get ahead of the "pack"?
What I meant by this is that the quiverfull movement has died out https://www.reddit.com/r/FundieSnarkUncensored/comments/ld825o/is_the_quiverfull_movement_losing_its_popularity/ creating a cultivar that survives multiple generations is non-trivial
People who liked this might also be interested in Social Epistasis Amplification:
https://archive.org/download/Jolly_Heretic_Archive/The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Mutants-%20Social%20Epistasis%20Amplification%2C%20with%20Michael%20Woodley%20of%20Menie.mp4
Great stuff!
hey, do you have an email or messaging app where i can ask you some questions?
You can DM me on twitter (@arctotherium42)
There's a lot here to digest, and I agree with most of it. I will just add a few thoughts on non-heterosexual identities and reproduction.
In previous decades there was a cost to declaring yourself as someone with a non-heterosexual identity. As a result you probably did strongly desire this identity and were active within it (to the extent possible within your current society). Now the cost is much closer to zero, and among groups of Gen Y/Z the adoption of non-heterosexual identities may have in-group benefits.
The result of this is that a person who declares as bisexual/pansexual (tautologous terms, but nevermind) or gay has much lower need to have the norms of those terms enforced on their actual behavior. In many cases they may adopt these for a while, in the generational version of 'lesbian until graduation' or may simply use them while mostly adhering to more traditional actual sexual practices in line with their natural attractions.
Secondly, reproduction has been at least partly divorced from sexual identity. Women without male partners and who have functioning reproductive systems are able to utilize a system that was initially designed around allowing heterosexual couples to fulfil their reproductive desires. They will reproduce at a much lower rate on average (1 child is typical, 3 is rare), and this is likely to see them reproduce their ideology natally, while moderating the population decline in that generation. Men (gay/trans) and non-reproducing women are also able to coerce others to reproduce on their behalf, either using financial means and employing surrogates or relying on their friendships and/or misplaced obligation to help non-reproducing men and women.
When the children of these people are in social institutions (kindergarten, school etc.) their parents then have influence through their buy-in to these institutions. And as we have seen, they are willing to use that power and influence to shape the world in their direction.
All of this is to say that there are vertical/mitochondrial/biological and lateral/memetic pathways for the transmission of these ideas. I'm interested in thinking about this further and look forward to what you have to say.