Jack comments on Reason as memetic immune disorder - Less Wrong

215 Post author: PhilGoetz 19 September 2009 09:05PM

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Comment author: Jack 09 June 2010 07:17:02AM 0 points [-]

A better metaphor than antibodies is probably vectors. The degree of compartmentalization in a person's belief network is a feature of the memetic environment- equivalent to the concentration of population or prevalence of vermin in the context of microbes. When people have a low degree of compartmentalization mimetic schema take over lots domains of thought just has urban living (pre-sanitation) increased the spread of disease. I don't think there is an obvious sense in which the degree of vectorization has a 'default' though, unless you just want to make it zero because that is convenient.