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David_Gerard comments on [SEQ RERUN] Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization - Less Wrong
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As I noted, crashing individuals is often possible. (c.f. the forbidden post, and the valley of bad rationality.) But something mass? As you note, it just doesn't work epidemiologically.
Of course, bad ideas spread quite effectively, as long as they don't kill their host.
Thanks, I hadn't read those before.
That's an interesting observation; I would think that in most cases good ideas would out compete bad ideas if they deal with the same subject (flat earth, young earth creationism), but obviously people hold many irrational ideas all the time. Could the analogy of irrationality as a memetic disorder be usefully extended? (I have read the sequence article about reason as an 'immune system' for the mind, but it seems as though the concept could be expanded.)
Memes such as religions and New Age beliefs often contain anti-epistemology so as to stop people thinking too hard about them not actually making sense.