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.)
Could the analogy of irrationality as a memetic disorder be usefully extended?
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.
Today's post, Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization, was originally published on 16 March 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Blue or Green on Regulation?, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.