“Our human value system includes” “religious practice”? Are non-religious people (which in places such as Europe make up a large fraction of the population) are mutants or something?
Yes, these people certainly are memetic mutants (to the extent you can make the analogy to genetics), inasmuch as religion has served as a terminal value (or as close as you get in humans minds) for pretty much all of humanity since the species arose, and the irreligiosity meme as we know it only arose since the Enlightenment.
But don't feel bad, all our genes arose by mutation if you trace them back far enough, and we can say that about most memes as well.
It seems to me that when people discover signalling, they see it everywhere and write essays about how no human activity is aimed at its stated purpose.
However, stated purposes and other sorts of useful work get done anyway, and I'm sure there are constraints which mostly keep signalling under enough control that it's mostly not deadly. When I try to think about the subject, I don't get anywhere, possibly because the constraints on signalling are mostly tacit.
Any thoughts or resources on the subject?