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MrMind comments on Engineering Religion - Less Wrong Discussion
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As kithpendragon has already wrote, religions from a memetic point of view must contain tools for its propagation and defence, such as ways to infect other agents and fight aggressions.
I also want to propose another question: the purposes served by religions are better served by what other social constructs?
The secular parallel to religion is called an ideology.
What does "better" mean?
I guess it depends on the purpose. If I was designing a new religion, I could ask: a religion spreads through such and such mechanism, how we could design a faster spreader?
I'm not pointing at any particular direction, I was just saying that it's a better question than simply analyzing the state of the art, so to speak.
Yes, I agree. But still, the answer very much depends on the specific criterion you're interested in. Social constructs that are extra virulent (spread fast) will be different from social constructs that are, say, extra robust (survive long).