Rational and anti-rational memes

One of the most useful insights from David Deutsch’s universal acid worldview is on memes. 

By memes, I’m referring to replicators in the Dawkinsian sense: Ideas that spread by being copied and shared as a cultural parallel to genes.

A natural question arises: What mechanism do memes spread by?

It’s hard to avoid circularity: An effective meme is one that people like. Memes that people don’t like will not survive. Dawkins notes that genetic evolution can feel a little circular too: Genes that aid survival and reproduction, by definition, make more copies of themself. 

The natural environment is the arbiter of which genes survive. Culture, made up by people, is the arbiter of memes.

Two types of memes

David Deutsch usefully distinguishes between two types of memes: rational memes and anti-rational memes. They are distinguished based on the mechanism which they replicate.

Rational Memes

Rational memes are ideas that spread because they help solve problems. People find them useful so they share them. If others find them useful, they will use them and share them too.

Eli Whitney’s idea of the cotton gin to separate the coton from the lint (rather than the lint from the coton) spread because it was useful¹. It beat out other methods that weren’t as effective.

Rational memes flourish in an open, dynamic society. Memes that are not robust to criticism will be discarded.

However, there are memes that replicate via a different mechanism.

Anti-rational memes

Anti-rational memes rely on being shielded from criticism to replicate. They disable the critical faculty of the host of the meme so they are unable to reject them.

A classic example is religion. A religious fundamentalist is committed to not criticize his or her faith. That would make them a heretic. They are committed to not leave their faith. That would make them an apostate. Heretics and apostates are shamed and punished. The meme discourages doubt and skepticism. Doubt may even be the sign of the devil.

The idea shields itself from criticism. When it is shared with a new audience (often children of the adherents) it prevents the new hosts from criticizing it and disables their creativity too. The cycle repeats itself. 

This is how wokeness resembles religion². Particular thoughts are taboo. The meme discourages criticism. Critical voices are censored. Disagreeing is a sign of white fragility. Simply asking questions may be a sign of racism or sexism. This is a textbook example of an anti-rational meme. It disables engagement and prevents criticism.

Lysenkoism in the 20th century is another example. Lysenko rejected fundamental principles of biology and agriculture that contradicted Soviet ideology. Scientists were punished or ignored if they dissented. Others have noticed that wokeness is modern day Lysenkoism. Both anti-rational memes.

A less well-known anti-rational meme which is often discussed in Deutschian circles relates to parenting and education. The ubiquity of this meme is why Deutsch co-founded the philosophy Taking Children Seriously.

The basis premise is this: Our culture does not take children seriously. Most schooling and parenting practices have the assumption that, because adults know better than children, adults are justified in coercing them for the child’s own good. If this meme is successfully passed on to children, they will accept adults' authority over them. When they grow up, they will apply it to their parenting. The cycle repeats itself.

Remember, it’s the method of replication

To be clear, these types of memes are not distinguished by whether or not they are harmful. It’s easy to make this conflation as the harmfulness of anti-rational memes can be quite apparent. However, there are harmful ideas that are not anti-rational memes. They are simply false.

We are talking about the mechanism of replication³. 

Let’s imagine a pool of memes. Most are false. Most don’t replicate very well. A meme that starts preventing itself from criticism will cause people to discard it at a lower rate. It will produce more copies of itself in the meme pool. It is an evolutionary principle. The same mechanism as a gene that produces more copies of itself in the gene pool.

Rational memes that solve problems will also produce more copies of themselves by people sharing them because they are useful. 

1.  Despite becoming a ubiquitous practice, Whitney didn’t make much from his patent as it was so simple to bootleg

2.  John McWhorter, who probably hasn’t heard the rational/anti-rational meme distinction, made this parallel between religion and wokeness. 

3.  It’s a bit like how Thomas Sowell, in Knowledge and Decisions, distinguishes between different types of decisions based on the decision process, not the decision itself.