“Sometimes ideas (and behaviors) do direct damage to the adopters, but they survive because the damage has made it difficult for the adopter to discover an alternative.”
– Gil Milbauer
From the archives: Posted on 2nd February 1999
In reply to this post by David Deutsch, Leonie wrote:
“The survival of the person is very closely related to the survival of the meme, in the same way that an unborn foetus is related to its mother—it is not the same, but they are interdependent. Whilst a person can transmit their behaviour to other people without physical reproduction, part of the transmission of the behaviour is associated with whether or not it ensures the survival of those adopting it. And I do believe that, with the extreme of Taking Children Seriously, (not of all ‘good memes’) there does come a trade off between happiness and survival.”
I’m afraid you are missing the point of David’s reply. The point is that while there is a high correlation between the survival of genes and the survival of the host (because the survival of the gene depends on the host’s ability to survive and reproduce), there is no such requirement of memes. Yes, many people learn many ideas and behaviors from their parents; but I don’t think that this how most ideas propagate (and it certainly isn’t the primary method that we expect Taking Children Seriously’s propagation to use). As David pointed out, ideas about methods of suicide propagate, even though they certainly do nothing to help the survival of their adopters. On the other hand, the secret to immortality would not be popular until its holder communicated it to others.
So the ideas that have been around for a long time have not survived because they are the best at helping their holders survive or prosper. They have survived because they are successful at getting adopted by other people. This is very often not in the survival interests of the adopters. Sometimes ideas (and behaviors) do direct damage to the adopters, but they survive because the damage has made it difficult for the adopter to discover an alternative.
Religious memes are very good at propagating, but I don’t think they help their holders survive (in fact, many of them have killed each other because of it).
Altruism is an idea that doesn’t help the holder survive. It explicitly urges him to forgo what he perceives to be in his best interest. It propagates well because it plays upon common human feelings of unworthiness, guilt, and the willingness to evade responsibility for one’s judgements (by adopting the judgement of authorities).
So ideas survive either because people learn and judge them to be better than alternative ideas (as we hope Taking Children Seriously will), or they survive because they are successful at nesting in people’s minds via a process that avoids critical judgement. If the standard is human prosperity, the former type of idea can be said to be “the fittest” in a sense, but the latter type (which I believe is, unfortunately, by far the more common) can not.
[To understand rational memes and anti-rational memes, be sure to read David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity.
See also:
- The fittest memes—survival of the meme
- What is an ‘anti-rational meme’—or any kind of ‘meme’?! And how does this have anything to do with being a parent?
- If anti-rational memes are compelling me to coerce my children, what hope is there?!
Gil Milbauer, 1999, ‘Memes survive by being good at getting themselves replicated’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/memes-survive-by-being-good-at-getting-themselves-replicated