Because it provides a stabilizing, short-term emotional benefit (that impedes long-term growth). This applies to any form of ideological belief.
A first-rate fact-packed analysis of a phenomenon that has baffled historians for decades. It's time to recognize the power of memes. ‘Viral’ Hunts? A Cultural Darwinian Analysis of Witch Persecutions:http://culturalscience.org/article/10.5334/csci.116 …
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Like evolutionary computation right? Oh wait, that's highly successful field in computer science. Everything you need for a darwinian mechanism is decent, modification and selection. Ideas are being shared, change over time and compete with one another. Ergo cultural Darwinism.
End of conversation
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It would be interesting to do a comparative analysis of the development of an idea like postmodernism with something like witch hunts. The former very academic, the latter not so much? The former more group cultural selection, the latter not so much?
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Professor Dennett, this concept of the memetic virus becoming more benign, less harmful to further it's own survival could be applied to post-enlightenment religion, no? Basically european Christianity relaxed it's grip a little to avoid inoculation?pic.twitter.com/eLfcrOLHDl
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Trying to explain with memes looks like trying to explain humanity at gene level. At least genes have a kind of physical base when memes is just an idea-invention. I think memes is another attempt at bottom-up thinking destined to fail, by definition, as explanatory tool.
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