Memetic Immune Systems

To expand on that jargon-post…

We can model ideas and ideologies as existing in an environment of evolution, much like creatures (not a new idea - this is the basis of meme theory AFAIK).

In so doing, we can model them as having various components that suit different purposes, like viruses.  Metaphorically.

There may be parts evolved to cause people to adopt the idea, parts to cause people to spread the idea, parts to prevent people from giving up on the idea, and so on.

If a human wants to stay aligned with the truth, they need to process and filter out harmful or dangerous idea complexes, because like viruses in nature, the only hard rules that prevent them from being too dangerous is that they don’t kill their hosts too quickly to spread.

And so humans reason about ideas, and have intuitions about bad ideas, and have various layers of defenses to protect themselves from bad ideas.

Now, if you’re making idea and don’t care that much about truth or whatever but want it to spread, what could you do to increase its chances of replication?

• Demand that it not be scrutinized (so more of it gets through and it isn’t rejected)
  
• Demand that it must be followed and copied EXACTLY (so more of it gets through)
• Demand to punish anyone that gives up on it
• Demand to punish anyone who doesn’t adopt it

Etc.

So, in the discussion of Bad Social Justice rhetoric, we sometimes see something come up about standpoint theory (or whatever the formal name is), the idea being that privileged people such as whites, men, white gay men, etc, cannot truly know the experiences of oppressed groups.

They must “sit down and listen”, to use the vocabulary.

Criticism of the ideology is then rejected (on the grounds that they cannot ever truly have the proper knowledge).  The full content must be accepted, acted upon, and spread.  No stopping to consider whether it’s healthy or safe or anything else.

The problem is that, like a rootkit that gets direct access to the core of a computer system, this leaves a giant, exploitable hole.

This is not the only group, ideology, or movement to do or have done this.

It’s way more common than it should be.