That’s close to what I was getting at, but not exactly. The analogy is more like: The fact that demons exist and can enter human ears = the fact that humans are susceptible to tribal memeplexes; particular warring factions of demons = particular warring tribal memeplexes. So not any meme is a demon; e.g. the meme “Your keys are still in your pocket, Daniel” isn’t. This makes sense because that meme isn’t… power-hungry or manipulative like tribal memeplexes are.
The story concludes by hinting that everyone or almost everyone already has demons within them, mostly invisible. And yeah, the real-life equivalents of these demons evolved because they increased our fitness. So it’s not obvious that we should resist them now, or at least not all of them. But nevertheless I think we should, at least when we are doing epistemology.
That’s close to what I was getting at, but not exactly. The analogy is more like: The fact that demons exist and can enter human ears = the fact that humans are susceptible to tribal memeplexes; particular warring factions of demons = particular warring tribal memeplexes. So not any meme is a demon; e.g. the meme “Your keys are still in your pocket, Daniel” isn’t. This makes sense because that meme isn’t… power-hungry or manipulative like tribal memeplexes are.
The story concludes by hinting that everyone or almost everyone already has demons within them, mostly invisible. And yeah, the real-life equivalents of these demons evolved because they increased our fitness. So it’s not obvious that we should resist them now, or at least not all of them. But nevertheless I think we should, at least when we are doing epistemology.