Survival of a meme for a long time is a weak evidence of its truth. It’s not zero evidence, because true memes have advantage over false ones, but neither it’s particularly strong evidence, because there are other reasons for meme virulence instead of truth, so the signal to noise ratio is not that great.
You should, of course, remember that Argument Screens Off Authority. If something is true there have to be some object level arguments in favor of it, instead of just vague meta-reasoning about “Anscient Wisdom”.
If all the arguments for a particular thing are appeals to tradition, if you actually look into the matter and it turns out that even the most passionate supporters of it do not have anything object-level to back up their beliefs, if the idea has to shroud itself in ancestry and mystery, lest it will lack any substance, then it’s a stronger evidence that the meme is false.
Survival of a meme for a long time is a weak evidence of its truth. It’s not zero evidence, because true memes have advantage over false ones, but neither it’s particularly strong evidence, because there are other reasons for meme virulence instead of truth, so the signal to noise ratio is not that great.
You should, of course, remember that Argument Screens Off Authority. If something is true there have to be some object level arguments in favor of it, instead of just vague meta-reasoning about “Anscient Wisdom”.
If all the arguments for a particular thing are appeals to tradition, if you actually look into the matter and it turns out that even the most passionate supporters of it do not have anything object-level to back up their beliefs, if the idea has to shroud itself in ancestry and mystery, lest it will lack any substance, then it’s a stronger evidence that the meme is false.