There’s strong selection pressure on us to develop immunity to harmful memes. There’s no selection pressure on the meme to be harmful to us. So we win, don’t we?
(It’s different with parasites; there’s no selection pressure for them to harm us as such, but they are competing with us for resources, which will ultimately harm us. The only resource that memes require is talking time).
Memes require resources too. Harmful memes are just like other pathogens—so they are selected for increased virulence, increased ability to compromise host immunity, increased ability to divert host resources into the production and distribution of memes—and so on.
So I’m left trying to explain why committing suicide and having fewer children might be adaptive behavior.
Not a very promising approach. Suicide is very unlikely to be adaptive—and it is pretty well established that the demographic transition is also maladaptive:
The continuing decline of fertility to below replacement levels in many parts of Europe (both richer and poorer parts) is unlikely ever to find an adaptive explanation.
I’m updating: I concede I was likely talking nonsense regarding suicide memes. Memes are sort of like viruses in that they really want to spread themselves but don’t necessarily require that much in way of resources from the host. Yet deadly viruses exist.
So I think I’d expect deadly memes to spread in “outbreaks” and “epidemics”, like viruses do, but not to hang around a population for generations gradually sapping everybody’s reproductive ability.
I’ll try and dig up Boyd and Richerson. Do you know if they address my particular hypothesis (collapse precursor?) I couldn’t see any mention of it with a quick googling—are such hypotheses so easy to generate that there are dozens of them out there and people only address the leading ones?
So I think I’d expect deadly memes to spread in “outbreaks” and “epidemics”, like viruses do, but not to hang around a population for generations gradually sapping everybody’s reproductive ability.
The memes that gradually sap the reproductive ability.of many are not “deadlly”. They are more like cold viruses, and persistent viral infections.
Boyd and Richerson don’t look at your collapse hypothesis. They argue that the number of kids is so small in many cases that it can’t possibly be adaptive.
Memes require resources too. Harmful memes are just like other pathogens—so they are selected for increased virulence, increased ability to compromise host immunity, increased ability to divert host resources into the production and distribution of memes—and so on.
Not a very promising approach. Suicide is very unlikely to be adaptive—and it is pretty well established that the demographic transition is also maladaptive:
Boyd and Richerson 2005, p.173.
I’m updating: I concede I was likely talking nonsense regarding suicide memes. Memes are sort of like viruses in that they really want to spread themselves but don’t necessarily require that much in way of resources from the host. Yet deadly viruses exist.
So I think I’d expect deadly memes to spread in “outbreaks” and “epidemics”, like viruses do, but not to hang around a population for generations gradually sapping everybody’s reproductive ability.
I’ll try and dig up Boyd and Richerson. Do you know if they address my particular hypothesis (collapse precursor?) I couldn’t see any mention of it with a quick googling—are such hypotheses so easy to generate that there are dozens of them out there and people only address the leading ones?
The memes that gradually sap the reproductive ability.of many are not “deadlly”. They are more like cold viruses, and persistent viral infections.
Boyd and Richerson don’t look at your collapse hypothesis. They argue that the number of kids is so small in many cases that it can’t possibly be adaptive.