How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch Fans of Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins will revel in Aaron Lynch s groundbreaking examination of memetics the study of how ideas and beliefs spread. A meme is characterized by its capacity for displacing rival ideas and beliefs in an evolutionary drama that changes the way people think. By drawing on examples from everyday life, Lynch develops a conceptual basis for understanding memetics.
Memes evolve by natural selection.
What makes an idea potent meme is how effectively it outpropagates other ideas. In memetic evolution, the fittest ideas are not always the truest or the most helpful, just the ones best at self-replication. Thus, crash diets spread not because they confer lasting benefit, but because they cause alternating episodes of dramatic weight loss and slow regain. Lynch argues that certain beliefs spread like viruses and evolve like microbes. In its most revolutionary aspect, memetics asks not how people accumulate ideas, but how ideas accumulate people.