Anti-Rational Meme

A Meme that spreads by suppressing Criticism of it.

Anti-rational memes propagate through credentialism, taboos, social pressure, and shame — mechanisms that prevent ideas from being scrutinized. Rather than surviving criticism, they survive by avoiding it.

Connections

• •Opposite of Rational Meme — which spreads by surviving criticism
• •Thrives in static societies where criticism is discouraged
• •Undermined by traditions of criticism in dynamic societies
• •Produces Stasis by blocking Error Correction
• •Can create hangups within individual minds
• •Coercion is a common mechanism anti-rational memes use to propagate
• •Part of Culture — the memetic landscape of a society