These cultural memes have had lots of selective pressure acting on them, so most of the time they won’t be obviously harmful
For the meme; not necessarily for the person who holds it. Dying for one’s fatherland can be a very successful meme. And that’s exactly why questioning memes is often a good thing for the questioner.
I think the reason most people are averse to questioning is simply due to the social drive to conform, which does not strongly depend on the quality of the norms you’re conforming to. And the drive to associate in cliques and dislike outsiders, which sometimes causes people to associate in similar-IQ cliques and dislike those other stupid/smart people and their rationalist/irrational ideas.
For the meme; not necessarily for the person who holds it. Dying for one’s fatherland can be a very successful meme. And that’s exactly why questioning memes is often a good thing for the questioner.
I think the reason most people are averse to questioning is simply due to the social drive to conform, which does not strongly depend on the quality of the norms you’re conforming to. And the drive to associate in cliques and dislike outsiders, which sometimes causes people to associate in similar-IQ cliques and dislike those other stupid/smart people and their rationalist/irrational ideas.
I mean, yeah, but my point is most of the time a desire to conform is adaptive.
It’s adaptive, but not just because the common memes are good; it’s in large part because others people act against those who don’t conform.
Of course questioning memes needn’t lead to rejecting them.