Keep in mind that one of the central ideas of memetics is that memes do not necessarily benefit their hosts. Just as genes do not propagate for the sake of the survival of the species, neither do memes; the most successful memes are the ones that are best at propagating, not the ones that are best for their carriers.
Sure, but at the same time, benefiting the host is certainly an effective method for a meme to propagate—possibly the most effective method. So if an idea tends to be beneficial, we aught to expect that it will spread, and when an idea spreads, we aught to suspect that it is beneficial.
I would say benefiting the host is not only not the most effective method for a meme to propagate, it’s not even among the more effective methods. Memes that do well are ones which maximize their own representation in the population, and how a meme affects factors such as its host’s health and productivity are going to be relatively minor factors compared to how it affects reproduction (observe fundamentalist religious memeplexes which increase their representation due to their carriers’ high rate of childbirth,) how well it encourages transmission between carriers, and how effectively it achieves fixation in those it’s transmitted to (which has much more to do with the quirks of our psychology than any sort of analysis of how the meme benefits us.)
Being beneficial to the host is about as important to the propagation of memes as it is to the propagation of bacterial and viral infestation, which is in fact mostly benign, and sometimes beneficial (we rely on some of the bacteria in our bodies for digestion, for instance, but not most of them.) In the case of bacteria or viruses, we have enough familiarity to dispense with the intuition that benefiting the host might be the most powerful factor in propagation.
It is much less important a mechanism of survival for memes to be beneficial to their host than genes, because memes can travel freely between hosts, and genes cannot, and also because the fitness of memes depends heavily on their ability to achieve fixation in the hosts they’re transmitted to, while transmitted genes are not simply extinguished in their hosts.
(I’ll add a caveat; usefulness to the host could dominate if the selection effects are strong enough; in a situation where most carriers survive and most non-carriers die without reproducing, a meme could become heavily-to-universally represented in a population even if it were not very effective at transmission. But such strong selection effects on memes are unlikely to occur in real life.)
Keep in mind that one of the central ideas of memetics is that memes do not necessarily benefit their hosts. Just as genes do not propagate for the sake of the survival of the species, neither do memes; the most successful memes are the ones that are best at propagating, not the ones that are best for their carriers.
Sure, but at the same time, benefiting the host is certainly an effective method for a meme to propagate—possibly the most effective method. So if an idea tends to be beneficial, we aught to expect that it will spread, and when an idea spreads, we aught to suspect that it is beneficial.
I would say benefiting the host is not only not the most effective method for a meme to propagate, it’s not even among the more effective methods. Memes that do well are ones which maximize their own representation in the population, and how a meme affects factors such as its host’s health and productivity are going to be relatively minor factors compared to how it affects reproduction (observe fundamentalist religious memeplexes which increase their representation due to their carriers’ high rate of childbirth,) how well it encourages transmission between carriers, and how effectively it achieves fixation in those it’s transmitted to (which has much more to do with the quirks of our psychology than any sort of analysis of how the meme benefits us.)
Being beneficial to the host is about as important to the propagation of memes as it is to the propagation of bacterial and viral infestation, which is in fact mostly benign, and sometimes beneficial (we rely on some of the bacteria in our bodies for digestion, for instance, but not most of them.) In the case of bacteria or viruses, we have enough familiarity to dispense with the intuition that benefiting the host might be the most powerful factor in propagation.
It is much less important a mechanism of survival for memes to be beneficial to their host than genes, because memes can travel freely between hosts, and genes cannot, and also because the fitness of memes depends heavily on their ability to achieve fixation in the hosts they’re transmitted to, while transmitted genes are not simply extinguished in their hosts.
(I’ll add a caveat; usefulness to the host could dominate if the selection effects are strong enough; in a situation where most carriers survive and most non-carriers die without reproducing, a meme could become heavily-to-universally represented in a population even if it were not very effective at transmission. But such strong selection effects on memes are unlikely to occur in real life.)