Faith is the defence of reason against the passions.
The memetic immune system is the defence of the passions against reason, for while True Reason is eternally perfect, it is not so when attempted by our fallible minds.
We can be as mistaken in our reasoning as in our passions, and both must work harmoniously together.
I’d rather see a shorter, commoner single word for “memetic immune system”. WWCW? (What Would Chesterton Write? Or C.S. Lewis, or Aquinas in English translation.)
Ignoring base rates? -- in the sense that if you just invented a clever theory why good is actually bad, and bad is actually good, consider that the prior probability of this being true (and you being the first person who noticed that) is smaller than the probability of you making a mistake in the clever argument.
Maybe even tails coming apart—in the sense that arguments that seem rational are in general more likely to be true, however the correlation may disappear at the extremes, and the marginal value of taking one more idea in an already too long unlikely chain seriously may be negative.
Well said! Though it raises a question: how can we tell when such defenses are serving truth vs defending an error?
As for an easier word for “memetic immune system”, Lewis might well have called it Convention, as convention is when we disregard memes outside our normal mileu. Can’t say for Chesterton or Aquinas; I’m fairly familiar with Lewis, but much less so with the others apart from some of their memes like Chesterton’s Fence.
Faith is the defence of reason against the passions.
The memetic immune system is the defence of the passions against reason, for while True Reason is eternally perfect, it is not so when attempted by our fallible minds.
We can be as mistaken in our reasoning as in our passions, and both must work harmoniously together.
I’d rather see a shorter, commoner single word for “memetic immune system”. WWCW? (What Would Chesterton Write? Or C.S. Lewis, or Aquinas in English translation.)
Adding Up to Normality?
Common sense?
Ignoring base rates? -- in the sense that if you just invented a clever theory why good is actually bad, and bad is actually good, consider that the prior probability of this being true (and you being the first person who noticed that) is smaller than the probability of you making a mistake in the clever argument.
Maybe even tails coming apart—in the sense that arguments that seem rational are in general more likely to be true, however the correlation may disappear at the extremes, and the marginal value of taking one more idea in an already too long unlikely chain seriously may be negative.
Well said! Though it raises a question: how can we tell when such defenses are serving truth vs defending an error?
As for an easier word for “memetic immune system”, Lewis might well have called it Convention, as convention is when we disregard memes outside our normal mileu. Can’t say for Chesterton or Aquinas; I’m fairly familiar with Lewis, but much less so with the others apart from some of their memes like Chesterton’s Fence.