A bit of devils advocacy: We do not automatically understand what is and isn’t important for the mission of people and their loved ones living good lives and avoiding being killed. In order to gain that understanding we need strong rationality, and to make use of the thought work that other people have done and continue to do. Good understanding of memeplexes seems very valuable for that rationality work, and so, from that perspective is upstream of other concerns. However, pragmatically, I do think we need to be working both to use existing memeplexes while at the same time trying to understand memeplexes (and develop better memeplexes for understanding memeplexes).
A bit of devils advocacy: We do not automatically understand what is and isn’t important for the mission of people and their loved ones living good lives and avoiding being killed. In order to gain that understanding we need strong rationality, and to make use of the thought work that other people have done and continue to do. Good understanding of memeplexes seems very valuable for that rationality work, and so, from that perspective is upstream of other concerns. However, pragmatically, I do think we need to be working both to use existing memeplexes while at the same time trying to understand memeplexes (and develop better memeplexes for understanding memeplexes).