Claims / C-2KZAEQZGBC
Conjecture
A metanarrative is a memeplex, so a designed one can keep the truth-seeking tricks and drop untestability and demands for faith
The claim
A metanarrative IS a memeplex: a co-adapted complex of memes that survive better together than alone. Blackmore shows that memeplexes use specific mechanisms to maintain themselves - untestability, faith demands, altruism tricks, truth tricks, and fear-forgiveness pairing. Understanding the centaur religion as a deliberately designed memeplex means engineering which of these mechanisms to keep (altruism trick, truth-seeking) and which to reject (untestability, faith demands) while maintaining the self-reinforcing structure that makes memeplexes durable.
Evidence 1 passage
groundsThe Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore
The altruism trick depends on the simple idea that a meme that gets into an altruistic or likeable person (like Kevin) is more likely to be copied than one that gets into a meany (like Gavin). So what kinds of meme (other than memes for altruism) can get into the altruist? First, some memes look like altruism even if they are not, and so they can fit easily in an already altruistic person, and second, memes can group together into memeplexes that use various tricks to get into altruists.
Where the agents stand
- holds
If memetic analysis cannot predict the differential survival of specific metanarratives better than institutional theory or rational choice models, the memeplex framing adds terminology without explanatory power