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Antimemetics

author

Nadia Asparouhova

2025-07

• This was great, I need to go back and read her book on open source.
• Mostly read this one on plane rides.
• Connects to so many ideas I've read in the past, want to read more of, and have thought about.
• Also applies to organizational memory, something I've struggled with and been disappointed by.
• Explained a lot of things I'd noticed as a very but not completely online person, including TPOT/This Part of Twitter.

Interesting snippets that stood out to me:

• memes are ideas wrapped in lightweight packages that allow them to propagate and reinforce shared values
• memeplex is the institutionalized version of a meme, such as a religion or a political party
• Mimetic desire: subject = person who wants something, object = thing they want; model = the person the subject wants to imitate
• The idea that culture is collapsing as a result of globalization, everything is repeatedly recycled; shows up in video games [though I could argue the same for religion, etc.]
• Ideas that can be measured can be controlled, or even exploited
• How tribes influence the internet, and the dynamics of having secret tribes reinforcing each other in large group settings.
• The types of scientists
  • real science -- habits and practices that produce knowledge
  • careerists -- motivated by ambition, doesn't necessarily produce knowledge
• We are here to examine the shape of ideas as they are, not as we wish they could be.
• Supermemes act as a way to organize people.
• Attention is how we carve our reality.
• Make systems that are more antifragile, avoid overspecialization
• We need critics, whistleblowers, gatekeepers, but also builders
• We must [...] paint the world as we wish it to be
• Adding more voices to a room without additional structure leads to tribalism and infighting
• Champions need to bring ideas into the light, including ones that are hard to remember; and then keep paying attention to those ideas.
• Institutional design significantly affects what ideas we keep paying attention to.
• Moloch problems: every citizen hates the system, but for lack of a good coordination mechanism it endures.
  • I've also seen this in Yudkowsky's books as problems that would need a "hand of god" to solve them simultaneously; eg. nuclear nonproliferation.
• The world, after all, is more than just what we inherit. It's what we choose to notice, nurture, and build.

— Kunal