Variations on the same meme

March 5, 1999

If, as Susan Blackmore says, ideas survive by natural selection as "memes", is the theory of memes itself also a meme? If it is, it cannot be a scientific one because it would in that case be unfalsifiable, and thus could only survive as one of her "false" memes or religious viruses. If it is not, then by definition it would be unfit to survive anyway. I vote we forget it, provided voting is still allowed in such a deterministic universe.

C. F. Goodey London E6

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