This post was inspired by the following question posed by /u/IGI-111:

so i'm going to make the claim you don't agree with already

abstract philosophers have a ton of influence on what people eventually think

it's not just innate selection, if Marx didn't exist leftists wouldn't be commies and would have believed in a probably completely different radical theory in the XXth century

and the only relevant question you should ask yourself if you actually want to engage productively with memetics

is to what degree would that alternative idea be different from Marx's

if it's 0, then yeah memetics is useless

if it's more than 0, then there is a degree of influence Marx had and had he changed it slightly with his individual agency, history might have turned out slightly differently

Memes as ideas that exist and replicate independent from man’s genes and material environment exist only in the case of scientific ideas; this is more than I would have admitted a month ago, and I still maintain that it is more accurate to deny the existence of memes in general. Certainly, where culture is concerned, that is the case, if only for the reason that people are adept at ignoring scientific ideas or implications that they dislike.

The reason that memes exist only as scientific ideas is that only non-trivial, apparently proven ideas can ever hope to take on a life of their own beyond the basic impulses of men. This, in turn, is inferred from the observation that the mind contains only one impulse that is enough of a sandbox that individually unimaginable ideas may enter it and subsequently act as an independently replicating, potentially mutating external pressure on behavior. That impulse is the desire for truth.

Let’s demonstrate this with some models. First imagine a flat, featureless plain. Many classical memeticists believe this is what the mind is like; they are liberal individualists and blank slatists.1 For them, memetics is just an impulse that allows them to discuss the obvious evolution of behavior without disobeying by admitting that genes shape behavior2 (more on this later). Since the mind has no features, behavior is explained solely by whatever memes reside on the plain. Under maximal tabula rasa assumptions, memes get into the mind on a first-come-first-serve basis (making childhood Really Important in keeping with the blank slate tradition), and evolution of the meme-pool occurs as unfit memes cause deadly behaviors. Consequently, neither the gene pool nor the material environment must change as culture changes.

In the second model, the mind has some valleys and crevices. Memes that fit these holes can enter the mind and fill them with various success. Better fitting memes may enter and displace worse fitting memes. Whatever meme currently fills the holes produces the behavior. Memes are selected by symbiotic potential and good fit with the mold, which may be determined by genes and environment. The most appealing memes may not be the most symbiotic, implying the existence of pathological memes that have staying power once attached, in contrast to Model 1’s mere first-come first-served basis.

In the third model, the mind lets no memes reside within it. Instead, like in Model 2, the mind has a certain shape which can vary based on genetics or environmental factors; unlike in Model 2, in Model 3, behavior is determined merely by the shape of the mind. While Model 3 does allow for environmental factors, including existing culture, to influence the shape of the mind dynamically, it does not allow for the Freud-esque mental-fragility of Model 2 wherein brief exposure to information can drive behavior long after that information is flushed from the subject’s immediate environment.

Model 3 of course includes cultural inertia as a part of the environment, but unlike Model 2 it gives culture no independence from man and his immediate surroundings; in Model 2 (and Model 1), culture can mutate independent of change in the gene pool or material conditions; in Model 3 it cannot. Change in Model 3 proceeds from the relevant starting point, but where there is change in culture there must also be change in the gene pool or the environment-excluding-culture. In Model 3, Culture = E[Phenotype], whereas in Model 2, Culture = E[Phenotype + Memepool].

Which model fits the mind best? It is intuitively apparent to me that Model 2 gives the best explanation for scientific beliefs, while Model 3 is gives the best explanation for normative culture. As such, memetics is garbage when it comes to explaining politics, although it may be useful for modeling how justified true belief proliferates.

Why this intuition? I think the explanation is that memes must be rigorous and apparently true to the average receiver before taking on lives of their own. Obvious nonsense may be unique, but it is still nonsense, hardly even information. An example: there are different species of trees. Say this offends some group that has special logging interests. They begin to state that all trees are the same even though everyone can see that this is obviously untrue. Because the loggers have power, people fall in line as to not offend them. The key observation is that, because the idea is obviously untrue, no one really believes it, so its existence is totally dependent on the loggers maintaining their power. The BS was born out of genes and material conditions and is only maintained in the face of overwhelming arbologoy by said genes and material conditions maintaining sovereignty. Any “mutation” of the political gaslight in any direction other than that of truth is in fact heresy and, because it is false, totally trivial impulse-verbiage. Mutations must require effort; if they are not effortful, then they come from impulse, and if they come from impulse, they appeal to impulse. If they come from impulse quickly and appeal to said impulse, then we are dealing with a mold that produces its own memes. This is Model 3. The mold must not produce the meme; mutation must come from nontrivial effort such that it may appeal to impulse but is not itself impulse in essence. For any descriptive idea that is political instead of scientific, obviously false or unproven instead of true and demonstrated, that idea is going to be, in essence, impulse. In no way does it have life of its own; the idea was essentially already contained in the subjects from which it comes and to which it attaches. To put it most concisely, I believe Model 2 is appropriate for descriptive ideas that are apparently true, while Model 3 is appropriate for normative impulses and descriptive ideas that are accepted due to heavy normative biases.

Sometimes there may be side-shows that approximate Model 2 which are totally dependent on Model 3 processes. Some of the extensive academic “discourse” in wokeism may approximate Model 2 if there is enough double-think in its participants and if the ideas are complicated enough that they aren’t just garbage any anti-white person could think up in five minutes (then it’s just ideological whining, not memetic exchange). Even if this is sometimes the case, it would be a mistake to model wokeism with Model 2, since the mold in Model 2 would be selecting for ideas that effectively shit on white people. The memetic “discourse” is in this case merely a process of a gene-environment driven, pre-existing hatred for white people. It may correlate with policy but it does not cause policy. Underlying normative hatred for white people causes both. To lose oneself in the memetics of such a vapid political discourse, if it has memes at all, would be to distract oneself and to ignore true causes behind culture.

What of memetics itself then? What we see in memetics is a pseudo-scientific discourse that is probably best modeled with Model 2 insofar as we have found that some form of memetics is half-way plausible sometimes, where the mold selects for ideas that explain group evolution without using group evolution (because that’s racist). But since memetics should set off obvious truth alarm bells, the Model 2 discourse may be best encapsulated and situated within a Model 3 where genes and material incentives are discouraging the recognition of race and by extension ideas like group evolution.

Lastly, what can we say about the Idealism Coefficient presented above? On average we should expect it to be low. Different events may possess different coefficients depending on their scientific content. Darwin, for instance, certainly raised the average Idealism Coefficient of the 19th century. Did Marx? That depends on how scientific Marxism really is. Assuming it’s essentially just an impulse-ethic, Marx would have only given definite form to Leftist/Communist impulses that already existed. To whatever degree Marxism is rigorous, I assume it would be a weak version of Model 2 where variance in meme exposure accounts for less than 10% of variance in ideological behavior.

I am just beginning to read Marx, so I will form a better opinion on this question in the following weeks. If you would like to join the reading discord and discuss these things, here’s the link. We would love to have you: https://discord.gg/UkKhUds2pF

Addendum: The Lindsay Fallacy

The Lindsay fallacy: A name for the phenomenon where a memetic discourse is assumed to be the cause of sovereignty and sovereignty's agenda, as opposed to a second result of said agenda. I decided to bestow this honor upon Mr. Lindsay after watching the first hour of this video. The thesis of said video is that "the Hegelian dialectic is the operating system of the Left" and specifically that "you need to understand the Hegelian dialectic, their religion, to understand and predict wokeism."

An hour into the video, Lindsay has presented the following evidence: (a) a CRT textbook used the term "dialectic" (b) Marx was influenced by Hegel and used the term "dialectic" (c) The Young Hegelians were leftist and thought that the dialectic of the State was not yet complete.

I believe the following evidence falsifies Lindsay's hypothesis. (a) Lindsay himself mentioned this one: the Young Hegelians were opposed by conservative Hegelians who believed that the Prussian State was the Absolute Idea of the State, the completion of the dialectic. Hegel himself seems to have leaned this way -- Russel states in his summary in A History of Western Philosophy that Hegel was a monarchist and supported the Prussian State. Russel also stated that Hegel said that he believed the dialectic could continue in the Americas via conflict between the Northern continent and the Southern continent, but Hegel was apparently quiet as to what he thought the new synthesis would look like.

(b) Fauerbach, and Marx, stripped Hegelianism of its core metaphysical substance, leaving the dialectic as an empty shell. This means that Hegel's original dialectic did not cause Marxism. Marxism and subsequent Leftisms merely aped Hegelianism and were not truly influenced by it. Hegel himself actually stole the dialectic from a demonstration in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, where it was a tool that was used to demonstrate some hypothesis about space-time. The core to Hegelianism was, apparently, that the world is one Absolute Idea which is evolving. Everything is connected and our thoughts and political organization are determined by the knowledge of this Absolute Idea. Existence is but a thought and man exists so that the Absolute can observe its own thought. The logic of Hegel's dialectic is that the Absolute cannot both be one thing and be not one thing. It cannot be Just and injust, for instance. Just and injust are illusions and the truth is some combination found (imprecisely) by imagining their "synthesis." Political contradictions are also mere illusions which will resolve; time is an illusion as well. Fauerbach, and with him Marx, sucked all of the mystical-occult substance out of this "philosophy" and declared that everything is material, there is no absolute Idea, none of that stuff is true. Marx was an instrumentalist who declared that such abstract philosophy was silly, and that the point was to change things. Hegel, then, was just a skin for Marx, a camouflage if you will, a way to appear en vogue, and he moved away from it in his later years as Hegel's general influence waned. Yet the now-hollow phrase "dialectic" remained, the substance of which for Marx was that of class conflict and the apparent inevitability of Communism. These ideas were nothing like what Hegel thought and did not deeply rely on the "dialectic" aesthetic.

(c) The Marxist dialectic is no longer the "driving force" of the Left. The textbook Lindsay cites for evidence mentions a racial dialectic. Marx never spoke of race conflict, so again the substance has been removed from "dialectic." What is "dialectic" with no substance? Merely "change" or "conflict." The Left is now at least twice removed from the actual meaning of "dialectic" yet Lindsay thinks it's their secret operating system, when in reality it's just a skin passed down via Marx to people who have an in-born temperament that predisposes them to the bleeding-heart ethic that is omnipresent in his work.

What there is here with Lindsay, then, is a clear case of someone seeing an instance of a discourse within a power structure and assuming that the memetic discourse is supreme, that this empty signal which has been passed down is some "operating system," something necessary to "understand" if you want to predict "wokeism." This can't be the case because there are at least 3 different actual understandings of "dialectic," and wokeism is on the 3rd one only, and that understanding is not broached by Lindsay, because it is the understanding that "dialectic" is a shell filled with woke temperament on modern identity issues. The question as to where that temperament comes from is unsolved by Lindsay, because the answer is definitely not "from reading Hegel", or Marx, or anything for that matter.