What people call “memes,” ideas that spread and that compete with one another using people as carriers, are not truly like genes. Ideas spread because, alas, they have for carriers self-serving agents who are interested in them, and interested in distorting them in the replication process. You do not make a cake for the sake of merely replicating a recipe—you try to make your own cake, using ideas from others to improve it. We humans are not photocopiers. So contagious mental categories must be those in which we are prepared to believe, perhaps even programmed to believe. To be contagious, a
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