"Mental antivirus": why memetics-based education against contagious ideas matters now
irinarish · x · 2026-09-20
Jim O'Shaughnessy kicked off a thread on "cracking the code of contagious ideas": for decades, memetics researchers, cultural evolution theorists, and communication scholars have been wrestling with the same potentially trillion-dollar question — why ideas spread and how bad ones infect populations.
He argues that teaching "mental antivirus" skills grounded in this science isn't nice-to-have but crucial education needed now more than ever.
More from AGI Musings
- Nature commentary: universities must stop protecting academic bullies or lose more scientists — skoularidou · 2026-09-20
- AI Debater: Distinguish First-Principles ASI Risk From Today's Regulatory Noise — JOBhakdi · 2026-09-20
- As Agents Start Choosing Products, GEO Replaces SEO as the New battleground — nikvassev · 2026-09-20
- Former AI safety skeptic: the 'preposterous' predictions are already coming true — dan_s_becker · 2026-09-20
- "Four Rivers of Computing": a personal syllabus for stealing pioneers' moves — threepointone · 2026-09-20
- Millennium problems become 'low-hanging fruit' once AI solves them, author laments — haider1 · 2026-09-20