Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading
TLDR: “A little weird and vague. Not 100% sure of the author’s point, but it was often interesting.”
This is an odd book. It’s quite short, which is good, because had it been much longer, I might have bailed out.
I don’t think it quite delivers on the title. It’s supposedly about how good ideas don’t spread, and the author is all over the place trying to explain that.
There are some obvious reasons: political discouragement, awkward societal implications, a general desire to keep secrets, etc. But the author goes down some weird rabbit holes, some of which are spiritual.
I don’t really know what to make of it. I think my only takeaway is that sometimes a lot of different things “gang up” on an idea to prevent it from spreading. At some level, I already knew this of course, and I don’t think this book did much to clarify or expand on that point.
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