Antimemetics IRL
Information with weird properties
Ideas are so common that they are hard to think about. One is tempted to compare it to a fish in water, not knowing what water is. Ideas are so common, flowing everywhere all the time in conscious experience, that they are more akin to the oxygen atoms in the water molecules. The study of ideas themselves has branched out in many directions since Plato
Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" in 1973, arguing that memes are units of information transmitted through culture, much like genes are transmitted through reproduction. While some of the finer quantifiable points of Dawkins’ proposition do not stand up to scrutiny or scientific study, it is impossible to deny that there is an analogy here. Ideas exist, and they spread. Memes with certain advantages will “survive” more effectively than others. Ideas that contribute to the continuation of life will spread more effectively than those that do the opposite. Memes that make one feel good will spread effectively, but so can memes that make one feel bad if they feel the need to offload that feeling onto another mind to be rid of it.
While there is far more to say about memetics, and especially about its relationship to mimetics, this essay will not go further into what makes ideas spread well. This essay focuses instead on ideas that do not spread well for various reasons: antimemes, countermemes, and entromemes.
Antimemes
An antimeme is an idea that cannot spread easily. Out of the types discussed in this essay, this is the least interesting. An antimeme is hard to describe, like a complex mathematical formula. Even if it can be described simply, there is an obstacle to its transmission. An idea is like a seed, and to grow, it needs to be planted in fertile soil. One may be able to explain a gradient easily (as the combination of partial derivatives of a multivariable function), but the recipient needs a background in calculus to understand it effectively.
This kind of information is common and typically found in advanced graduate school textbooks. It can be accessed and spread, but it takes a very long time for such memes to do so. For a mind to receive and spread these kinds of ideas, it must be trained and disciplined over a long period of time.
Countermemes
Countermeme is barely a real term, with its only definition being in Wiktionary:
A meme posted in opposition to or as a mockery of another meme.
This is a terrible definition. Discard forever. Here is a better thing for the term to refer to. A countermeme is a meme that completely neutralizes the memetic forces of another meme. This means the former idea can no longer spread, which makes it quite difficult to find an example of it. This does not refer to the debunking of an idea, because in such instances, both the debunked idea and its debunking can survive and be transmitted. This is more akin to the original idea no longer existing and being entirely replaced by another idea.
A description of such a meme can only be approached from the side, not head-on. Hopefully, the reader will relate to this: occasionally, one becomes acquainted with something new, whether it is a new book, a new TV show, a system, or perhaps even another person. At the onset of such a discovery, one tends to have a first impression, a specific perspective on the matter. When one spends enough time with the subject at hand, that perspective can shift dramatically as it becomes more fleshed out. In the end, one realizes that their perspective has changed, but because of the new information, they cannot bring their head back to the previous perspective that lacked it. I have had this experience a few times, and it is especially pronounced when the initial understanding is a misperception.
Even if the reader cannot relate to this experience, I can, which means it exists. There are ideas that, at one time, depended on my subjective perception and that I cannot possibly recover because my subjective perception has since gained more information.
Another example may be gaslighting. When gaslighting, one introduces countermemes into another's head. These are often temporary countermemes in which the original erased idea is eventually recovered.
Entromemes
Entromemes (a term I just made up), or entropic memes, are ideas that break down as they are spread. They decompose and become less of what they are. They lose structure and coherence in their spread, even if they can still be represented. There is only one instance I can think of where information has this property: inefficiencies in the stock market.
The stock market is a remarkably effective information transmission device. It uses skin-in-the-game incentives to get all information about a security reflected in its price as quickly as possible. When this is not happening, and information is not priced in, such as if you see the ad for the iPhone 19x pro before anyone on Wall Street, you can act on this information and buy Apple stock. In doing so, you drive up demand for the stock, raising the price just a little bit. As the information disseminates, the price now reflects the increase in value that the new iPhone brings to Apple’s stock.
Edges in the stock market tend to be more complex than this, but not always. Often, an inefficiency is that information is not being priced in quickly enough. One can act on this fact and make the trade before this information is priced in. However, once they maximize this, they close the gap. They are now the ones pricing in the information, and the edge no longer exists. The idea of an edge in the stock market disappears once it is acted upon.
These edges disappear even faster when they are disseminated because more people act on them, causing them to fade. Edge erosion is why Renaissance Technologies is so secretive about its algorithms, and why there is a cap on the number of its investors in its fund. If information about their algorithms, which consistently beat the market (until recently), were made public, the essential aspect of that information (that it is an edge in the stock market) would decay.
Entromemetic edge erosion is similar to strategy optimization in game theory. Players will adjust their strategies based on new information, especially if that information is the opponent changing their strategy. Best possible strategies cease to be the best once everyone knows about them. Then they are no longer the best possible strategies: the meme itself degrades into just another strategy. The thing that made the meme spread: its effectiveness as a strategy, disappears as it spreads. An interesting dynamic is at play here, and I have had a hard time finding other examples of it.
Example of a countermeme: the meme "LOST is a good TV show" was entirely destroyed by the meme "LOST was always a terrible TV show" as soon as the finale aired. It simply became impossible for anyone to believe the former.
The Entromeme concept may need to be refined somewhat, mainly because at first glance there are a ton of concepts that could fall under that classification. Maybe that's intentional, but it didn't sound that way with your elaboration. I'm primarily thinking of the entropic nature within complicated ideas, which power social or political movements, but lose resolution and become low-poly flanderizations of themselves as they are popularized.
There was an entire drama cycle revolving around Academic Agent observing this trend within the Dissident Rightist spaces a few months ago for example. The rejoinder from cooler heads was exactly this, that ideas tend to lose detail and have their sharper edges weathered off as they spread until they can resemble caricatures of themselves, but that's natural with mass movements etc. etc.