I’ve stumbled onto a scientific field that, as far as I can tell, is still very nascent. There are many working in it, but they all use different te

A Beginner's Guide to Culture Science - Defender’s Corner

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2025-01-09 03:00:05

I’ve stumbled onto a scientific field that, as far as I can tell, is still very nascent. There are many working in it, but they all use different terms & language. It’s historically been very difficult to study this rigorously and openly, but I think this is changing now. I think the missing piece is active participation from the people being studied.

We need to study ourselves at minimum to protect against propaganda & manipulation. In the best case, I think it will be critical for large scale coordination, and for solving the existential crises that humanity faces today.

I call it “culture science”, most people call it “memetics”. The core idea is that narratives & beliefs have observable, functional effects on our behavior, at the individual & societal levels. We can study the effects of these narratives, their interactions, rates of propagation, and mutations.

Both memetics and biology study patterns that survive. The key difference is that biology studies patterns OF MATTER that survive, whereas memetics studies patterns OF BEHAVIOR that survive.