Conspiracy theories and how to combat them were a big topic here last week, right on the heels of Dean Esmay's major contribution with his post about conspiracy theories generally. Well, here's a model that may help us get a handle on them: memetic epidemics.
meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to pass on the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.Couple that concept with epidemic spread patterns and mechanisms, and we have a useful framework that also suggests counter-strategies. Here's how it all fits...
Some societies are indeed more predisposed to this behaviour than others, and conspiracy theories have a more "contagious" environment there. There's also a societal correction factor, which we might define as the "immune response capability." Call it the "Fisk Factor." When contagiousness in an environment is high and immune responses are low, conspiracy memes can and do go epidemic quickly. For a whole host of historical and cultural-political reasons, Arab/Islamic culture is a good example.
Simple enough. To fight these epidemics, however, we need to understand how they spread.
Malcolm Gladwell may have handed us the key. Fortunately, most members of a society are really passive players in this little drama. As he notes in his book "The Tipping Point" and in some of his articles, the people who really matter are a sequence of:
If we think in terms of these players and approaches, a number of potential strategies and approaches open up. Give it some thought, and I'm sure you can come up with a few of your own - or fit examples you've seen into this pattern.
UPDATE: Lazypundit has an excellent point in this post's Comments section re: where satire fits into this framework.
Immune response to a virus can be stimulated by innoculating the subject with a weakened form of the virus, a sample that has been killed or chemically altered so that it is not a threat. Yet the virus remains identifiable, the body learns to produce antibodies, and the immune response is engaged whenever the real viral agent is encountered.
The memetic equivalent to this is obvious: satire. The target meme is rendered inoffensive through hyperbole or paradox, and potential hosts are innoculated with the neutered meme. Their immune response (skepticism, ridicule) is thereby developed, and comes into play whenever the original meme is encountered.
So Scott Ott, Chris Muir, and Cox and Forkum are actually the best anti-Idiotarian memetic engineers we have.
That's a very intelligent point. Thanks, Kevin!
I'll second that motion. Well put indeed, Kevin!
In fact, speaking of Chris Muir, tomorrow on my blog I'll be featuring a cartoon by him that examines this very theme!
Entirely by coincidence, of course. Or so I'd have you believe....