Read some fun stories about antimeme SCPs. It's a fun idea for some creepy stories, but I'm more interested in this idea in a practical sense. namely, in the sense that antimemes do exist in the world and in our minds. the way that our minds are constructed naturally result in blind spots. blind spots are valuable to be aware of for lots of reasons. the things that you're not aware of can be valuable, or dangerous or can make your life more or less difficult depending on your awareness of them. In general, it's good to be aware of your blind spots. knowledge can fall under a handful of different categories. this is nothing new but i'll go through the relevant ones very quickly: - knowledge you know - knowledge you know you don't know - knowledge you don't know you don't know antimemes are a special category of the last one. antimemes are things that your brain is bad at remembering, even when exposed to it repeatedly or even when you try to learn it. Naturally, this means antimemes are information that is difficult to obtain or internalize. Antimemes are a natural interest to me, as someone who's interested in arcane ideas and concepts. It's easy to be excited by what antimemes could be. It's easy to be excited by the possibility that antimemes are useful. One might think that antimemes, by their nature are difficult to describe, but I don't think that's true at all. In fact, by thinking of ways to describe them, I think that the usefulness of interacting with and learning about antimemes will become self evident. The first way i want to think of antimemes is by considering how they might emerge. I think antimemes naturally percolate in situations where a piece of information becomes harmful to some entity in some way. One of the easiest examples that come to mind is information that is emotionally harmful. I think we all viscerally know why we would want to avoid that information, but i think that avoiding processing or engaging with that information or those ideas can create interesting positive feedback loops. here's one such example of an antimeme - the idea that your appearance is statistically not very attractive. Now, i think right now there's a movement around saying that everyone is beautiful, which i largely agree with, but once we reduce sexual attractiveness down to appearance and statistics (which i am aware is a very reductive perspective of human sexuality), it is very possible that, for some people, their appearance is not going to be attractive to more than 50% of polled people. In fact, given that human sexuality based on appearance has no guarantee of being statistically normal, it's even possible that a majority of people would not be found to be attractive to a majority of people polled. I think that this is a perfect example of an antimeme. I think it's natural to think soemthing like "well that doesn't really connect to overall attractiveness anyways" or "I'm happy with how i look, i don't need anyone else to like it" which are very valid and generally speaking, good things to think, BUT it's also possible that those kinds of thoughts or reactions are natural reactions to the emotional hurt or irritation that the core sentiment causes. This is a really important detail because this is the core detail that makes this kind of information an antimeme. furthermore, if an individual feels emotional hurt or irritation from an idea and chooses to minimize exposure to that idea as a result, whether that's concious or instintual, they minimize the chances that they can gain any use or information out of that idea. In cases like this, one of the most useful pieces of information that they can get out of that idea can be, how to prevent that idea from hurting you in the future. let's go back to our example. the idea "i am not conventionally attractive" is an idea that's likely to be hard to keep in your head or on your mind due to how emotionally uncomfortable it can be. However, if people are able to keep that idea in their heads, it's very possible that they can follow up that idea with thoughts like "do I want to be conventionally attractive?", "how can become conventionally attractive?", :"What are some of the easiest ways to improve my conventional attractive rating?" and answering these questions and/or taking actions based on these questions can make the idea "i am not conventionally attractive" less harmful when it presents itself again in the future. I am not simply saying that, if the idea that "i am not conventionally attractive" bothers you, then you should simply resolve to become conventionally attractive. I'm keeping my wording deliberately vague - I think that processing these difficult thoughts can result in a lot of different forms of closure. My personal response to processing the idea of "i am not conventionally attractive" has been to say, internally "well, i don't really care enough about it to focus on improving that rather than doing other things i'm basically just choosing this for myself, and there's no point in feeling bad about a choice i've made". however, the chances are that, the more emotionally uncomfortable an idea is, the more difficult it is to process. the more difficult it is to process, the harder it is to develop tools to deal with it when it comes up, the harder it is to predict or anticipate, and the harder it is to see or take action around ways that it impacts other aspects of their life. someone who's terrified of the idea "i am not conventionally attractive" might make it into such an antimeme that they regularly avoid situations that might suggest this kind of idea, like dating. They might end up terrified to ask even one person out on a date, even though, statistically, almost definitely someone will say yes to a date if you ask enough people. they may avoid taking actions that are likely to make them more conventionally attractive, because they might feel like taking those actions is finally admitting that they're ugly. In this way, we start seeing a positive feedback loop. the fact that this idea is an antimeme makes the antimeme more dangerous and more impactful. if someone were simply comfortable seeing themselves as conventionally unattractive, the idea that they might be conventionally unattractive would have very little value to that person. however, if someone is terrified of being conventionally unattractive, they might develop all sorts of harmful/non-ideal behaviors or habits that could be better understood and dismantled if they were simply willing to consider the idea that they might be conventionally unattractive. Because of this, this is a type of antimeme that i think is very valuable to aggressively tackle and process and dismantle. obviously, this isn't easy or always possible depending on the situations that people are in, but i think that this does a decent job of demonstrating why understanding antimemes can be valuable and/or useful. of course, that's not the only type of antimeme. I brought that one up first because i think it's potentially the easiest to understand. However, i think that there's a few more cases in which antimemes are very important to understand. there are situations where a piece of information, a concept, or an idea can be harmful to an individual or a group when other people have that information. In these situations, antimemes are naturally created, usually by the people that could be hurt by other people having that information, because it strongly benefits them to keep that information from others. There are many such cases and i'll try to go through as many as i can think of. One of the easiest examples to think of is a password. if someone else finds the password to your bank account, you could be fucked. As a result, it's in our best interests to make our passwords as difficult for people to get as possible. that's one of the reasons that password managers are so highly recommended - because strings of random characters are very difficult to keep in people's brains. However, if your password is soemthing like your last name and your birthday, people can remember that for years or be able to infer it from knowledge about you. this is an easy example that demonstrates this kind of situation, but it's not particularly useful to categorize this as an antimeme. We're vaguely all aware of this kind of antimeme and aware that these things should be antimemes. Another example is in the oppression of marginalized people. When people are marginalized or when a group of people are subject to the values of another group of people, things can no longer be said openly. this isn't simply in explicit ideas, like escape plans or revolutionary actions. this is also in feelings, sentiments, vibes, in recognizing the look in other people's eyes that tell you that you're not alone, in creating and maintaining culture in environments that try and stamp that culture out. This also applies in figuring out who to trust. Little shibboleths that tell you or others "oh, we're from the same place, you can talk openly to me." It's hard for me to describe because it's largely subconscious/instinctual, but I feel rather strongly that korean culture, african american culture, and southern culture and gay culture draw a lot from this kind of antimeme. These cultures historically and currently have a lot of contexts in which people are de-incentivized from talking openly. As a result, I think these cultures naturally learn to make little ways of communiation that can't be manipulated by others. inside jokes or expressions that look like random nonsense or gibberish to others. ways of talking that other people can't replicate (like accents) or turns of phrase that mean more to those "in the know", but can't be easily or naturally deciphered by people outside of the culture. I think this is also a huge part of why slang frequently has nebulous definitions. If a new piece of slang has an easy definition, it's easy for other people to take and replicate. i think this also includes methods or styles of communication. Maybe this is natural - after all, when people can't or don't want to assume that people simply say what they mean, then the guidelines for conversations tend to be different. The things that you have to reassure people about are different. being told "you can trust me" might be reassuring for some people, but if you're from a culture that relies on these shibboleths to figure out who to trust, being told "you can trust me" by someone who doesn't have any of the right cues is not going to feel comfortable. Very relatedly, another one of this kind of antimeme is created when people in positions of power are in control. There are pieces of information that can empower people who are being controlled by people in power. The people in power do not want the people under them to have that information. One such piece of information is compensation information. People in power have successfully made compensation information taboo to talk about despite the fact that it benefits workers significantly. Another type of information is information about unionization and organizing. the more information about unionization and organizing there is, the easier it is for people to unionize and/or organize. this gives organizations more power over the corporations that they work for. one way that I think this happens quite a lot is in information control. A lot of companies or organizations will be the arbiters or gatekeepers of knowledge. Food companies might lobby for safety regulations that might not be strictly necessary but convince people that only food that they make can be trusted. Educational institutions insinuate that the best way to learn is from taking certified classes that you need to pay tons of money for. The political party will insist that voting is the most impactful way that you can affect politics. They don't want you learning about direct action, or the commnunist values of people like Martin Luther King Jr whose legacy they claim to want to uphold. finally, another type of antimeme is what i'll call the "problematic" antimeme. this is a type of antimeme that is mostly adapted because of the harm it can do to other people, but because so ingrained in one's brain that the input of other people no longer becomes necessary in order to make it an antimeme. The gist of this antimeme is - there are many topics that most people consider hugely repugnant for good reason - abuse, pedophilia, rape, racism, homophobia, etc. A lot of these topics can frequently be so repugant to people that deeply thinking about the circumstances and be seen as terrible or bad. This is largely very similar to the first type of antimeme. Thinking about something might cause bad feelings in yourself so you try to avoid it. However, this one is different in an interesting and unique way. While the first type of antimeme is about personal emotional preservation, this kind of antimeme is about protecting other people and that's where it gets interesting. When the George Floyd protests broke out in 2020, there were a huge number of ways that people protested. In tech, I saw an interesting trend - replacing problematic words with non-problematic words. For example, in systems where multiple servers got their instructions from one primary service, we moved from describing these servers as "masters" and "slaves" to "lead" and "follower" or something like that. Similarly, there was a cultural move from using the terms "blacklist" and "whitelist" to "allowlist" and "blocklist". With actions like this, i think it's natural and reasonable to ask, "What is the practical effect of this terminology change?" However, asking that kind of question can be an antimeme. The question itself requires people to think deeply about the effects of racism and or place within it. The answer that we might come to is that, in fact, we aren't doing very much to combat racism and it's possible for the discomfort of that to turn this conversation and this perspective into an antimeme. The antimeme might cause some people to simply not ask any questions. The antimeme might cause people to get defensive or accuse people of supporting racist structures. This problematic feeling might push people to avoid all sorts of things, out of fear that they might secretly be supporting racism. This problematic feeling might push people to shame other people for asking questions about racist institutions and about how racism impacts people's lifes. I think with many problematic things, people often take an attitude of "if you have to ask, it's probably bad". This is even a perspective that i largely agree with, but i would be pretty hesitant to discourage conversation and communication around why it might be bad, especially when that conversation and communication can do a lot towards educating people about how to deal with these big problems. A very easy example of this kind of thing is the massive online reaction to Lindsey Ellis's video where she compared Raya and the Last Dragon to the Last Airbender. I personally haven't bothered to dig into the details of people's complaints and what happened, but it strikes me as very much the kind of phenomenon fueled by this antimemetic feeling around racism. the reaction wasn't measured and conversational. It wasn't even a "i strongly disgree and really hope you see where you went wrong here". It pretty quickly turned into death threats, which i think most people would say is an overreaction to a turn of phrase. There's a lot of these kinds of cases in which i think being subject to the antimemetic qualities to things can be quite harmful to society and to individuals. The final category of antimeme that i want to talk about is i think probably the least harmful, but still not great: antimemes caused by a difficulty or unnaturality in connecting or understanding. To some degree, this is more a commentary on a primarily mechanism by which many antimemes form and there can be a lot of overlap between this kind of antimeme and other kinds of antimemes, but i think this one is worth thinking about meaningfully anyways. This type of antimeme just emerges from patterns of thinking being particularly illsuited for the natural ways that humans think or the natural ways that a particular individual might think. At the most understandable or relatable level, i think we have quantum mechanics, which repeatedly challenges our notions of what is or isn't possible, with ideas saying that particles can be in multiple places at once, or that a particle can have two seemingly contradictory states at the same time. these concepts are spectacularly hard to get an intuition for, even if we flesh out the formalism so strictly that we can achieve highly accurate results with the mathematics of the situation. At a slightly less relatable level, we have concepts that are difficult to think of or consider because they contradict natural assumptions. For example, a natural assumption that people are likely to have is something like "this person that is nice to be is good". A lot of people don't naturally wonder if someone that's being nice to them is secretly trying to manipulate them. I would put this in the category of antimemes created by cognitive biases. The coginitve biases push away possible ideas or truths that might be valuable. Of course, the idea of cognitive biases and a willingness to counteract them can be huge in removing antimemetic power here. At the least widely relatable level, it's possible that individual humans have specific patterns of thought that make it harder for them to perceive or see certain ideas. I think this can be very frustrating for people around them, especially if this antimeme is causing problems in their life. I think that this one is probably the least harmful, but obviously still very valuable to combat. Combating this type of antimeme does a lot to develop and vivid, detailed, and nuanced version of the world, which in my perspective, is extremely valuable in figuring out your own happiness.