Introduction: Joseph Bronski recently put out an article outlining his case against “Mind Virus Theory” [28]. Basically, he doesn’t think that debate or public opinion affect anything. I agree with this, but he evidences this by marshaling evidence for the stronger claim that public ideology does not effect public behavior. This, I disagree with. The two main things of substance to respond to are the claims that A) ideological beliefs do not cause the public to engage in costly behaviors the beliefs might demand of them, unlike actual viruses that are able to impose real fitness costs; and B) the rising tide of shitlibbery can be explained by a general rise in mental illness caused by relaxed selection pressures and incrementally-accruing levels of mutational load in the gene pool. I provide new evidence addressing his fitness cost test, and point out some general problems with the mutational load explanation.
Very intresting!