[C]oncepts from population genetics . . . transfer smoothly: here is a case of what a geneticist would call linked loci: two memes that happen to be physically tied together so that they tend always to replicate together, a fact that affects their chances. There is a magnificent ceremonial march, familiar to us all, and one that would be much used for commencements, weddings, and other festive occasions, perhaps driving "Pomp and Circumstance" and the Wedding March from "Lohengrin" to near extinction, were it not for the fact that its musical meme is too tightly linked to its title meme, which we all tend to think of as soon as we hear the music: Sir Arthur Sullivan's unusable masterpiece, "Behold the Lord High Executioner."
This is actually just a vivid case of one of the most important phenomena in the infosphere: the mis-filtering of memes due to such linkages. We all have filters of the following sort:
ignore everything that appears in X
For some people, X is The National Inquirer or Pravda; for others it is The New York Review of Books; we all take our chances, counting on the "good" ideas to make it eventually through the stacks of filters of others into the limelight of our attention.
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