idea replication is inherently darwinian: replicons that are more appealing or easier to understand will spread faster, meaning they have an adaptive advantage over replicons that are harmful, boring or difficult to grasp; perhaps we could use this property to 'breed' replicons in a similar way to how humans have bred organisms for desirable traits
just learned you can use DiseasesDB to search for diseases by symptom. for example, if you have 'hiccups' and 'hallucinations', it'll return a list of potential candidates. tried it out. Hiccups & Hallucinations = Rabies (100% of cases), African Trypanosomiasis (60%), Palace Intracranial Aneurysms (33%), etc... what a great resource!
weird thing about the unwillingness of people to work together collectively is that individualistic push and pull concepts like 'personal responsibility' only really work when everyone is playing by the same rules. we actually do live in a collective. even if you go Full Libertarian, at some point you are going to need other people. individualism only really 'works' if you have a very high degree of alignment between individuals. otherwise you will just get fucked. especially if you are acting in good faith. this is basically the prisoner's dilemma.