Copy That

Humans are exceptional imitators. From infancy, neural systems prioritise social learning, language acquisition, and behavioural mirroring because copying is cheap, fast, and scalable compared to individual trial-and-error. Cultural transmission compounds this: ideas, habits, tools, symbols, and institutions propagate through imitation, modification, and re-imitation across generations. Genetic evolution provided the substrate, but memetic and cultural reproduction now dominate human continuity, operating through communication networks, education systems, markets, media, and technology. These systems do not just transmit information. They preferentially amplify patterns that are repeatable, compressible, and socially adhesive.

What looks like chaos—conflict, distraction, ideological churn, aesthetic excess—is not noise opposed to copying but the field in which copying becomes more efficient. Turbulence increases variation, variation increases selection pressure, selection pressure increases fidelity and speed. Over time, the compression moves away from objects or ideas themselves and into the space of possible configurations they can occupy. This is why culture feels accelerated while meaning feels thinned. The system is not optimising for truth, coherence, or goodness. It is optimising for transmissibility of potential. Tension is not a flaw here. It is the gradient that keeps the structure from collapsing into stasis, the differential that forces novelty without resolution, the condition under which propagation continues.