Interesting model. I have found the meme model a useful thing in the past but have not distinguished things except by their transmissibility and energy consumption. The meme parasite model is an interesting way to distinguish "harmful" memes from good ones.<p>Currently, I suspect parasitic memes have lots of room to flourish because we keep people alive who are hosts. There is very little selection pressure.<p>But that is because we are in a time of unbelievable prosperity, a Stable Era. I believe that as other countries catch up, we will enter a Chaotic Era. The real pressures will pop up then and either a massive gap will yawn between those with many meme parasites or the ones with meme parasites will follow their directive to eat those without.<p>Not to sound like an accelerationist but since I'd prefer that parasitic memes die out, I hope that the chaos comes fast, so that even if I am heavily infected the coming purge wipes me so that Clean Humanity may survive. If we wait too long, too many of us may be infected, and we may win but doom us all to a local optimum.<p>And as Toby Ord argues in <i>The Precipice</i>, that would be a terrible end.