Cosma Shalizi reviews [Dan Sperber]'s Explaining CultUre. To explain how it comes about that every sapient creature in the United States knows the Roswell story, and similar facts, Sperber saw that we need an "epidemiology of beliefs," (MemetIc) or even of "representations" in general. So far he has the agreement of the whole line of cultural Darwinists, from James to Richard Dawkins to [Aaron Lynch]. Now, however, he reaps the fruit of his anthropological and cognitive studies. Unlike the genetic apparatus, the mind never leaves its contents alone; to think, even to remember, is to change. Nor are these changes, as it were, equally in all directions. Rather the mind works upon its representations in the direction of what Sperber and Wilson call "maximum relevance" --- roughly, extracting the most new information from them for the least processing. (This concept is made clear and precise in their book.) The correctness of their relevance theory is not essential to Sperber's present argument; it is enough that representations change in a highly non-random fashion.

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