The Role of Criticism in the Survival of Useful Ideas

David Frum: Why do useful ideas survive, even though there's rapid change going on in the society more widely? He says it is because rivals too are being criticized. But those rivals fail to be replicated because they're rightly criticized and shown to be false. And so they tend not to get replicated. Because the useful idea survives the process of criticism,. that makes it more robust in a sense. It is able to weather the storms of criticism and everyone around can see that it's useful for doing useful stuff like building bridges and making better artillery in the case of Newton's laws. So I shall call them rational memes. Memes of the older, static society kind, which survive