the dopamine reward system may permit instantiating ideas as rewards, similar to sex and food. if that's the case, it's certainly possible for an idea to become addictive, just as cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, speed and other dopamine-enhancing substances are, to a degree. our learning reward system gets hi-jacked, sending feedback to the brain that we should repeat a behavior, and the dopamine system has trouble recalibrating, so a person so entrenched will want to repeat something again and again.

is this a neurological way we can talk about memetics, in part? ideas as rewards and goals that orient the dopamine system? ideas that more effectively plug into the dopamine reinforcement signals would be likely to be successful memes.

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