Man in Doge Mask, Los Angeles, 2024, Photograph, Getty ImagesHow do you build the perfect defense against cognitive blind spots?More than any other, this is the question that undergirds the highly influential online “rationalist” movement. What sounds like an introductory philosophy exercise has, over the past decade, precipitated deep-pocketed research institutes, financial collapse, at least one abusive cult, at least one other murderous cult, and national political tumult.A currently sold-out science fiction paperback might offer the answer.In late 2024, There Is No Antimemetics Division by “qntm” (the pen name of British programmer Sam Hughes) became an unusual kind of viral sensation: rationalists and tech workers began posting photos of their copies across social media. By January 2025, the $9 paperback edition had vanished from Amazon's offerings, spawning listings from third-party sellers for hundreds of dollars.The novel tells the story of an agent at a secret organization dedicated to catching, categorizing, and containing ideas that resist being remembered. Unlike regular memes, which spread by sticking in people’s minds, “antimemes” erase themselves from both individual memories and institutional records. An antimeme might be a face you instantly forget or a room that vanishes from floor plans. Or it might be an entity seeking to enslave all human will that your organization keeps forgetting to fight because your organization keeps forgetting it exists.The novel's central tension revolves around the Antimemetics Division’s repeated failures — its once-numerous agents keep being eliminated in the same ways, unable to learn from their mistakes because of the very nature of their work. Again and again, the Division's careful protocols and documentation systems become vectors for the very threats they are meant to contain.In 2025, this premise reads more like prophecy than genre fiction. The spectacular collapses of recent rationalist or rationalist-adjacent