Why he belongs here
Dennett spent a career asking what happens when we refuse to smuggle magic into explanations. His work on consciousness, evolution and memes encourages mechanistic curiosity without requiring that mechanisms be simple.
For a site about information environments, the older idea of a meme as a cultural replicator is worth recovering from the image macro. Ideas compete for memory, repetition and transmission. Some spread because they are true. Others spread because they are memorable, identity-enhancing, frightening or funny.
Those are different selection pressures.