Lynch questions whether ideas might be "shopping" for humans as well as vice versa, and asked whether humans own their most cherished beliefs or the beliefs own them. However, Lynch stopped short of suggesting that ideas have consciousness, will or planning abilities. To Lynch, ideas were information encoded in human neurons or other media. Like computer viruses, they are the products of human thinking and are in no way aware of or deliberating controlling their self-replicating abilities. However, unlike computer viruses, ideas often evolve new or improved contagious properties without intentional human design, through copying infidelity mutations or recombination into powerful new belief sets. According to Lynch, Natural selection determines which ideas survive and propagate successfully through human populations and which lose market share to the point of extinction.