Cool article! And yes, the picture is quite different whether you're looking at individual or collective learning. I figure Linch is using the words "cultural evolution" in the narrowest sense of "group of people collective learn how to do something without any understanding of what's going on", as in the famous example of detoxifying mandioca tubers. Which, as you point out, is only the tip of the iceberg of what counts as cultural evolution.
In any case, I'm a bit confused about how mimicry ended up towards the top of both your and Linch's list. Aping what other people are doing is common, and we may be hard-wired to do that a lot, but how is it epistemically better than the dumber parts of cultural evolution? Doesn't it amount to more or less the same, as in "I guess I'll pound the mandioca because that's what everybody else is doing"?
Btw, I found Robert B. Edgerton's _Sick Societies_ to be a powerful counterpart to _The Secret of our Success_. It's example after example of societies shooting themselves in the foot just softly enough to barely survive. Have you read it, any opinions?
This is vibe-y, but yeah my interpretation is that mimicry is just an excellent way of acquiring knowledge for practical tasks in their full dimensionality, and often (though not always) comes with pretty good feedback (you immediately see the success or lack thereof) so it's a relatively reliable way of knowing.
Haven't read Sick Societies but heard about it a bit!
I think it refers to instances where something difficult is clearly being achieved by someone else, and it is clear that what they are doing could be useful to you. Say seeing that people who are fishing more successfully are using a certain shape of hook.
Does it talk about drift? That's something I find most selectionists don't like to talk about, and it's super-important in these rapid forms of cultural evolution.
It's written with lots of references to anthropology, doesn't go that much into evolutionary mechanisms. Basically more of a long list of counter-examples to cultural evolutionary optimism. I suppose cultural loss counts as drift, as in a whole culture forgetting how to make canoes or some such.
When I was at university, they had the Socratic Society, that conducted earnest debates.
We had the Philosophical Interest Group. PIGs for short. At short notice a speaker might be called upon to defend the indefensible. It was skill in debating, not fact or logic, that decided the winner. This article deserves an honorable mention.
We like your content and wanted to share our hypothesis with you (OSIM forensic cosmology hypothesis v2.2): We tried to phrase this so everyone could get a visual of how it would work:Think of the universe not as a digital computer program, but as a giant, perennial tomato plant.
a tomato plant grows, produces fruit, dies back in the winter, and its seeds wait in the soil to sprout again. It does not need a programmer to tell it how to grow; it follows an internal, biological blueprint. Our independent research group is investigating whether the universe might follow a similar, naturally cyclical pattern.
Rather than a one-time Big Bang, recent discussions in the scientific community are exploring the Big Bounce an infinite, cyclical process. Our hypothesis suggests that instead of expanding forever, the universe might reach a limit, contract, and bounce back, with biological systems potentially acting as the most efficient way to store and reset information through each cycle.
A tomato plant does not stop at one fruit; it branches out, growing multiple stems, each producing its own fruit. If our universe follows this biological blueprint, it would not just seed our own galaxy. Instead, we may be looking at a system that grows fruit—galaxies—along every stem of the cosmic web. Each galaxy could be a localized site for life to bloom within the larger, cyclical structure.
Dark matter may act as the trellis for our cosmic tomato plant. It provides the gravitational structure that guides the growth of these stems, serving as a road map that ensures the system develops and resets in a way that allows life to re-emerge across the entire plant.
The Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) is the focal point of our research. We propose this constant as a way to measure Goldilocks Entropy—the narrow, stable energy range where life can persist without the system stagnating. It may be the tuning knob that explains why the universe stays just right for consciousness to emerge on every stem, cycle after cycle.
Because this model emphasizes biological efficiency, we suggest the possibility that we are the hardware, not the software. If this is a biological system, our consciousness and our physical form may be the fruit of this cosmic garden, essential to how the system functions.
We are currently tracking data from the Simons Observatory. They are looking for specific ripple patterns in the ancient light of the universe—echoes of a Big Bounce. If they find these signatures, it would provide evidence that our hypothesis is on the right track.
This is Forensic Cosmology. We are moving away from the who—a creator—and focusing on the how—the blueprint.
Our hypothesis is strictly falsifiable. If evidence confirms the universe will continue to expand indefinitely toward a Big Freeze, our Life-Raft model is incorrect. If a non-biological material is ever proven to exceed the efficiency of biological systems, the premise of the Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) fails.
We are not looking for a coder. We are documenting the physical fingerprints of a system that may be preserving life through an infinite, natural cycle.
Cool article! And yes, the picture is quite different whether you're looking at individual or collective learning. I figure Linch is using the words "cultural evolution" in the narrowest sense of "group of people collective learn how to do something without any understanding of what's going on", as in the famous example of detoxifying mandioca tubers. Which, as you point out, is only the tip of the iceberg of what counts as cultural evolution.
In any case, I'm a bit confused about how mimicry ended up towards the top of both your and Linch's list. Aping what other people are doing is common, and we may be hard-wired to do that a lot, but how is it epistemically better than the dumber parts of cultural evolution? Doesn't it amount to more or less the same, as in "I guess I'll pound the mandioca because that's what everybody else is doing"?
Btw, I found Robert B. Edgerton's _Sick Societies_ to be a powerful counterpart to _The Secret of our Success_. It's example after example of societies shooting themselves in the foot just softly enough to barely survive. Have you read it, any opinions?
This is vibe-y, but yeah my interpretation is that mimicry is just an excellent way of acquiring knowledge for practical tasks in their full dimensionality, and often (though not always) comes with pretty good feedback (you immediately see the success or lack thereof) so it's a relatively reliable way of knowing.
Haven't read Sick Societies but heard about it a bit!
I think it refers to instances where something difficult is clearly being achieved by someone else, and it is clear that what they are doing could be useful to you. Say seeing that people who are fishing more successfully are using a certain shape of hook.
Does it talk about drift? That's something I find most selectionists don't like to talk about, and it's super-important in these rapid forms of cultural evolution.
https://magazine.trollbreath.com/fad-fashion-in-science-fiction/
It's written with lots of references to anthropology, doesn't go that much into evolutionary mechanisms. Basically more of a long list of counter-examples to cultural evolutionary optimism. I suppose cultural loss counts as drift, as in a whole culture forgetting how to make canoes or some such.
When I was at university, they had the Socratic Society, that conducted earnest debates.
We had the Philosophical Interest Group. PIGs for short. At short notice a speaker might be called upon to defend the indefensible. It was skill in debating, not fact or logic, that decided the winner. This article deserves an honorable mention.
It is often easier to reply to someone who wrote about something than to pick a topic and set out to write about it!
A very short primer on cultural evolution.
http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=randall_hayes&article=009
The podcast I mention there is now archived here.
https://randallhayes.substack.com/podcast
We like your content and wanted to share our hypothesis with you (OSIM forensic cosmology hypothesis v2.2): We tried to phrase this so everyone could get a visual of how it would work:Think of the universe not as a digital computer program, but as a giant, perennial tomato plant.
a tomato plant grows, produces fruit, dies back in the winter, and its seeds wait in the soil to sprout again. It does not need a programmer to tell it how to grow; it follows an internal, biological blueprint. Our independent research group is investigating whether the universe might follow a similar, naturally cyclical pattern.
Rather than a one-time Big Bang, recent discussions in the scientific community are exploring the Big Bounce an infinite, cyclical process. Our hypothesis suggests that instead of expanding forever, the universe might reach a limit, contract, and bounce back, with biological systems potentially acting as the most efficient way to store and reset information through each cycle.
A tomato plant does not stop at one fruit; it branches out, growing multiple stems, each producing its own fruit. If our universe follows this biological blueprint, it would not just seed our own galaxy. Instead, we may be looking at a system that grows fruit—galaxies—along every stem of the cosmic web. Each galaxy could be a localized site for life to bloom within the larger, cyclical structure.
Dark matter may act as the trellis for our cosmic tomato plant. It provides the gravitational structure that guides the growth of these stems, serving as a road map that ensures the system develops and resets in a way that allows life to re-emerge across the entire plant.
The Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) is the focal point of our research. We propose this constant as a way to measure Goldilocks Entropy—the narrow, stable energy range where life can persist without the system stagnating. It may be the tuning knob that explains why the universe stays just right for consciousness to emerge on every stem, cycle after cycle.
Because this model emphasizes biological efficiency, we suggest the possibility that we are the hardware, not the software. If this is a biological system, our consciousness and our physical form may be the fruit of this cosmic garden, essential to how the system functions.
We are currently tracking data from the Simons Observatory. They are looking for specific ripple patterns in the ancient light of the universe—echoes of a Big Bounce. If they find these signatures, it would provide evidence that our hypothesis is on the right track.
This is Forensic Cosmology. We are moving away from the who—a creator—and focusing on the how—the blueprint.
Our hypothesis is strictly falsifiable. If evidence confirms the universe will continue to expand indefinitely toward a Big Freeze, our Life-Raft model is incorrect. If a non-biological material is ever proven to exceed the efficiency of biological systems, the premise of the Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) fails.
We are not looking for a coder. We are documenting the physical fingerprints of a system that may be preserving life through an infinite, natural cycle.