I can't get on board with this hypothesis. I haven't read Hanson's essays so maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like the starting assumption that modern cultures are under less adaptive pressure is already wrong. We have fewer plagues and famines now, but those don't tend to actually kill cultures. Medieval English culture went on and survived just fine after the Black Death. Irish culture persisted through the Potato Blight.
As Vaish points out, the cultural diversity of the world is lower now than it has been throughout most of history. But of course the only way that happens is that a lot of cultures that used to exist died out. So objectively cultures right now are under very high selection pressure not to be among the ones that go extinct.
From the inside of Western Progressive culture it can often not feel like our culture is under much pressure, but that's because ours happens to be on of the most adaptive culture around. If you look at native Americans, most of them speak English and practice Christianity. This is true even on the reservations. Not only is our culture thriving, it's the invasive agent that replaces other mal-adaptive cultures.
There really is only one way to promulgate your culture: You induct new members into it. Babies are born without culture. Creating babies only stands out as a useful way to spread your culture because it's easier to instill a culture in your child than it is in adult strangers. But information technology has shrunk that gap and Western culture could be seen as a rational adaptation to that reality. Why go for the costly process of raising children with your culture when you could just proselytize for much cheaper.
Arguably still, Western culture is less pro-natalist than is maximally adaptive. But if there is a reason that it gets away with it more than they would in another era, it would be the fact that the Darwinian environment is further from equilibrium. We live in a era of rapid social change, and cultural evolution hasn't kept up.
Thanks Arie, these are good points, but I think that the claim would be that while medieval English culture survived the Black Death, it was later outcompeted by post-Enlightenment culture which eventually recognized germ theory etc. and that this result was not at all random but was determined by harsh selection pressures, like plagues, promoting the adoption of post-Enlightenment culture.
The way I put it in the podcast is that when selection pressures were harsher cultures which survived implicitly placed value on people that didn't yet exist (otherwise they'd be less likely to persist over time). Whereas when external pressures are weaker, and cultures are spread more by evangelism vs by imperialism or just not dying out, they prioritize existing people and don't necessarily place value on future people. And that this leads to norms and values being adopted which are attractive to individuals but could nevertheless be maladaptive at a species level. So as I phrased it in my note today culture can change quickly but this is more like increasing the pace of mutations which can be widely adopted without the needed pressures to determine which mutations are adaptive or not.
I can't get on board with this hypothesis. I haven't read Hanson's essays so maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like the starting assumption that modern cultures are under less adaptive pressure is already wrong. We have fewer plagues and famines now, but those don't tend to actually kill cultures. Medieval English culture went on and survived just fine after the Black Death. Irish culture persisted through the Potato Blight.
As Vaish points out, the cultural diversity of the world is lower now than it has been throughout most of history. But of course the only way that happens is that a lot of cultures that used to exist died out. So objectively cultures right now are under very high selection pressure not to be among the ones that go extinct.
From the inside of Western Progressive culture it can often not feel like our culture is under much pressure, but that's because ours happens to be on of the most adaptive culture around. If you look at native Americans, most of them speak English and practice Christianity. This is true even on the reservations. Not only is our culture thriving, it's the invasive agent that replaces other mal-adaptive cultures.
There really is only one way to promulgate your culture: You induct new members into it. Babies are born without culture. Creating babies only stands out as a useful way to spread your culture because it's easier to instill a culture in your child than it is in adult strangers. But information technology has shrunk that gap and Western culture could be seen as a rational adaptation to that reality. Why go for the costly process of raising children with your culture when you could just proselytize for much cheaper.
Arguably still, Western culture is less pro-natalist than is maximally adaptive. But if there is a reason that it gets away with it more than they would in another era, it would be the fact that the Darwinian environment is further from equilibrium. We live in a era of rapid social change, and cultural evolution hasn't kept up.
Thanks Arie, these are good points, but I think that the claim would be that while medieval English culture survived the Black Death, it was later outcompeted by post-Enlightenment culture which eventually recognized germ theory etc. and that this result was not at all random but was determined by harsh selection pressures, like plagues, promoting the adoption of post-Enlightenment culture.
The way I put it in the podcast is that when selection pressures were harsher cultures which survived implicitly placed value on people that didn't yet exist (otherwise they'd be less likely to persist over time). Whereas when external pressures are weaker, and cultures are spread more by evangelism vs by imperialism or just not dying out, they prioritize existing people and don't necessarily place value on future people. And that this leads to norms and values being adopted which are attractive to individuals but could nevertheless be maladaptive at a species level. So as I phrased it in my note today culture can change quickly but this is more like increasing the pace of mutations which can be widely adopted without the needed pressures to determine which mutations are adaptive or not.
https://substack.com/@reganarntzgray/note/c-73274884