# Cultural Evolution > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Evolution / Culture / Information **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Cultural evolution studies changes in socially transmitted beliefs, practices, institutions and technologies across populations. ## Nexus Context Blockchain communities transmit norms, fork rules and governance commitments, producing branching cultural and technical lineages even when strict genetic-style reproduction is absent. ## Evidence Boundary Cultural evolution can be Darwinian in some models but often includes guided invention, strategic adoption and horizontal transfer. Mechanisms must be stated rather than assumed. ## Relationships [[wiki/Cultural Transmission|Cultural Transmission]], [[wiki/Technological Evolution|Technological Evolution]], [[wiki/Branching Descent|Branching Descent]], [[wiki/Gene-Culture Coevolution|Gene-Culture Coevolution]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "Experts call a machine that can "think" a General Artificial Intelligence." > **— Michael Vassar**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/A Thinking Machine Is Artificial General Intelligence by Michael Vassar|A Thinking Machine Is Artificial General Intelligence by Michael Vassar]] > "The potential benefits of artificial intelligence will be vast, but like any powerful technology these benefits will depend on this technology being applied with care." > **— Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Artificial Intelligence’s Benefits Depend on Careful Use by Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman|Artificial Intelligence’s Benefits Depend on Careful Use by Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman]] > "May in some not-so-distant future or not-too-distant possibility non-organisms engage in organic thinking?" > **— June Gruber and Raul Saucedo**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Can Non-Organisms Engage in Organic Thinking by June Gruber and Raul Saucedo|Can Non-Organisms Engage in Organic Thinking by June Gruber and Raul Saucedo]] > "Taking on the mantle of creation is an immense act of hubris. Can we do better than four billion years of evolution did with us?" > **— Kate Jeffery**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Can We Improve on Four Billion Years of Evolution by Kate Jeffery|Can We Improve on Four Billion Years of Evolution by Kate Jeffery]] > "Human minds are incredibly complex, but have been battle-tested into (relative) stability over eons of evolution in a variety of extremely challenging environments." > **— Anthony Aguirre**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Human Minds Were Battle-Tested by Evolution by Anthony Aguirre|Human Minds Were Battle-Tested by Evolution by Anthony Aguirre]] > “Cooked food has so many important biological effects that its adoption should be clearly marked in the fossil record by signals of a reduced digestive system and increased energy use. While such signs are clear at the origin of Homo erectus, they are not found later in human evolution. The match between the biological merits of cooked food and the evolutionary changes in Homo erectus is thus so obvious that except for a scientific obstacle, I believe it would have been noticed long ago. The obstacle is the insistence of archaeologists that the control of fire is not firmly evidenced before about a quarter of a million years ago. As a result of this archaeological caution, the idea that humans could have used fire before about 250,000 to 500,000 years ago has long been sidelined.” > **— Richard Wrangham**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham|Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham]] > “Because evolution by selection is a relatively slow process, the acquisition of scientific knowledge about adaptations for exploitation may enable staying one step ahead of exploiters, and effectively short-circuit their strategies. Some classes of crime will be curtailed. Cultural evolution, however, being fleeter than organic evolution, may enable the rapid circumvention of anti-exploitation defenses. Defenses, in turn, favor novel strategies of exploitation. Dissemination of discoveries about adaptations for exploitation and co-evolved defenses may change permanently the nature of social interaction. Or perhaps, like some co-evolutionary arms races, these discoveries ultimately may change nothing at all.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss|Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss]] > “Theodiversity once was the exclusive subject matter of the humanities. But it is now a focal point of a budding science-humanities collaboration. The religious diversification of humankind in historical time poses fascinating questions and challenges for the new science of cultural evolution. Also, these are times of renewed anxieties about real or imagined cultural conflict between religions, and between religions and secular modernity. This is why quantifiable, evidence-based, and nuanced understanding of the complexities of theodiversity are important now more than ever.” > **— Ara Norenzayan**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan|Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan]] > “My nominee is the concept of evolution by selection (which encompasses natural selection, sexual selection, and the selective processes that generate cultural evolution). It offers the best explanation for what we are, where we came from, and the nature of life in the rest of the universe. It also explains why we invent and why we believe the inventions described in this list are important. It is the invention that explains invention.” > **— Paul W. Ewald**, *1999, Edge Annual Question, “What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution by Selection Explains What We Are and Where We Are Going by Paul W. Ewald|Evolution by Selection Explains What We Are and Where We Are Going by Paul W. Ewald]] > “Material culture is the thing that makes us human, driving human evolution from the outset with its continually modifying power. Our species' particular dilemma is that in order to safeguard what we have, we have continually to change. The culture of things—invention and technology—is ever changing under the tide of words and routines whose role is to image fixity and agreement when, in reality, none exists. This form of change is no trivial thing because it is essential to our longer term survival. At least, the longer term survival of anything we may be proud to call universally human.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humanity Must Keep Changing to Preserve What It Has by Timothy Taylor|Humanity Must Keep Changing to Preserve What It Has by Timothy Taylor]] > “Population thinking readily extends beyond biology to the study of cultural evolution (as argued by Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Peter Godfrey-Smith). Cultural phenomena can be thought of as populations, the members of which share features because they influence one another even though they do not beget one another the way organisms do and are not exactly copies of one another. Here are three examples.” > **— Dan Sperber**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber|Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber]] > “The idea that evil has evolved is dangerous on several counts. If our brains contain psychological circuits that can trigger murder, genocide, and other forms of malevolence, then perhaps we can't hold those who commit carnage responsible: "It's not my client's fault, your honor, his evolved homicide adaptations made him do it." Understanding causality, however, does not exonerate murderers, whether the tributaries trace back to human evolution history or to modern exposure to alcoholic mothers, violent fathers, or the ills of bullying, poverty, drugs, or computer games. It would be dangerous if the theory of the evolved murderous mind were misused to let killers free.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Evolution of Evil by David M. Buss|The Evolution of Evil by David M. Buss]] > “At a particular point (yet to be clearly defined) in human cultural evolution, a specific idea took hold that there were two, partially separable, elements present in a living creature: the material body and the force that animated it. On the death of the body the animating force would, naturally, desire the continuation of this-worldly action and struggle to reassert itself (just as one might strive to retrieve a flint axe one had accidentally dropped). If the soul (or spirit) succeeded, it would also seek to repossess its property, including its spouse, and reassert its material appetites.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor|The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor]] > “In 1972 George Price extended his general variation-selection equation to allow for multi-level selection. This form of the equation has been very useful to evolutionary biologists for it has allowed them to see, for example, the relationship between kin and group selection clearly and so put to rest endless controversies stemming from incompatible mathematical formulations. It hasn't yet been applied to cultural evolution, though it surely will. But I think that the extended Price equation is much more important than even that. I think it slices one of the Gordian knots that scientists and philosophers of science have wrestled with forever.” > **— Armand Marie Leroi**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi|The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi]] > “Although we now have an appreciation for the frequency of de novo mutations due to the spectacular advances in sequencing technology and analytics, we do not have even a rudimentary understanding of what induces them in the first place—and what are the more subtle impacts that may track with a sort of devolution of man. Especially disconcerting is that the signals of increased genomic instability are occurring in a relatively short span of time, in the context of human evolution over millions of years.” > **— Eric Topol**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Rise in Genomic Instability by Eric Topol|The Rise in Genomic Instability by Eric Topol]] > “Alongside the biological changes runs a history, or prehistory, of technology. It has usually been supposed that this technology, surviving mainly as modified stone artifacts, was a product of the higher brain power that our human ancestors displayed. According to Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis, female hominins favored innovative male hunters, and the incremental growth in intelligence led, ultimately, to material innovation (hence the evocative but not taxonomic term, Homo faber—Man the Maker).” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Weapons Technology Powered Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor|Weapons Technology Powered Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor]] > “I've changed my mind. I don't think it's possible to understand events at any one level of analysis without taking into account what occurs at other levels. In particular, I'm now convinced that at least some aspects of the structure and function of the brain can only be understood by situating the brain in a specific cultural context. I'm not simply saying that the brain has evolved to function in a specific type of environment (an idea that forms a mainstay of evolutionary psychology and some areas of computer vision, where statistics of the natural environment are used to guide processing). Rather, I'm saying that to understand how any specific brain functions, we need to understand how that person was raised, and currently functions, in the surrounding culture.” > **— Stephen M. Kosslyn**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?”* [[reminders/Identity/A Brain Cannot Be Understood Apart From Its Cultural Context by Stephen M. Kosslyn|A Brain Cannot Be Understood Apart From Its Cultural Context by Stephen M. Kosslyn]] > “Knowing how to turn knowledge into power is the most powerful form of knowledge. The mindsets, mindtools, and institutions that make massive technological progress possible are all part of an invisible cultural system — it is learned, not inherent, it was invented, not evolved, it hypnotizes you to see the world in a certain way.” > **— Howard Rheingold**, *1999 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Information/The Invisible Cultural System That Turns Knowledge Into Power by Howard Rheingold|The Invisible Cultural System That Turns Knowledge Into Power by Howard Rheingold]] > “What is required for all other human inventions is the notion that one can actively, consciously construct new ideas. We take this for granted, but it is not a "natural" development. Three-year-old children have lots of ideas and even make up new ideas. But they do not have the Idea of an Idea that they can construct anew; they do not naturally arrive at the idea that making up new ideas is something people do. The Idea of an Idea is a cultural creation that children have to learn.” > **— George Lakoff**, *1999 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Evolution/The Idea of Making Ideas Is a Cultural Invention by George Lakoff|The Idea of Making Ideas Is a Cultural Invention by George Lakoff]] > “Everyone steals ideas from everyone else, but they do so unconsciously. This has evolved for our very survival. It maximizes the innovative power of society.” > **— Allan Snyder**, *2004 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Evolution/Society Innovates Through Unconscious Idea Sharing by Allan Snyder|Society Innovates Through Unconscious Idea Sharing by Allan Snyder]] > “Is there an evolutionary advantage to building societies that favor entertaining over understanding?” > **— Lisa Mosconi**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Human Animality/Can Entertainment Over Understanding Have an Evolutionary Advantage by Lisa Mosconi|Can Entertainment Over Understanding Have an Evolutionary Advantage by Lisa Mosconi]] > “[Human exceptionalist beliefs] have not been constants of human cultures across the ages. We are capable of new (or old) mental models of ourselves and our relation to the world in which we live.” > **— Tom Murphy**, *Human Exceptionalism, scientist-maintained authored essay, 2022* [[reminders/Human Animality/Human Exceptionalism Is Not Fixed in Our DNA by Tom Murphy|Human Exceptionalism Is Not Fixed in Our DNA by Tom Murphy]] ## Sources / Provenance - Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman; Boyd and Richerson.