<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <rdf:RDF xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:taxo="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:cc="http://web.resource.org/cc/" xmlns:syn="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/">
  <channel rdf:about="http://pinboard.in">
    <title>Pinboard (cshalizi)</title>
    <link>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/public/</link>
    <description>recent bookmarks from cshalizi</description>
    <items>
      <rdf:Seq>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724448"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum5811/files/henrich/files/hong_henrich_-_2021_-_the_cultural_evolution_of_epistemic_practices.pdfd"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://tkeskinturk.github.io/blog/publicopin/"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20230458"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/22/5/2261/7582277?redirectedFrom=PDF&amp;login=false"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13399"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01742-2"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/22/2/475/7202322?redirectedFrom=fulltext&amp;login=false"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.22.586239v1?rss=1"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04494-0"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/wdh3f"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691224145/modeling-social-behavior"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773462"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://elevanth.org/blog/2022/09/19/the-problem-with-cultural-evolution/"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/2ekcr/"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198830184.001.0001/oso-9780198830184?rskey=cA4yfN&amp;result=277"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v9-8-184/"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/culture-without-copying-or-selection/4A0AD3781ED1616BD9D9424BD02FDCB4"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00031224211024525"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v8-5-83/"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-extinction-in-evolutionary-perspective/035F093515E2A445FCA0D78DA542075B"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10210"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76658-2#Sec12"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198835943.001.0001"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-origins-of-unfairness-9780198789970?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;#"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://acerbialberto.com/publication/preprint_ibmcultevo/"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/710518"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/no-universals-in-the-cultural-evolution-of-kinship-terminology/0BF406C9CFC182F9142749FDD0442471"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-evolution-by-capital-accumulation/955EDA9A637BE4C59F44CE61378FCCDA"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/openended-cumulative-cultural-evolution-of-hollywood-film-crews/4FEC5F46E4EAA1574E3BDC962DD658B9"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/modelling-cultural-selection-on-biological-fitness-to-integrate-social-transmission-and-adaptive-explanations-for-human-behaviour/CE568B2DCF569DCC719FDBE2FED1445B"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/group-selectioninclusive-fitness-equivalence-claim-not-true-and-not-relevant/89224BA8AC224877F3A22127762668F4"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-group-selection-and-human-cooperation-a-conceptual-and-empirical-review/3BEEC0756C9D4DFA7D97A320D9D54AB3"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1059712318822298"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2560786"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675692"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.11768"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02460"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171982/the-evolution-of-knowledge"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/02/11/1910880117"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://cambridge.org/9781108412674"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/cultural-evolution-in-the-digital-age-9780198835943?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;#"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110218-025040"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05273"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctvnp0krm"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv301h1w"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wf4dft"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103112"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085153?intcmp=trendmd"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/hugo-merciers-blog/a-matter-of-taste"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0062"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo28246030"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo28082555"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/POSC_a_00057"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(18)30094-9"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/115/14/3628"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ARTL_a_00244"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/42/E8822.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7915.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7877.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7838.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7861.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7846.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7790.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7782.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/34/9140.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://home.uchicago.edu/~jlmartin/Papers/Life's%20A%20Beach%20but%20You're%20an%20Ant.pdf"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.pnas.org/content/113/48/13666.abstract"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo25011505"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-016-9269-8"/>
      </rdf:Seq>
    </items>
  </channel><item rdf:about="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724448">
    <title>When Is Similarity-Biased Social Learning Adaptive? | The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science: Vol 77, No 1</title>
    <dc:date>2026-04-18T22:12:08+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/724448</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Some cultural evolution theorists claim that humans tend to imitate the traits of people who are similar to themselves—men tend to imitate men, women tend to imitate women, and so on. These theorists further suggest that selection has shaped human psychology to attend to similarities and weigh them when learning from others. The argument typically works like this: If similar people face similar problems, then learning from those people can ensure humans learn the most relevant information to solve problems they will face. Little formal evolutionary modelling has explored the conditions under which this argument is valid. This article develops a series of models to answer this question. The general insight is that the viability of the evolutionary argument depends largely on what we assume the function of social roles to be. If, as is the default view in the cultural evolution literature, social roles facilitate coordination, then the model is not very robust with respect to the initial conditions, parameter settings, or population structure. However, if social roles facilitate the division of labour, then similarity-biased learning evolves under a wide range of conditions. These results can improve our understanding of the origins of inequality. Some philosophers have proposed evolutionary bargaining models as potential explanations for inequality. These models make frequent use of similarity-biased learning assumptions. I suggest some ways to improve the research programme on bargaining models in light of these results."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution inequality</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:9e68f53b9a9f/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:inequality"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum5811/files/henrich/files/hong_henrich_-_2021_-_the_cultural_evolution_of_epistemic_practices.pdfd">
    <title>The Cultural Evolution of Epistemic Practices: The case of Diviniation</title>
    <dc:date>2026-04-16T17:38:56+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum5811/files/henrich/files/hong_henrich_-_2021_-_the_cultural_evolution_of_epistemic_practices.pdfd</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Although a substantial literature in anthropology and comparative religion explores
divination across diverse societies and back into history, little research has integrated
the older ethnographic and historical work with recent insights on human learning,
cultural transmission, and cognitive science. Here we present evidence showing that
divination practices are often best viewed as an epistemic technology, and we formally model the scenarios under which individuals may overestimate the efficacy of
divination that contribute to its cultural omnipresence and historical persistence. We
found that strong prior belief, underreporting of negative evidence, and misinferring
belief from behavior can all contribute to biased and inaccurate beliefs about the
effectiveness of epistemic technologies. We finally suggest how scientific epistemology, as it emerged in Western societies over the past few centuries, has influenced
the importance and cultural centrality of divination practices."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB divination superstition cultural_evolution epistemology via:?</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:55ac0f0a6d48/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:divination"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:superstition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epistemology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:?"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://tkeskinturk.github.io/blog/publicopin/">
    <title>Visualizing the Dynamics of Opinion Change – Turgut Keskintürk</title>
    <dc:date>2026-03-18T13:26:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://tkeskinturk.github.io/blog/publicopin/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[--- I'm going to follow the references, but I will make two predictions just based on this.
1. It's pretending to solve the age-period-cohort non-identification problem by decreeing that one of those effects just doesn't exist.  (Advantages of theft over honest toil, etc.)
2. Having done so, it's the Kitagawa (-Oaxaca-Blinder) decomposition.  (Which is a cool thing I wish I had appreciated earlier, and no shame in having re-re-re-discovered.)

]]></description>
<dc:subject>have_read visual_display_of_quantitative_information social_measurement via:kjhealy public_opinion surveys cultural_evolution track_down_references</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:bd8814cc4a6b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:visual_display_of_quantitative_information"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_measurement"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:kjhealy"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:public_opinion"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:surveys"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:track_down_references"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20230458">
    <title>A Stepping Stone Approach to Norm Transitions - American Economic Association</title>
    <dc:date>2025-09-22T17:14:04+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20230458</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["We propose a model to study when an intermediate action can serve as a stepping stone that enables the elimination of a harmful norm. While the intermediate action may facilitate the first "step," it may also become a new norm. We derive intuitive conditions for stepping stones, which depend on the relative size of social penalties and intrinsic utility benefits. We propose an econometric approach to testing whether an intermediate action is a stepping stone, and apply it to original data on female genital cutting in Somalia. The analysis shows that the intermediate action may become the new norm."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read young.h_peyton institutions cultural_evolution re:do-institutions-evolve evolutionary_game_theory</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:97fbe7c5d5da/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:young.h_peyton"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_game_theory"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/22/5/2261/7582277?redirectedFrom=PDF&amp;login=false">
    <title>Social Conflict and the Evolution of Unequal Conventions | Journal of the European Economic Association | Oxford Academic</title>
    <dc:date>2025-09-05T16:13:38+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/22/5/2261/7582277?redirectedFrom=PDF&amp;login=false</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["We propose a theory of social norms (or conventions) that implement substantial levels of inequality between men and women, ethnic groups, and classes and that persist over long periods of time despite being inefficient and not supported by formal institutions. Consistent with historical cases, we extend the standard asymmetric stochastic evolutionary game model to allow subpopulation sizes to differ and idiosyncratic rejection of a status quo convention to be intentional to some degree (rather than purely random as in the standard evolutionary models). In this setting, if idiosyncratic play is sufficiently intentional and the subordinate class is sufficiently large relative to the elite, then risk-dominated conventions that are both more unequal and inefficient relative to alternative conventions will be stochastically stable and may persist for long periods. We show that the same is true in a general bipartite network of the population if most of the subordinate groups interactions are local, while the elite is more “cosmopolitan”. We apply the model to the evolution of wage conventions on the bipartite network of workers and employers, and find that an unequal monopsonistic wage convention is robust to the idiosyncratic play of workers that otherwise might displace it."

--- Need to see how/if this differs from earlier Naidu&Bowles papers...]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read cultural_evolution institutions inequality bowles.samuel naidu.suresh to_teach:statistics_of_inequality_and_discrimination via:henry_farrell</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:de97228cfc12/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:inequality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bowles.samuel"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:naidu.suresh"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_teach:statistics_of_inequality_and_discrimination"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13399">
    <title>[2402.13399] Learning and Sustaining Shared Normative Systems via Bayesian Rule Induction in Markov Games</title>
    <dc:date>2024-12-11T15:54:28+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13399</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["A universal feature of human societies is the adoption of systems of rules and norms in the service of cooperative ends. How can we build learning agents that do the same, so that they may flexibly cooperate with the human institutions they are embedded in? We hypothesize that agents can achieve this by assuming there exists a shared set of norms that most others comply with while pursuing their individual desires, even if they do not know the exact content of those norms. By assuming shared norms, a newly introduced agent can infer the norms of an existing population from observations of compliance and violation. Furthermore, groups of agents can converge to a shared set of norms, even if they initially diverge in their beliefs about what the norms are. This in turn enables the stability of the normative system: since agents can bootstrap common knowledge of the norms, this leads the norms to be widely adhered to, enabling new entrants to rapidly learn those norms. We formalize this framework in the context of Markov games and demonstrate its operation in a multi-agent environment via approximately Bayesian rule induction of obligative and prohibitive norms. Using our approach, agents are able to rapidly learn and sustain a variety of cooperative institutions, including resource management norms and compensation for pro-social labor, promoting collective welfare while still allowing agents to act in their own interests."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB learning_in_games cultural_evolution re:do-institutions-evolve to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d14f2941ad42/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:learning_in_games"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01742-2">
    <title>Machine culture | Nature Human Behaviour</title>
    <dc:date>2024-07-17T15:21:08+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01742-2</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The ability of humans to create and disseminate culture is often credited as the single most important factor of our success as a species. In this Perspective, we explore the notion of ‘machine culture’, culture mediated or generated by machines. We argue that intelligent machines simultaneously transform the cultural evolutionary processes of variation, transmission and selection. Recommender algorithms are altering social learning dynamics. Chatbots are forming a new mode of cultural transmission, serving as cultural models. Furthermore, intelligent machines are evolving as contributors in generating cultural traits—from game strategies and visual art to scientific results. We provide a conceptual framework for studying the present and anticipated future impact of machines on cultural evolution, and present a research agenda for the study of machine culture."]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution to_read scooped? re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator philip_k_dick_and_the_fake_humans_rules_everything_around_me in_NB large_language_models_(so_called)</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:b1c2193084d5/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:scooped?"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:philip_k_dick_and_the_fake_humans_rules_everything_around_me"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:large_language_models_(so_called)"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/22/2/475/7202322?redirectedFrom=fulltext&amp;login=false">
    <title>Diffusion of Gender Norms: Evidence from Stalin’s Ethnic Deportations | Journal of the European Economic Association | Oxford Academic</title>
    <dc:date>2024-06-15T20:29:26+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article-abstract/22/2/475/7202322?redirectedFrom=fulltext&amp;login=false</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["We study horizontal between-group cultural transmission using Stalin’s ethnic deportations as a historical experiment. Over 2 million Soviet citizens, mostly Germans and Chechens, were forcibly relocated from the western to eastern parts of the USSR during WWII solely based on ethnicity. As a result, the native population of the deportation destinations was exogenously exposed to groups with drastically different gender norms and behavior. We combine historical and contemporary data to document that present-day gender equality in labor force participation, business leadership, and fertility as well as pro-gender-equality attitudes are higher among local native population of deportation destinations with a larger presence of Protestant compared to Muslim deportees. The effects are stronger for culturally closer groups and when adopting deportee norms is less costly. The results cannot be explained by selection, vertical cultural transmission, or deportee impact on the local economy. The evidence strongly suggests that gender norms diffused horizontally from deportees to the local population through imitation and learning."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution cultural_exchange ussr cant_make_an_omlette_without_running_some_natural_experiments</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:64b16dc0d798/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_exchange"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:ussr"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cant_make_an_omlette_without_running_some_natural_experiments"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.22.586239v1?rss=1">
    <title>The refinement paradox and cumulative cultural evolution: collective improvement in knowledge favors conformity, blind copying and hyper-credulity | bioRxiv</title>
    <dc:date>2024-04-01T03:53:35+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.22.586239v1?rss=1</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Social learning is common in nature, yet cumulative culture (where knowledge and technology increase in complexity and diversity over time) appears restricted to humans. To understand why, we organized a computer tournament in which programmed entries specified when to learn new knowledge and when to refine (i.e. improve) existing knowledge. The tournament revealed a ‘refinement paradox’: refined behavior afforded higher payoffs as individuals converged on a small number of successful behavioral variants, but refining did not generally pay. Paradoxically, entries that refined only in certain conditions did best during behavioral improvement, while simple copying entries thrived when refinement levels were high. Cumulative cultural evolution may be rare in part because sophisticated strategies for improving knowledge and technology are initially advantageous, yet complex culture, once achieved, favors conformity, blind imitation and hyper-credulity."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read cultural_evolution collective_cognition bowles.samuel laland.kevin via:rvenkat</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a98468938d78/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bowles.samuel"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:laland.kevin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:rvenkat"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04494-0">
    <title>Innovation and cumulative culture through tweaks and leaps in online programming contests | Nature Communications</title>
    <dc:date>2024-04-01T03:52:30+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04494-0</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The ability to build progressively on the achievements of earlier generations is central to human uniqueness, but experimental investigations of this cumulative cultural evolution lack real-world complexity. Here, we studied the dynamics of cumulative culture using a large-scale data set from online collaborative programming competitions run over 14 years. We show that, within each contest population, performance increases over time through frequent ‘tweaks’ of the current best entry and rare innovative ‘leaps’ (successful tweak:leap ratio = 16:1), the latter associated with substantially greater variance in performance. Cumulative cultural evolution reduces technological diversity over time, as populations focus on refining high-performance solutions. While individual entries borrow from few sources, iterative copying allows populations to integrate ideas from many sources, demonstrating a new form of collective intelligence. Our results imply that maximising technological progress requires accepting high levels of failure."

--- That's quite a conclusion from one study...

]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution collective_cognition laland.kevin via:rvenkat programming</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:9f7a44c38ba5/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:collective_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:laland.kevin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:rvenkat"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:programming"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/wdh3f">
    <title>SocArXiv Papers | Measuring Movement in Cultural Landscapes</title>
    <dc:date>2024-03-12T01:38:04+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/wdh3f</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Culture is often conceptualized as a landscape, where the peaks represent popular beliefs, institutions or practices, while the valleys represent those that receive infrequent attention. In this article, we build on this metaphor, and explore how individuals navigate these cultural landscapes. Using longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we follow participants’ survey response trajectories across three cultural domains, each with particular topographical features. We show that movement across cultural landscapes is adequately captured by a gravitational model of change, which specifies transition probabilities among cultural positions as a function of the distance between them and how populated they are. Nonetheless, the kind of movement that such a gravitational model would predict varies widely depending on the initial topography of the landscape. Our work highlights that charting landscapes is not only useful cartography, but also an analytical tool that helps us understand the kind of cultural trajectories we should expect individuals to follow."

--- Off-the-cuff, unfair reaction to the abstract is that "landscape" and "gravity" (in the sense of economic geography) are two metaphors which will never combine felicitiously, and they should pick _one_.
]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution sociology</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:7a6feec1b69a/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691224145/modeling-social-behavior">
    <title>Modeling Social Behavior | Princeton University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2023-11-16T18:24:35+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691224145/modeling-social-behavior</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["This book provides a unified, theory-driven introduction to key mathematical and agent-based models of social dynamics and cultural evolution, teaching readers how to build their own models, analyze them, and integrate them with empirical research programs. It covers a variety of modeling topics, each exemplified by one or more archetypal models, and helps readers to develop strong theoretical foundations for understanding social behavior. Modeling Social Behavior equips social, behavioral, and cognitive scientists with an essential tool kit for thinking about and studying complex social systems using mathematical and computational models."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted smaldino.paul agent-based_models cultural_evolution sociology books:suggest_to_library books:owned</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:0ccdc3b87f40/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:smaldino.paul"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:agent-based_models"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:suggest_to_library"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:owned"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773462">
    <title>Divination: &quot;Adaptive&quot; from Whose Perspective? on JSTOR</title>
    <dc:date>2023-06-15T19:45:51+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773462</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>to:NB divination magic anthropology cultural_evolution via:?</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:48687cf314f0/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:divination"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:magic"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:anthropology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:?"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://elevanth.org/blog/2022/09/19/the-problem-with-cultural-evolution/">
    <title>The Problem With Cultural Evolution | Elements of Evolutionary Anthropology</title>
    <dc:date>2022-09-25T17:18:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://elevanth.org/blog/2022/09/19/the-problem-with-cultural-evolution/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>cultural_evolution have_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:c8841093f3f4/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/2ekcr/">
    <title>MetaArXiv Preprints | The Cultural Evolution of Science</title>
    <dc:date>2022-08-27T19:44:05+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/2ekcr/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>to:NB science_as_a_social_process cultural_evolution oconnor.cailin smaldino.paul</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a3d7c4238bd9/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:science_as_a_social_process"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:oconnor.cailin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:smaldino.paul"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198830184.001.0001/oso-9780198830184?rskey=cA4yfN&amp;result=277">
    <title>Dragon in the West: From Ancient Myth to Modern Legend - Oxford Scholarship</title>
    <dc:date>2022-07-11T02:36:58+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198830184.001.0001/oso-9780198830184?rskey=cA4yfN&amp;result=277</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The book describes the evolution of the modern dragon from its ancient forebears, in terms both of its form and of its narrative contexts. In physical form dragons are broadly serpentine, but have animalian heads, thick central bodies, wings, and clawed legs. In their stories they live in caves, lie on treasure, maraud, and burn; they are extraordinarily powerful, but even so ultimately worsted in their battles with humans. Despite the inestimable success of this physical form and this broad story-type, there is nothing obvious, inevitable, or natural about them. Rather, both are mature, complex, and artificial constructs. The book traces the evolution of the dragon’s form from the purely serpentine drakon of classical antiquity, through its merging with the forms of the ancient sea monster and the winged, humanoid demon, into that of the first recognizably modern dragon, the two-legged wyvern that emerged in the illustrated manuscripts of the ninth century AD, which has previously been described as the ‘Romanesque’ or ‘Gothic’ dragon. It traces the evolution of the dragon’s typical story-type again from classical antiquity, across the vast tradition of medieval hagiography (saints’ lives), and into the Germanic world, where particular attention is given to the wealth of dragons featured in the Norse sagas."]]></description>
<dc:subject>in_NB books:noted mythology cultural_evolution dragons downloaded</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:1704bb86d6f2/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mythology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:dragons"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:downloaded"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v9-8-184/">
    <title>Cohort Succession Explains Most Change in Literary Culture | Sociological Science</title>
    <dc:date>2022-05-08T21:45:25+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v9-8-184/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Many aspects of behavior are guided by dispositions that are relatively durable once formed. Political opinions and phonology, for instance, change largely through cohort succession. But evidence for cohort effects has been scarce in artistic and intellectual history; researchers in those fields more commonly explain change as an immediate response to recent innovations and events. We test these conflicting theories of change in a corpus of 10,830 works of fiction from 1880 to 1999 and find that slightly more than half (54.7 percent) of the variance explained by time is explained better by an author’s year of birth than by a book’s year of publication. Writing practices do change across an author’s career. But the pace of change declines steeply with age. This finding suggests that existing histories of literary culture have a large blind spot: the early experiences that form cohorts are pivotal but leave few traces in the historical record."

--- The idea (but not, of course, the data) is present in Schuking (1931), IIRC.
Of course, curious about how they measure "better explained".  (Also, variance in what?)]]></description>
<dc:subject>literary_history cultural_evolution underwood.ted to:NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d81e69138df8/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:literary_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:underwood.ted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/culture-without-copying-or-selection/4A0AD3781ED1616BD9D9424BD02FDCB4">
    <title>Culture without copying or selection | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2021-12-05T17:06:04+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/culture-without-copying-or-selection/4A0AD3781ED1616BD9D9424BD02FDCB4</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Typical examples of cultural phenomena all exhibit a degree of similarity across time and space at the level of the population. As such, a fundamental question for any science of culture is, what ensures this stability in the first place? Here we focus on the evolutionary and stabilising role of ‘convergent transformation’, in which one item causes the production of another item whose form tends to deviate from the original in a directed, non-random way. We present a series of stochastic models of cultural evolution investigating its effects. The results show that cultural stability can emerge and be maintained by virtue of convergent transformation alone, in the absence of any form of copying or selection process. We show how high-fidelity copying and convergent transformation need not be opposing forces, and can jointly contribute to cultural stability. We finally analyse how non-random transformation and high-fidelity copying can have different evolutionary signatures at population level, and hence how their distinct effects can be distinguished in empirical records. Collectively, these results supplement existing approaches to cultural evolution based on the Darwinian analogy, while also providing formal support for other frameworks – such as Cultural Attraction Theory – that entail its further loosening."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution to_read re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:0fd3c9200150/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00031224211024525">
    <title>Cultural Schemas: What They Are, How to Find Them, and What to Do Once You’ve Caught One - Andrei Boutyline, Laura K. Soter, 2021</title>
    <dc:date>2021-07-14T04:08:01+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00031224211024525</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Cultural schemas are a central cognitive mechanism through which culture affects action. In this article, we develop a theoretical model of cultural schemas that is better able to support empirical work, including inferential, sensitizing, and operational uses. We propose a multilevel framework centered on a high-level definition of cultural schemas that is sufficiently broad to capture its major sociological applications but still sufficiently narrow to identify a set of cognitive phenomena with key functional properties in common: cultural schemas are socially shared representations deployable in automatic cognition. We use this conception to elaborate the main theoretical properties of cultural schemas, and to provide clear criteria that distinguish them from other cultural or cognitive elements. We then propose a series of concrete tests empirical scholarship can use to determine if these properties apply. We also demonstrate how this approach can identify potentially faulty theoretical inferences present in existing work. Moving to a lower level of analysis, we elaborate how cultural schemas can be algorithmically conceptualized in terms of their building blocks. This leads us to recommend improvements to methods for measuring cultural schemas. We conclude by outlining questions for a broader research program."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB sociology cultural_transmission cultural_evolution re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:e126717164a5/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v8-5-83/">
    <title>A Model-Based Method for Detecting Persistent Cultural Change Using Panel Data | Sociological Science</title>
    <dc:date>2021-06-01T13:42:21+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v8-5-83/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Recent work argues that changes in people’s responses to the same question over time should be thought of as reflecting a fixed baseline subject to temporary local influences, rather than durable changes in response to new information. Distinguishing between these two individual-level process—a settled dispositions model and an active updating model—is important because these individual-level processes underlie different theories of population-level social change. This article introduces an alternative method for adjudicating between these two models based on structural equation modeling. This model provides a close fit to the theoretical models outlined in previous work. Applying this method to more than 500 questions in the General Social Survey’s three-wave panels, we find even stronger evidence than previous work that most survey responses reflect settled dispositions developed prior to adulthood."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB time_series sociology cultural_evolution one_funeral_at_a_time</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:747d663210a3/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:time_series"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:one_funeral_at_a_time"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-extinction-in-evolutionary-perspective/035F093515E2A445FCA0D78DA542075B">
    <title>Cultural extinction in evolutionary perspective | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2021-04-30T19:20:11+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-extinction-in-evolutionary-perspective/035F093515E2A445FCA0D78DA542075B</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Cultural diversity is disappearing quickly. Whilst a phylogenetic approach makes explicit the continuous extinction of cultures, and the generation of new ones, cultural evolutionary changes such as the rise of agriculture or more recently colonisation can cause periods of mass cultural extinction. At the current rate, 90% of languages will become extinct or moribund by the end of this century. Unlike biological extinction, cultural extinction does not necessarily involve genetic extinction or even deaths, but results from the disintegration of a social entity and discontinuation of culture-specific behaviours. Here we propose an analytical framework to examine the phenomenon of cultural extinction. When examined over millennia, extinctions of cultural traits or institutions can be studied in a phylogenetic comparative framework that incorporates archaeological data on ancestral states. Over decades or centuries, cultural extinction can be studied in a behavioural ecology framework to investigate how the fitness consequences of cultural behaviours and population dynamics shift individual behaviours away from the traditional norms. Frequency-dependent costs and benefits are key to understanding both the origin and the loss of cultural diversity. We review recent evolutionary studies that have informed cultural extinction processes and discuss avenues of future studies."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution phylogenetics cultural_transmission cultural_differences imperialism nationalism re:flynn_from_gellner</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3dfce1372b89/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:phylogenetics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_differences"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:imperialism"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:nationalism"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:flynn_from_gellner"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10210">
    <title>[2104.10210] How individuals change language</title>
    <dc:date>2021-04-22T15:28:36+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10210</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Languages emerge and change over time at the population level though interactions between individual speakers. It is, however, hard to directly observe how a single speaker's linguistic innovation precipitates a population-wide change in the language, and many theoretical proposals exist. We introduce a very general mathematical model that encompasses a wide variety of individual-level linguistic behaviours and provides statistical predictions for the population-level changes that result from them. This model allows us to compare the likelihood of empirically-attested changes in definite and indefinite articles in multiple languages under different assumptions on the way in which individuals learn and use language. We find that accounts of language change that appeal primarily to errors in childhood language acquisition are very weakly supported by the historical data, whereas those that allow speakers to change incrementally across the lifespan are more plausible, particularly when combined with social network effects."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB linguistics cultural_transmission cultural_evolution re:do-institutions-evolve color_me_skeptical to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:0086148e0ca4/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:linguistics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:color_me_skeptical"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76658-2#Sec12">
    <title>Diversity begets diversity in mammal species and human cultures | Scientific Reports</title>
    <dc:date>2021-03-01T19:04:15+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76658-2#Sec12</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Across the planet the biogeographic distribution of human cultural diversity tends to correlate positively with biodiversity. In this paper we focus on the biogeographic distribution of mammal species and human cultural diversity. We show that not only are these forms of diversity similarly distributed in space, but they both scale superlinearly with environmental production. We develop theory that explains that as environmental productivity increases the ecological kinetics of diversity increases faster than expected because more complex environments are also more interactive. Using biogeographic databases of the global distributions of mammal species and human cultures we test a series of hypotheses derived from this theory and find support for each. For both mammals and cultures, we show that (1) both forms of diversity increase exponentially with ecological kinetics; (2) the kinetics of diversity is faster than the kinetics of productivity; (3) diversity scales superlinearly with environmental productivity; and (4) the kinetics of diversity is faster in increasingly productive environments. This biogeographic convergence is particularly striking because while the dynamics of biological and cultural evolution may be similar in principle the underlying mechanisms and time scales are very different. However, a common currency underlying all forms of diversity is ecological kinetics; the temperature-dependent fluxes of energy and biotic interactions that sustain all forms of life at all levels of organization. Diversity begets diversity in mammal species and human cultures because ecological kinetics drives superlinear scaling with environmental productivity."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution anthropology ecology diversity via:?</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:381cc85fd508/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:anthropology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:ecology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diversity"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:?"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198835943.001.0001">
    <title>Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age - Oxford Scholarship</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-16T06:16:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198835943.001.0001</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["From emails to social media, from instant messaging to political memes, the way we produce and transmit culture is radically changing. This book uses, for the first time, cultural evolution theory to analyze how information spreads, and how it affects our behavior in the digital age. Online connectedness and digital media allows access to networks where cultural transmission is possible, increasing both the availability of cultural models (from whom we can copy) and our reach (the number of individuals who can copy from us). This poses new problems, and new opportunities (Chapter 1). A cognitive and evolutionary approach suggests that we are wary learners, and the power of social influence, either online or offline, is often overestimated (Chapter 2). The background developed in the initial chapters into the details of different online phenomena is used: the tendency to copy popular individuals (Chapter 3), popular opinions (Chapter 4), or exchange information only with same-minded individuals (Chapter 5). The spread of online misinformation is then scrutinized at length (Chapter 6), proposing that to understand the phenomenon we need to understand why, generally, some information is more successful in spreading than other. The last two chapters examine how online, digital, transmission is different from other forms of cultural transmission, providing more “fidelity amplifiers” (Chapter 7), and how this could affect future cultural cumulation (Chapter 8). Overall, it is proposed that a “long view” to the current situation, based on a personal perspective of cognitive and evolutionary approaches to culture, suggests that some of the dangers of digital, online, interactions may have been overestimated, and the opportunities still ahead of us are discussed.']]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted networked_life cultural_evolution to_read to_download re:do-institutions-evolve books:owned</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:da324cef5ab1/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_download"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:owned"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-origins-of-unfairness-9780198789970?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;#">
    <title>The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution - Cailin O'Connor - Oxford University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2021-01-16T03:04:22+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-origins-of-unfairness-9780198789970?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;#</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In almost every human society some people get more and others get less. Why is inequity the rule in these societies? In The Origins of Unfairness, philosopher Cailin O'Connor firstly considers how groups are divided into social categories, like gender, race, and religion, to address this question. She uses the formal frameworks of game theory and evolutionary game theory to explore the cultural evolution of the conventions which piggyback on these seemingly irrelevant social categories. These frameworks elucidate a variety of topics from the innateness of gender differences, to collaboration in academia, to household bargaining, to minority disadvantage, to homophily. They help to show how inequity can emerge from simple processes of cultural change in groups with gender and racial categories, and under a wide array of situations. The process of learning conventions of coordination and resource division is such that some groups will tend to get more and others less. O'Connor offers solutions to such problems of coordination and resource division and also shows why we need to think of inequity as part of an ever evolving process. Surprisingly minimal conditions are needed to robustly produce phenomena related to inequity and, once inequity emerges in these models, it takes very little for it to persist indefinitely. Thus, those concerned with social justice must remain vigilant against the dynamic forces that push towards inequity."

--- Straight into my veins, as the saying goes.  (I read the introduction as an online sample and liked it a lot.)]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted cultural_evolution inequality social_theory evolutionary_game_theory re:do-institutions-evolve downloaded institutions sexism gender identity_group_formation to_teach:statistics_of_inequality_and_discrimination to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3ad04d98a175/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:inequality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_theory"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_game_theory"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:downloaded"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sexism"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:gender"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:identity_group_formation"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_teach:statistics_of_inequality_and_discrimination"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://acerbialberto.com/publication/preprint_ibmcultevo/">
    <title>Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R | Alberto Acerbi</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-19T04:02:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://acerbialberto.com/publication/preprint_ibmcultevo/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The field of cultural evolution has emerged in the last few decades as a thriving, interdisciplinary effort to understand cultural change and cultural diversity within an evolutionary framework and using evolutionary tools, concepts and methods. Given its roots in evolutionary biology, much of cultural evolution is grounded in, or inspired by, formal models. Yet many researchers interested in cultural evolution come from backgrounds that lack training in formal models, such as psychology, anthropology or archaeology. The aim of this book is to partly address this gap by showing readers how to create individual-based models (IBMs, also known as agent-based models, or ABMs) of cultural evolution. We provide example code written in the programming language R, which has been widely adopted in the scientific community. We will go from very simple models of the basic processes of cultural evolution, such as biased transmission and cultural mutation, to more advanced topics such as the evolution of social learning, demographic effects, and social network analysis. Where possible we recreate existing models in the literature, so that readers can better understand those existing models, and perhaps even extend them to address questions of their own interest. Please notice this is a ‘living’ book. It will be updated over time."]]></description>
<dc:subject>agent-based_models cultural_evolution books:noted R in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:06d1267a86a0/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:agent-based_models"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:R"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/710518">
    <title>Crowding out Memetic Explanation | Philosophy of Science: Vol 87, No 5</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-17T01:33:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/710518</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Memes have been proposed to explain wide swathes of human culture and language use. I argue that what is really doing the explanatory work in many of these cases is a basic mechanism of information transmission, which is distinct from memetic evolution by natural selection in significant ways. Perhaps the most significant of these is that information transmission depends primarily on the interests of the users of information, rather than the reproductive interests of the informational entities—‘memes’—themselves. Although my main target is memetic approaches, this argument also applies to some other, nonmemetic, theories of cultural evolution."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution cultural_transmission re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:799e6bb56205/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/no-universals-in-the-cultural-evolution-of-kinship-terminology/0BF406C9CFC182F9142749FDD0442471">
    <title>No universals in the cultural evolution of kinship terminology | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:49:47+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/no-universals-in-the-cultural-evolution-of-kinship-terminology/0BF406C9CFC182F9142749FDD0442471</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Kinship terminologies are the semantic systems of language that express kinship relations between individuals: in English, ‘aunt’ denotes a parent's sister. Theoretical models of kinship terminology diversity reduce over 10 billion possible organisations to six key types, each of which are hypothesised to be aligned with particular cultural norms of descent, marriage or residence patterns. Often, terminological type is used to infer social patterns in past societies based on these putative relationships between kinship terminologies and social structure, and these associations are staples of ‘Anthropology 101’. However, these relationships have not been scrutinised using modern comparative methods. Here we show that kinship terminologies vertically track language phylogeny in Austronesian, Bantu and Uto-Aztecan, three languages families of different time-depths and environments. We find no unidirectional or universal models of evolution in kinship terminology. Of 18 existing anthropological coevolutionary theories regarding kinship terminology and cultural practices across 176 societies, we find only patchy support, and no evidence for putative universal drivers of evolution in kinship terminologies."

]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution kinship anthropology phylogenetics</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:008bb08b6e8a/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kinship"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:anthropology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:phylogenetics"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-evolution-by-capital-accumulation/955EDA9A637BE4C59F44CE61378FCCDA">
    <title>Cultural evolution by capital accumulation | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:44:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-evolution-by-capital-accumulation/955EDA9A637BE4C59F44CE61378FCCDA</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In this article, we model cultural knowledge as a capital in which individuals invest at a cost. To this end, following other models of cultural evolution, we explicitly consider the investments made by individuals in culture as life history decisions. Our aim is to understand what then determines the dynamics of cultural accumulation. We show that culture can accumulate provided it improves the efficiency of people's lives in such a way as to increase their productivity or, said differently, provided the knowledge created by previous generations improves the ability of subsequent generations to invest in new knowledge. Our central message is that this positive feedback allowing cultural accumulation can occur for many different reasons. It can occur if cultural knowledge increases people's productivity, including in domains that have no connection with knowledge, because it frees up time that people can then spend learning and/or innovating. We also show that it can occur if cultural knowledge, and thus the higher level of resources that results from increased productivity, leads individuals to modify their life history decisions through phenotypic plasticity. Finally, we show that it can occur if technical knowledge reduces the effective cost of its own acquisition via division of labour. These results suggest that culture should not be defined only as a set of knowledge and skills but, more generally, as all the capital that has been produced by previous generations and that continues to affect current generations."

--- Cf. ibn Khaldun on the growth and decline of arts and sciences.]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:cdbd03274541/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/openended-cumulative-cultural-evolution-of-hollywood-film-crews/4FEC5F46E4EAA1574E3BDC962DD658B9">
    <title>Open-ended cumulative cultural evolution of Hollywood film crews | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:42:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/openended-cumulative-cultural-evolution-of-hollywood-film-crews/4FEC5F46E4EAA1574E3BDC962DD658B9</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Are there large-scale trends in art history that surpass individual creativity or relatively short artistic movements? Many theories describe art history as a process similar to a change of fashions, while others suggest that art can be progressive – getting better, in some sense, over time. We approach this question anew with the theory of cumulative cultural evolution, which describes cultural accomplishments in terms of innovations that are maintained across generations and accumulated to support ever greater creative potential. In this paper, we empirically test the possibility for cumulative evolution in the techniques used to make an artistic product. Specifically, we measure the size and structure of the production crews in American films in 1910–2010 based on a dataset of 1000 popular films across the century. We find that film crews become exponentially more complex, with a growing set of core jobs, and more innovative in creating new jobs in filmmaking. Our study shows that art history can be cumulative, showing the progressive maintenance of innovative techniques, and thus providing an alternative to the widespread view of art history as a mere fluctuation of trends and fashions."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB art_history movies social_networks cultural_evolution</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:159e27fa28c5/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:art_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:movies"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/modelling-cultural-selection-on-biological-fitness-to-integrate-social-transmission-and-adaptive-explanations-for-human-behaviour/CE568B2DCF569DCC719FDBE2FED1445B">
    <title>Modelling cultural selection on biological fitness to integrate social transmission and adaptive explanations for human behaviour | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:41:23+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/modelling-cultural-selection-on-biological-fitness-to-integrate-social-transmission-and-adaptive-explanations-for-human-behaviour/CE568B2DCF569DCC719FDBE2FED1445B</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["One of the difficulties with cultural group selection theory highlighted in the review by Smith (2020, Evol. Hum. Sci., 2, e7) is its inability to separate the evolutionary effects of selection of cultural traits based on biological fitness (Cultural Selection 1) from the effects of selection based on cultural fitness (Cultural Selection 2). Confusing these two processes can hinder the integration of adaptive explanations for human behaviour, which focus on biological fitness, and cultural evolution explanations, which often focus on social transmission. Recent empirical work is starting to bridge this gap, but progress in mathematical modelling has been considerably slower. Here, I suggest that modellers can contribute to achieving this integration by further developing models of Cultural Selection 1, where behaviours are influenced by culturally inherited traits selected on the basis of their effects on biological fitness. These models should build on existing social evolution theory methods and replace genetic relatedness with cultural relatedness, that is the probability that two individuals share a cultural variant."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution group_selection</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:933afc7eda19/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:group_selection"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/group-selectioninclusive-fitness-equivalence-claim-not-true-and-not-relevant/89224BA8AC224877F3A22127762668F4">
    <title>The group selection–inclusive fitness equivalence claim: not true and not relevant | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:40:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/group-selectioninclusive-fitness-equivalence-claim-not-true-and-not-relevant/89224BA8AC224877F3A22127762668F4</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The debate on (cultural) group selection regularly suffers from an inclusive fitness overdose. The classical view is that all group selection is kin selection, and that Hamilton's rule works for all models. I claim that not all group selection is kin selection, and that Hamilton's rule does not always get the direction of selection right. More importantly, I will argue that the paper by Smith (2020; Cultural group selection and human cooperation: a conceptual and empirical review. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2) shows that inclusive fitness is not particularly relevant for much of the empirical evidence relating to the question whether or not cultural group selection shaped human behaviour."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution group_selection</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:72854cf7d668/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:group_selection"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-group-selection-and-human-cooperation-a-conceptual-and-empirical-review/3BEEC0756C9D4DFA7D97A320D9D54AB3">
    <title>Cultural group selection and human cooperation: a conceptual and empirical review | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:40:01+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-group-selection-and-human-cooperation-a-conceptual-and-empirical-review/3BEEC0756C9D4DFA7D97A320D9D54AB3</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Cultural group selection has been proposed as an explanation for humans’ highly cooperative nature. This theory argues that social learning mechanisms, combined with rewards and punishment, can stabilise any group behaviour, cooperative or not. Equilibrium selection can then operate, resulting in cooperative groups outcompeting less-cooperative groups. This process may explain the widespread cooperation between non-kin observed in humans, which is sometimes claimed to be altruistic. This review explores the assumptions of cultural group selection to assess whether it provides a convincing explanation for human cooperation. Although competition between cultural groups certainly occurs, it is unclear whether this process depends on specific social learning mechanisms (e.g. conformism) or a norm psychology (to indiscriminately punish norm-violators) to stabilise groups at different equilibria as proposed by existing cultural group selection models. Rather than unquestioningly adopt group norms and institutions, individuals and groups appear to evaluate, design and shape them for self-interested reasons (where possible). As individual fitness is frequently tied to group fitness, this often coincides with constructing group-beneficial norms and institutions, especially when groups are in conflict. While culture is a vital component underlying our species’ success, the extent to which current conceptions of cultural group selection reflect human cooperative evolution remains unclear."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution group_selection parable_of_the_tribes units_of_selection</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:04c5b970da64/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:group_selection"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:parable_of_the_tribes"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:units_of_selection"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1059712318822298">
    <title>Cultural complexity and complexity evolution - Dwight Read, Claes Andersson, 2020</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-15T19:27:58+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1059712318822298</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[We review issues stemming from current models regarding the drivers of cultural complexity and cultural evolution. We disagree with the implication of the treadmill model, based on dual-inheritance theory, that population size is the driver of cultural complexity. The treadmill model reduces the evolution of artifact complexity, measured by the number of parts, to the statistical fact that individuals with high skills are more likely to be found in a larger population than in a smaller population. However, for the treadmill model to operate as claimed, implausibly high skill levels must be assumed. Contrary to the treadmill model, the risk hypothesis for the complexity of artifacts relates the number of parts to increased functional efficiency of implements. Empirically, all data on hunter-gatherer artifact complexity support the risk hypothesis and reject the treadmill model. Still, there are conditions under which increased technological complexity relates to increased population size, but the dependency does not occur in the manner expressed in the treadmill model. Instead, it relates to population size when the support system for the technology requires a large population size. If anything, anthropology and ecology suggest that cultural complexity generates high population density rather than the other way around.]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution anthropology to:NB re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3833124db470/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:anthropology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2560786">
    <title>Universal Cognitive Mechanisms Explain the Cultural Success of Bloodletting by Helena Miton, Nicolas Claidière, Hugo Mercier :: SSRN</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-15T14:54:55+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2560786</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Bloodletting — the practice of letting blood out to cure a patient — was for centuries one of the main therapies in the West. We lay out three potential explanations for bloodletting’s cultural success: that it was efficient, that it was defended by prestigious sources — in particular ancient physicians — and that cognitive mechanisms made it a particularly attractive practice. To test these explanations, we first review the anthropological data available in eHRAF. These data reveal that bloodletting is practiced by many unrelated cultures worldwide, where it is performed for different indications and in different ways. This suggests that the success of bloodletting cannot only be explained by its medical efficiency or by the prestige of Western physicians. Instead, some universal cognitive mechanisms likely make bloodletting an attractive form of therapy. We further test this hypothesis using the technique of transmission chains. Three experiments are conducted in the U.S., a culture that does not practice bloodletting. Studies 1 and 2 reveal that stories involving bloodletting survive longer than some other common therapies, and that the most successful variants in the experiments are also the most successful variants worldwide. Study 3 shows how a story about a mundane event — an accidental cut — can turn into a story about bloodletting. This research demonstrates the potential of combining different methodologies — review of anthropological data, experiments, and modeling — to investigate cultural phenomena."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read mercier.hugo cultural_transmission cultural_evolution epidemiology_of_representations medicine ideas bleed_him</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:16c7f9a6a71b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mercier.hugo"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:medicine"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:ideas"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bleed_him"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675692">
    <title>An Evolutionary Developmental Approach to Cultural Evolution | Current Anthropology: Vol 55, No 2</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-09T13:15:15+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675692</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Evolutionary developmental theories in biology see the processes and organization of organisms as crucial for understanding the dynamic behavior of organic evolution. Darwinian forces are seen as necessary but not sufficient for explaining observed evolutionary patterns. We here propose that the same arguments apply with even greater force to culture vis-à-vis cultural evolution. In order not to argue entirely in the abstract, we demonstrate the proposed approach by combining a set of different models into a provisional synthetic theory and by applying this theory to a number of short case studies. What emerges is a set of concepts and models that allow us to consider entirely new types of explanations for the evolution of cultures. For example, we see how feedback relations—both within societies and between societies and their ecological environment—have the power to shape evolutionary history in profound ways. The ambition here is not to produce a definitive statement on what such a theory should look like but rather to propose a starting point along with an argumentation and demonstration of its potential."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution to_read via:rvenkat</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:8bd454a2a6b0/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:rvenkat"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.11768">
    <title>[2011.11768] Replicator-mutator dynamics of linguistic convergence and divergence</title>
    <dc:date>2020-11-25T15:40:29+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.11768</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["People tend to align their use of language to the linguistic behaviour of their own ingroup and to simultaneously diverge from the language use of outgroups. This paper proposes to model this phenomenon of sociolinguistic identity maintenance as an evolutionary game in which individuals play the field and the dynamics are supplied by a multi-population extension of the replicator-mutator equation. Using linearization, the stabilities of all dynamic equilibria of the game in its fully symmetric two-population special case are found. The model is then applied to an empirical test case from adolescent sociolinguistic behaviour. It is found that the empirically attested population state corresponds to one of a number of stable equilibria of the game under an independently plausible value of a parameter controlling the rate of linguistic mutations. An asymmetric three-population extension of the game, explored with numerical solution methods, furthermore predicts to which specific equilibrium the system converges."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB linguistics cultural_evolution</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3097f2eb5d4d/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:linguistics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02460">
    <title>[2011.02460] Phylogenetic reconstruction of the cultural evolution of electronic music via dynamic community detection (1975-1999)</title>
    <dc:date>2020-11-08T06:43:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02460</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Cultural phylogenies, or "trees" of culture, are typically built using methods from biology that use similarities and differences in artifacts to infer the historical relationships between the populations that produced them. While these methods have yielded important insights, particularly in linguistics, researchers continue to debate the extent to which cultural phylogenies are tree-like or reticulated due to high levels of horizontal transmission. In this study, we propose a novel method for phylogenetic reconstruction using dynamic community detection that explicitly accounts for transmission between lineages. We used data from 1,498,483 collaborative relationships between electronic music artists to construct a cultural phylogeny based on observed population structure. The results suggest that, although the phylogeny is fundamentally tree-like, horizontal transmission is common and populations never become fully isolated from one another. In addition, we found evidence that electronic music diversity has increased between 1975 and 1999. The method used in this study is available as a new R package called DynCommPhylo. Future studies should apply this method to other cultural systems such as academic publishing and film, as well as biological systems where high resolution reproductive data is available, to assess how levels of reticulation in evolution vary across domains."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution community_discovery</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:88c2dc809df6/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:community_discovery"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171982/the-evolution-of-knowledge">
    <title>The Evolution of Knowledge | Princeton University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2020-03-12T20:11:18+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171982/the-evolution-of-knowledge</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["This book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution. Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene—this new geological epoch shaped by humankind.
"Renn reframes the history of science and technology within a much broader history of knowledge, analyzing key episodes such as the evolution of writing, the emergence of science in the ancient world, the Scientific Revolution of early modernity, the globalization of knowledge, industrialization, and the profound transformations wrought by modern science. He investigates the evolution of knowledge using an array of disciplines and methods, from cognitive science and experimental psychology to earth science and evolutionary biology. The result is an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge—and a bold new approach to the history and philosophy of science."

--- I can feel the shelf of books on evolutionary approaches to science and knowledge behind me (Popper, Toulmin, Hull, Kitcher, Plotkin, ...) glaring at the screen as I bookmark this.]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted science_as_a_social_process cultural_evolution philosophy_of_science history_of_science color_me_skeptical books:suggest_to_library</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:5cf163f3c28d/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:science_as_a_social_process"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:philosophy_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:history_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:color_me_skeptical"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:suggest_to_library"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/02/11/1910880117">
    <title>The evolution of early symbolic behavior in Homo sapiens | PNAS</title>
    <dc:date>2020-02-23T21:16:28+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/02/11/1910880117</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["How did human symbolic behavior evolve? Dating up to about 100,000 y ago, the engraved ochre and ostrich eggshell fragments from the South African Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter provide a unique window into presumed early symbolic traditions of Homo sapiens and how they evolved over a period of more than 30,000 y. Using the engravings as stimuli, we report five experiments which suggest that the engravings evolved adaptively, becoming better-suited for human perception and cognition. More specifically, they became more salient, memorable, reproducible, and expressive of style and human intent. However, they did not become more discriminable over time between or within the two archeological sites. Our observations provide support for an account of the Blombos and Diepkloof engravings as decorations and as socially transmitted cultural traditions. By contrast, there was no clear indication that they served as denotational symbolic signs. Our findings have broad implications for our understanding of early symbolic communication and cognition in H. sapiens."]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution human_evolution epidemiology_of_representations in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:e73c6f22ffd4/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:human_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://cambridge.org/9781108412674">
    <title>World ordering: social theory cognitive evolution | International relations and international organisations | Cambridge University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2020-01-12T21:02:45+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://cambridge.org/9781108412674</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Drawing on evolutionary epistemology, process ontology, and a social-cognition approach, this book suggests cognitive evolution, an evolutionary-constructivist social and normative theory of change and stability of international social orders. It argues that practices and their background knowledge survive preferentially, communities of practice serve as their vehicle, and social orders evolve. As an evolutionary theory of world ordering, which does not borrow from the natural sciences, it explains why certain configurations of practices organize and govern social orders epistemically and normatively, and why and how these configurations evolve from one social order to another. Suggesting a multiple and overlapping international social orders' approach, the book uses three running cases of contested orders - Europe's contemporary social order, the cyberspace order, and the corporate order - to illustrate the theory. Based on the concepts of common humanity and epistemological security, the author also submits a normative theory of better practices and of bounded progress."

]]></description>
<dc:subject>in_NB books:noted cultural_evolution institutions social_evolution via:auerbach re:do-institutions-evolve books:suggest_to_library</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:7577f5102035/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:institutions"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:auerbach"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:suggest_to_library"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/cultural-evolution-in-the-digital-age-9780198835943?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;#">
    <title>Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age - Alberto Acerbi - Oxford University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2020-01-09T20:42:15+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://global.oup.com/academic/product/cultural-evolution-in-the-digital-age-9780198835943?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;#</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["From emails to social media, from instant messaging to political memes, the way we produce and transmit culture is radically changing. Understanding the consequences of the massive diffusion of digital media is of the utmost importance, both from the intellectual and the social point of view.
"'Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age' proposes that a specific discipline - cultural evolution - provides an excellent framework to analyse our digital age. Cultural evolution is a vibrant, interdisciplinary, and increasingly productive scientific framework that aims to provide a naturalistic and quantitative explanation of culture. In the book the author shows how cultural evolution offers both a sophisticated view of human behaviour, grounded in cognitive science and evolutionary theory, and a strong quantitative and experimental methodology. The book examines in depth various topics that directly originate from the application of cultural evolution research to digital media.
"Is online social influence radically different from previous forms of social influence? Do digital media amplify the effects of popularity and celebrity influence? What are the psychological forces that favour the spread of online misinformation? What are the effects of the hyper-availability of information online on cultural cumulation? The cultural evolutionary perspective provides novel insights, and a relatively encouraging take on the overall effects of our online activities on our culture."]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted cultural_evolution social_influence social_life_of_the_mind social_media networked_life re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:86b28a5b7cf1/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networked_life"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:actually-dr-internet-is-the-name-of-the-monsters-creator"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110218-025040">
    <title>Cultural Evolution in Animals | Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics</title>
    <dc:date>2019-11-09T23:35:12+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110218-025040</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In recent decades, a burgeoning literature has documented the cultural transmission of behavior through social learning in numerous vertebrate and invertebrate species. One meaning of “cultural evolution in animals” refers to these discoveries, and I present an overview of key findings. I then address the other meaning of the term focused on cultural changes within a lineage. Such changes in humans, described as “cumulative cultural evolution,” have been spectacular, but relatively little attention has yet been paid to the topic in nonhuman animals, other than asserting that the process is unique to humans. A variety of evidence including both controlled experiments and field observations has begun to challenge this view, and in some behavioral domains, notably birdsong, cultural evolution has been studied for many years. In this review, I dissect concepts of cultural evolution and cumulative culture and appraise the accumulating evidence bearing on their nature and significance for evolutionary biology at large."]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution in_NB zoology</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f00c7fd844bf/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:zoology"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05273">
    <title>[1910.05273] The Natural Selection of Conservative Science</title>
    <dc:date>2019-10-15T18:14:43+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05273</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Social epistemologists have argued that high risk, high reward science has an important role to play in scientific communities. Recently, though, it has also been argued that various scientific fields seem to be trending towards conservatism -- the increasing production of what Kuhn (1970) would have called `normal science'. This paper will explore a possible explanation for this sort of trend: that the process by which scientific research groups form, grow, and dissolve might be inherently hostile to high risk science. In particular, I employ a paradigm developed by Smaldino and McElreath (2016) that treats a scientific community as a population undergoing selection. As will become clear, perhaps counter-intuitively this sort of process in some ways promotes high risk, high reward science. But, as I will point out, high risk high reward science is, in general, the sort of thing that is hard to repeat. While more conservative scientists will be able to train students capable of continuing their successful projects, and so create thriving lineages, successful risky science may not be the sort of thing one can easily pass on. In such cases, the structure of scientific communities selects against high risk, high rewards projects. More generally, this paper makes clear that there are at least two processes to consider in thinking about how incentives shape scientific communities -- the process by which individual scientists make choices about their careers and research, and the selective process governing the formation of new research groups."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB evolution cultural_evolution science_as_a_social_process</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d454619212fd/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:science_as_a_social_process"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctvnp0krm">
    <title>Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution on JSTOR</title>
    <dc:date>2019-09-09T23:54:12+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctvnp0krm</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Apparently not in our JSTOR subscription, so suggest the codex to the library?]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted cultural_evolution via:aelkus in_NB books:suggest_to_library</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:969e19b56c14/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:aelkus"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:suggest_to_library"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv301h1w">
    <title>The Evolution of Culture in Animals on JSTOR</title>
    <dc:date>2019-08-23T02:08:55+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv301h1w</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>books:recommended cultural_evolution downloaded in_NB evolution_of_cognition bonner.john_tyler</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:e108fb41b636/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:recommended"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:downloaded"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolution_of_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bonner.john_tyler"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wf4dft">
    <title>A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy on JSTOR</title>
    <dc:date>2019-08-22T04:54:50+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wf4dft</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>to:NB books:noted to_read mokyr.joel 18th_century_history 19th_century_history great_transformation social_life_of_the_mind cultural_evolution enlightenment industrial_revolution economic_history downloaded</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6693008188fa/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mokyr.joel"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:18th_century_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:19th_century_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:great_transformation"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:enlightenment"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:industrial_revolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:economic_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:downloaded"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103112">
    <title>The Psychology of Cultural Dynamics: What Is It, What Do We Know, and What Is Yet to Be Known? | Annual Review of Psychology</title>
    <dc:date>2019-05-26T18:02:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103112</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The psychology of cultural dynamics is the psychological investigation of the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. This article maps out the terrain, reviews the existing literature, and points out potential future directions of this research. It is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on micro-cultural dynamics, which refers to the social and psychological processes that contribute to the dissemination and retention of cultural information. The second part, on micro–macro dynamics, investigates how micro-level processes give rise to macro-cultural dynamics. The third part focuses on macro-cultural dynamics, referring to the distribution and long-term trends involving cultural information in a population, which in turn enable and constrain the micro-level processes. We conclude the review with a consideration of future directions, suggesting behavior change research as translational research on cultural dynamics."]]></description>
<dc:subject>psychology cognitive_science cultural_evolution cultural_transmission re:do-institutions-evolve in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:fbf9482b69ba/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085153?intcmp=trendmd">
    <title>Evolution in Archaeology | Annual Review of Anthropology</title>
    <dc:date>2019-05-26T17:45:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085153?intcmp=trendmd</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["This review begins with a brief outline of the key concepts of Darwinian archaeology. Its history is then summarized, beginning with its emergence as a significant theoretical focus within the discipline in the early 1980s; its main present-day currents are then presented, citing examples of recent work. The developments in archaeology are part of broader trends in anthropology and psychology and are characterized by the same theoretical disagreements. There are two distinct research traditions: one centered on cultural transmission and dual inheritance theory and the other on human behavioral ecology. The development of specifically archaeological methodologies within these two traditions for testing evolutionary hypotheses relating to diachronic questions using archaeological data is discussed. Finally, this review suggests that the greatest challenge for the future lies in finding ways of using archaeological data to address current major debates in evolutionary social science as a whole concerning, for example, the emergence of large-scale cooperation."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB archaeology cultural_evolution</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:006c586933e0/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:archaeology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/hugo-merciers-blog/a-matter-of-taste">
    <title>Blind imitation or a matter of taste? - International Cognition and Culture Institute</title>
    <dc:date>2019-01-14T21:42:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/hugo-merciers-blog/a-matter-of-taste</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>cultural_transmission cultural_evolution via:henry_farrell mercier.hugo morin.olivier</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:b40ec01d58e1/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:henry_farrell"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mercier.hugo"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:morin.olivier"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0062">
    <title>Fragmentation promotes accumulation | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences</title>
    <dc:date>2018-10-11T16:15:38+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0062</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Identifying the determinants of cumulative cultural evolution is a key issue in the interdisciplinary field of cultural evolution. A widely held view is that large and well-connected social networks facilitate cumulative cultural evolution because they promote the spread of useful cultural traits and prevent the loss of cultural knowledge through factors such as drift. This view stems from models that focus on the transmission of cultural information, without considering how new cultural traits actually arise. In this paper, we review the literature from various fields that suggest that, under some circumstances, increased connectedness can decrease cultural diversity and reduce innovation rates. Incorporating this idea into an agent-based model, we explore the effect of population fragmentation on cumulative culture and show that, for a given population size, there exists an intermediate level of population fragmentation that maximizes the rate of cumulative cultural evolution. This result is explained by the fact that fully connected, non-fragmented populations are able to maintain complex cultural traits but produce insufficient variation and so lack the cultural diversity required to produce highly complex cultural traits. Conversely, highly fragmented populations produce a variety of cultural traits but cannot maintain complex ones. In populations with intermediate levels of fragmentation, cultural loss and cultural diversity are balanced in a way that maximizes cultural complexity. Our results suggest that population structure needs to be taken into account when investigating the relationship between demography and cumulative culture."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read cultural_evolution diversity social_networks re:democratic_cognition re:do-institutions-evolve via:hugo_mercier</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:84ee3971ecad/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diversity"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:hugo_mercier"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo28246030">
    <title>Hayek and the Evolution of Capitalism, Beck</title>
    <dc:date>2018-07-23T19:25:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo28246030</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Few economists can claim the influence—or fame—of F. A. Hayek. Winner of the Nobel Prize, Hayek was one of the most consequential thinkers of the twentieth century, his views on the free market echoed by such major figures as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
"Yet even among those who study his work in depth, few have looked closely at his use of ideas from evolutionary science to advance his vision of markets and society. With this book Naomi Beck offers the first full-length engagement with Hayek’s thought from this perspective. Hayek argued that the capitalism we see in advanced civilizations is an unintended consequence of group selection—groups that adopted free market behavior expanded more successfully than others. But this attempt at a scientific grounding for Hayek’s principles, Beck shows, fails to hold water, plagued by incoherencies, misinterpretations of the underlying science, and lack of evidence. As crises around the globe lead to reconsiderations of the place of capitalism, Beck’s excavation of this little-known strand of Hayek’s thought—and its failure—is timely and instructive."]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted hayek.f.a._von cultural_evolution in_NB books:suggest_to_library</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f898156abfc0/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:hayek.f.a._von"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:suggest_to_library"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo28082555">
    <title>Culture and the Course of Human Evolution, Tomlinson</title>
    <dc:date>2018-06-05T15:42:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo28082555</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The rapid evolutionary development of modern Homo sapiens over the past 200,000 years is a topic of fevered interest in numerous disciplines. How did humans, while undergoing few physical changes from their first arrival, so quickly develop the capacities to transform their world? Gary Tomlinson’s Culture and the Course of Human Evolution is aimed at both scientists and humanists, and it makes the case that neither side alone can answer the most important questions about our origins. 
"Tomlinson offers a new model for understanding this period in our emergence, one based on analysis of advancing human cultures in an evolution that was simultaneously cultural and biological—a biocultural evolution. He places front and center the emergence of culture and the human capacities to create it, in a fashion that expands the conceptual framework of recent evolutionary theory. His wide-ranging vision encompasses arguments on the development of music, modern technology, and metaphysics. At the heart of these developments, he shows, are transformations in our species’ particular knack for signmaking. With its innovative synthesis of humanistic and scientific ideas, this book will be an essential text."]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted human_evolution cultural_evolution cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:206b4dcbc6b5/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:human_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/POSC_a_00057">
    <title>The misunderstanding of memes: Biography of an unscientific object, 1976–1999 | Perspectives on Science | MIT Press Journals</title>
    <dc:date>2018-06-04T14:06:53+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/POSC_a_00057</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["When the “meme” was introduced in 1976, it was as a metaphor intended to illuminate an evolutionary argument. By the late-1980s, however, we see from its use in major US newspapers that this original meaning had become obscured. The meme became a virus of the mind. (In the UK, this occurred slightly later.) It is also now clear that this becoming involved complex sustained interactions between scholars, journalists, and the letter-writing public. We must therefore read the “meme” through lenses provided by its popularization. The results are in turn suggestive of the processes of meaning-construction in scholarly communication more generally."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to_read cultural_evolution epidemiology_of_representations in_NB history_of_science science_journalism</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:968a64e85f61/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:history_of_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:science_journalism"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(18)30094-9">
    <title>Social Learning Strategies: Bridge-Building between Fields: Trends in Cognitive Sciences</title>
    <dc:date>2018-05-18T00:48:03+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(18)30094-9</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["While social learning is widespread, indiscriminate copying of others is rarely beneficial. Theory suggests that individuals should be selective in what, when, and whom they copy, by following ‘social learning strategies’ (SLSs). The SLS concept has stimulated extensive experimental work, integrated theory, and empirical findings, and created impetus to the social learning and cultural evolution fields. However, the SLS concept needs updating to accommodate recent findings that individuals switch between strategies flexibly, that multiple strategies are deployed simultaneously, and that there is no one-to-one correspondence between psychological heuristics deployed and resulting population-level patterns. The field would also benefit from the simultaneous study of mechanism and function. SLSs provide a useful vehicle for bridge-building between cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_learning cultural_transmission cultural_evolution cognitive_science social_influence re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:341352c4a36e/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_learning"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_science"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/115/14/3628">
    <title>Coevolution of landesque capital intensive agriculture and sociopolitical hierarchy | PNAS</title>
    <dc:date>2018-05-07T22:31:13+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/115/14/3628</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["One of the defining trends of the Holocene has been the emergence of complex societies. Two essential features of complex societies are intensive resource use and sociopolitical hierarchy. Although it is widely agreed that these two phenomena are associated cross-culturally and have both contributed to the rise of complex societies, the causality underlying their relationship has been the subject of longstanding debate. Materialist theories of cultural evolution tend to view resource intensification as driving the development of hierarchy, but the reverse order of causation has also been advocated, along with a range of intermediate views. Phylogenetic methods have the potential to test between these different causal models. Here we report the results of a phylogenetic study that modeled the coevolution of one type of resource intensification—the development of landesque capital intensive agriculture—with political complexity and social stratification in a sample of 155 Austronesian-speaking societies. We found support for the coevolution of landesque capital with both political complexity and social stratification, but the contingent and nondeterministic nature of both of these relationships was clear. There was no indication that intensification was the “prime mover” in either relationship. Instead, the relationship between intensification and social stratification was broadly reciprocal, whereas political complexity was more of a driver than a result of intensification. These results challenge the materialist view and emphasize the importance of both material and social factors in the evolution of complex societies, as well as the complex and multifactorial nature of cultural evolution."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution inequality historical_materialism phylogenetics</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f3029e99714c/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:inequality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:historical_materialism"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:phylogenetics"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ARTL_a_00244">
    <title>Minimally Sufficient Conditions for the Evolution of Social Learning and the Emergence of Non-Genetic Evolutionary Systems | Artificial Life | MIT Press Journals</title>
    <dc:date>2017-11-02T16:04:06+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ARTL_a_00244</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Social learning, defined as the imitation of behaviors performed by others, is recognized as a distinctive characteristic in humans and several other animal species. Previous work has claimed that the evolutionary fixation of social learning requires decision-making cognitive abilities that result in transmission bias (e.g., discriminatory imitation) and/or guided variation (e.g., adaptive modification of behaviors through individual learning). Here, we present and analyze a simple agent-based model that demonstrates that the transition from instinctive actuators (i.e., non-learning agents whose behavior is hardcoded in their genes) to social learners (i.e., agents that imitate behaviors) can occur without invoking such decision-making abilities. The model shows that the social learning of a trait may evolve and fix in a population if there are many possible behavioral variants of the trait, if it is subject to strong selection pressure for survival (as distinct from reproduction), and if imitation errors occur at a higher rate than genetic mutation. These results demonstrate that the (sometimes implicit) assumption in prior work that decision-making abilities are required is incorrect, thus allowing a more parsimonious explanation for the evolution of social learning that applies to a wider range of organisms. Furthermore, we identify genotype-phenotype disengagement as a signal for the imminent fixation of social learners, and explain the way in which this disengagement leads to the emergence of a basic form of cultural evolution (i.e., a non-genetic evolutionary system)."]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution agent-based_models bullock.seth re:do-institutions-evolve in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:7e5031cc3acb/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:agent-based_models"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bullock.seth"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/42/E8822.abstract">
    <title>Evolutionary dynamics of language systems</title>
    <dc:date>2017-10-26T18:05:19+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/42/E8822.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Understanding how and why language subsystems differ in their evolutionary dynamics is a fundamental question for historical and comparative linguistics. One key dynamic is the rate of language change. While it is commonly thought that the rapid rate of change hampers the reconstruction of deep language relationships beyond 6,000–10,000 y, there are suggestions that grammatical structures might retain more signal over time than other subsystems, such as basic vocabulary. In this study, we use a Dirichlet process mixture model to infer the rates of change in lexical and grammatical data from 81 Austronesian languages. We show that, on average, most grammatical features actually change faster than items of basic vocabulary. The grammatical data show less schismogenesis, higher rates of homoplasy, and more bursts of contact-induced change than the basic vocabulary data. However, there is a core of grammatical and lexical features that are highly stable. These findings suggest that different subsystems of language have differing dynamics and that careful, nuanced models of language change will be needed to extract deeper signal from the noise of parallel evolution, areal readaptation, and contact."

--- I would be very curious to know what historical linguists make of this.]]></description>
<dc:subject>linguistics language_history cultural_evolution phylogenetics in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:9a0dbb967f03/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:linguistics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:language_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:phylogenetics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7915.abstract">
    <title>The evolution of cognitive mechanisms in response to cultural innovations</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:45:19+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7915.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["When humans and other animals make cultural innovations, they also change their environment, thereby imposing new selective pressures that can modify their biological traits. For example, there is evidence that dairy farming by humans favored alleles for adult lactose tolerance. Similarly, the invention of cooking possibly affected the evolution of jaw and tooth morphology. However, when it comes to cognitive traits and learning mechanisms, it is much more difficult to determine whether and how their evolution was affected by culture or by their use in cultural transmission. Here we argue that, excluding very recent cultural innovations, the assumption that culture shaped the evolution of cognition is both more parsimonious and more productive than assuming the opposite. In considering how culture shapes cognition, we suggest that a process-level model of cognitive evolution is necessary and offer such a model. The model employs relatively simple coevolving mechanisms of learning and data acquisition that jointly construct a complex network of a type previously shown to be capable of supporting a range of cognitive abilities. The evolution of cognition, and thus the effect of culture on cognitive evolution, is captured through small modifications of these coevolving learning and data-acquisition mechanisms, whose coordinated action is critical for building an effective network. We use the model to show how these mechanisms are likely to evolve in response to cultural phenomena, such as language and tool-making, which are associated with major changes in data patterns and with new computational and statistical challenges."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution cultural_transmission cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools human_evolution social_life_of_the_mind color_me_skeptical</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:9863baff7199/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:human_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:color_me_skeptical"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7877.abstract">
    <title>Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:43:21+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7877.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The complexity and variability of human culture is unmatched by any other species. Humans live in culturally constructed niches filled with artifacts, skills, beliefs, and practices that have been inherited, accumulated, and modified over generations. A causal account of the complexity of human culture must explain its distinguishing characteristics: It is cumulative and highly variable within and across populations. I propose that the psychological adaptations supporting cumulative cultural transmission are universal but are sufficiently flexible to support the acquisition of highly variable behavioral repertoires. This paper describes variation in the transmission practices (teaching) and acquisition strategies (imitation) that support cumulative cultural learning in childhood. Examining flexibility and variation in caregiver socialization and children’s learning extends our understanding of evolution in living systems by providing insight into the psychological foundations of cumulative cultural transmission—the cornerstone of human cultural diversity."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution cultural_transmission</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:fea9bd22278a/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7838.abstract">
    <title>A social insect perspective on the evolution of social learning mechanisms</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:42:02+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7838.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The social world offers a wealth of opportunities to learn from others, and across the animal kingdom individuals capitalize on those opportunities. Here, we explore the role of natural selection in shaping the processes that underlie social information use, using a suite of experiments on social insects as case studies. We illustrate how an associative framework can encompass complex, context-specific social learning in the insect world and beyond, and based on the hypothesis that evolution acts to modify the associative process, suggest potential pathways by which social information use could evolve to become more efficient and effective. Social insects are distant relatives of vertebrate social learners, but the research we describe highlights routes by which natural selection could coopt similar cognitive raw material across the animal kingdom."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution social_life_of_the_mind evolutionary_biology</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ca5c2c4b9757/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_biology"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7861.abstract">
    <title>Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:40:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7861.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Culture suffuses all aspects of human life. It shapes our minds and bodies and has provided a cumulative inheritance of knowledge, skills, institutions, and artifacts that allows us to truly stand on the shoulders of giants. No other species approaches the extent, diversity, and complexity of human culture, but we remain unsure how this came to be. The very uniqueness of human culture is both a puzzle and a problem. It is puzzling as to why more species have not adopted this manifestly beneficial strategy and problematic because the comparative methods of evolutionary biology are ill suited to explain unique events. Here, we develop a more particularistic and mechanistic evolutionary neuroscience approach to cumulative culture, taking into account experimental, developmental, comparative, and archaeological evidence. This approach reconciles currently competing accounts of the origins of human culture and develops the concept of a uniquely human technological niche rooted in a shared primate heritage of visuomotor coordination and dexterous manipulation."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools human_evolution</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:53d1ec7431be/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:human_evolution"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7846.abstract">
    <title>Cultural macroevolution matters</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:39:49+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7846.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Evolutionary thinking can be applied to both cultural microevolution and macroevolution. However, much of the current literature focuses on cultural microevolution. In this article, we argue that the growing availability of large cross-cultural datasets facilitates the use of computational methods derived from evolutionary biology to answer broad-scale questions about the major transitions in human social organization. Biological methods can be extended to human cultural evolution. We illustrate this argument with examples drawn from our recent work on the roles of Big Gods and ritual human sacrifice in the evolution of large, stratified societies. These analyses show that, although the presence of Big Gods is correlated with the evolution of political complexity, in Austronesian cultures at least, they do not play a causal role in ratcheting up political complexity. In contrast, ritual human sacrifice does play a causal role in promoting and sustaining the evolution of stratified societies by maintaining and legitimizing the power of elites. We briefly discuss some common objections to the application of phylogenetic modeling to cultural evolution and argue that the use of these methods does not require a commitment to either gene-like cultural inheritance or to the view that cultures are like vertebrate species. We conclude that the careful application of these methods can substantially enhance the prospects of an evolutionary science of human history."

--- I wish I could remember who it was that said "Of course, like any tool, human sacrifice can be mis-used..."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution anthropology human_sacrifice</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:dddbf3e4082c/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:anthropology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:human_sacrifice"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7790.abstract">
    <title>Culture extends the scope of evolutionary biology in the great apes</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:38:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7790.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Discoveries about the cultures and cultural capacities of the great apes have played a leading role in the recognition emerging in recent decades that cultural inheritance can be a significant factor in the lives not only of humans but also of nonhuman animals. This prominence derives in part from these primates being those with whom we share the most recent common ancestry, thus offering clues to the origins of our own thoroughgoing reliance on cumulative cultural achievements. In addition, the intense research focus on these species has spawned an unprecedented diversity of complementary methodological approaches, the results of which suggest that cultural phenomena pervade the lives of these apes, with potentially major implications for their broader evolutionary biology. Here I review what this extremely broad array of observational and experimental methodologies has taught us about the cultural lives of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans and consider the ways in which this knowledge extends our wider understanding of primate biology and the processes of adaptation and evolution that shape it. I address these issues first by evaluating the extent to which the results of cultural inheritance echo a suite of core principles that underlie organic Darwinian evolution but also extend them in new ways and then by assessing the principal causal interactions between the primary, genetically based organic processes of evolution and the secondary system of cultural inheritance that is based on social learning from others."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution cultural_transmission primates</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:b09fa94cb586/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:primates"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7782.abstract">
    <title>Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:37:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7782.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Human cultural traits—behaviors, ideas, and technologies that can be learned from other individuals—can exhibit complex patterns of transmission and evolution, and researchers have developed theoretical models, both verbal and mathematical, to facilitate our understanding of these patterns. Many of the first quantitative models of cultural evolution were modified from existing concepts in theoretical population genetics because cultural evolution has many parallels with, as well as clear differences from, genetic evolution. Furthermore, cultural and genetic evolution can interact with one another and influence both transmission and selection. This interaction requires theoretical treatments of gene–culture coevolution and dual inheritance, in addition to purely cultural evolution. In addition, cultural evolutionary theory is a natural component of studies in demography, human ecology, and many other disciplines. Here, we review the core concepts in cultural evolutionary theory as they pertain to the extension of biology through culture, focusing on cultural evolutionary applications in population genetics, ecology, and demography. For each of these disciplines, we review the theoretical literature and highlight relevant empirical studies. We also discuss the societal implications of the study of cultural evolution and of the interactions of humans with one another and with their environment."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution feldman.marcus_w.</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:5730225e5416/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:feldman.marcus_w."/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/34/9140.abstract">
    <title>Inferring patterns of folktale diffusion using genomic data</title>
    <dc:date>2017-08-28T22:27:06+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/114/34/9140.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Observable patterns of cultural variation are consistently intertwined with demic movements, cultural diffusion, and adaptation to different ecological contexts [Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981) Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach; Boyd and Richerson (1985) Culture and the Evolutionary Process]. The quantitative study of gene–culture coevolution has focused in particular on the mechanisms responsible for change in frequency and attributes of cultural traits, the spread of cultural information through demic and cultural diffusion, and detecting relationships between genetic and cultural lineages. Here, we make use of worldwide whole-genome sequences [Pagani et al. (2016) Nature 538:238–242] to assess the impact of processes involving population movement and replacement on cultural diversity, focusing on the variability observed in folktale traditions (n = 596) [Uther (2004) The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson] in Eurasia. We find that a model of cultural diffusion predicted by isolation-by-distance alone is not sufficient to explain the observed patterns, especially at small spatial scales (up to ∼∼4,000 km). We also provide an empirical approach to infer presence and impact of ethnolinguistic barriers preventing the unbiased transmission of both genetic and cultural information. After correcting for the effect of ethnolinguistic boundaries, we show that, of the alternative models that we propose, the one entailing cultural diffusion biased by linguistic differences is the most plausible. Additionally, we identify 15 tales that are more likely to be predominantly transmitted through population movement and replacement and locate putative focal areas for a set of tales that are spread worldwide."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB folklore epidemiology_of_representations historical_genetics cultural_evolution cultural_transmission to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:aa3f5ed33f14/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:folklore"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:historical_genetics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://home.uchicago.edu/~jlmartin/Papers/Life's%20A%20Beach%20but%20You're%20an%20Ant.pdf">
    <title>Life’s a beach but you’re an ant, and other unwelcome news for the sociology of culture</title>
    <dc:date>2017-04-01T04:44:33+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://home.uchicago.edu/~jlmartin/Papers/Life's%20A%20Beach%20but%20You're%20an%20Ant.pdf</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The sociology of culture has happily been able to get by without any strict definitions of culture, but most of us seem to assume that culture is some sort of complex cognitive web (say of signs or symbols) that is largely shared across persons and mirrored in aspects of their interiority. I argue that this is unlikely, because of what we know about the limitations to our cognitive powers. I present a selective review of such results and make a few arguments for the implications regarding our understanding of culture."

--- JLM re-invents Sperber (perhaps appropriately enough!)]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB have_read cultural_evolution sociology cultural_transmission martin.john_levi</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:1c7623aa2cdb/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:martin.john_levi"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/113/48/13666.abstract">
    <title>Phylogenetic approach to the evolution of color term systems</title>
    <dc:date>2016-12-07T14:25:57+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/113/48/13666.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The naming of colors has long been a topic of interest in the study of human culture and cognition. Color term research has asked diverse questions about thought and communication, but no previous research has used an evolutionary framework. We show that there is broad support for the most influential theory of color term development (that most strongly represented by Berlin and Kay [Berlin B, Kay P (1969) (Univ of California Press, Berkeley, CA)]); however, we find extensive evidence for the loss (as well as gain) of color terms. We find alternative trajectories of color term evolution beyond those considered in the standard theories. These results not only refine our knowledge of how humans lexicalize the color space and how the systems change over time; they illustrate the promise of phylogenetic methods within the domain of cognitive science, and they show how language change interacts with human perception."]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution phylogenetics linguistics in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:137dd17ffb51/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:phylogenetics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:linguistics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo25011505">
    <title>The Invention of Culture, Wagner, Ingold</title>
    <dc:date>2016-12-07T04:36:57+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo25011505</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In anthropology, a field that is known for its critical edge and intellectual agility, few books manage to maintain both historical value and contemporary relevance. Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture, originally published in 1975, is one.
"Wagner breaks new ground by arguing that culture arises from the dialectic between the individual and the social world. Rooting his analysis in the relationships between invention and convention, innovation and control, and meaning and context, he builds a theory that insists on the importance of creativity, placing people-as-inventors at the heart of the process that creates culture. In an elegant twist, he shows that this very process ultimately produces the discipline of anthropology itself.
"Tim Ingold’s foreword to the new edition captures the exhilaration of Wagner’s book while showing how the reader can journey through it and arrive safely—though transformed—on the other side."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted anthropology cultural_evolution</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d995636e038c/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:noted"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:anthropology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-016-9269-8">
    <title>Have human societies evolved? Evidence from history and pre-history - Springer</title>
    <dc:date>2016-06-23T16:29:45+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-016-9269-8</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["I ask whether social evolutionary theories found in sociology, archaeology, and anthropology are useful in explaining human development from the Stone Age to the present-day. My data are partly derived from the four volumes of The Sources of Social Power, but I add statistical data on the growth of complexity and power in human groups. I distinguish three levels of evolutionary theory. The first level offers a minimalist definition of evolution in terms of social groups responding and adapting to changes in their social and natural environment. This is acceptable but trivial. The hard part is to elucidate what kinds of response are drawn from what changes, and all sociology shares in this difficulty. This model also tends to over-emphasize external pressures and neglect human inventiveness. The second level of theory is “multilineal” evolution in which various paths of endogenous development, aided by diffusion of practices between societies, dominate the historical and pre-historical record. This is acceptable as a model applied to some times, places, and practices, but when applied more generally it slides into a multi-causal analysis that is also conventional in the social sciences. The third level is a theory of general evolution for the entire human experience. Here materialist theories are dominant but they are stymied by their neglect of ideological, military, and political power relations. There is no acceptable theory of general social evolution. Thus the contribution of social evolutionary theory to the social sciences has been limited."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_evolution cultural_evolution mann.michael re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:fad6523cbde0/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_evolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:mann.michael"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
</rdf:RDF>