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    <title>Pinboard (cshalizi)</title>
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    <description>recent bookmarks from cshalizi</description>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-propagation-of-false-news-in-wartime/"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3100"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=341"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/318/5849/394.pdf"/>
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  </channel><item rdf:about="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01912-w">
    <title>Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age | Nature Human Behaviour</title>
    <dc:date>2024-12-11T20:00:45+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01912-w</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In societies without writing, ethnographically known rituals have rarely been tracked back archaeologically more than a few hundred years. At the invitation of GunaiKurnai Aboriginal Elders, we undertook archaeological excavations at Cloggs Cave in the foothills of the Australian Alps. In GunaiKurnai Country, caves were not used as residential places during the early colonial period (mid-nineteenth century CE), but as secluded retreats for the performance of rituals by Aboriginal medicine men and women known as ‘mulla-mullung’, as documented by ethnographers. Here we report the discovery of buried 11,000- and 12,000-year-old miniature fireplaces with protruding trimmed wooden artefacts made of Casuarina wood smeared with animal or human fat, matching the configuration and contents of GunaiKurnai ritual installations described in nineteenth-century ethnography. These findings represent 500 generations of cultural transmission of an ethnographically documented ritual practice that dates back to the end of the last ice age and that contains Australia’s oldest known wooden artefacts."

!!!]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_transmission archaeology</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d8b731d6d3b8/</dc:identifier>
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<item rdf:about="https://archive.is/ApTpS">
    <title>Is Culture Dying? | The New Yorker</title>
    <dc:date>2024-12-04T14:43:45+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://archive.is/ApTpS</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[--- _As relayed here_, this is just modernity, including Gellner's "modular man".  OTOH Roy has down very solid work on central Asia so I suspect important stuff has gotten lost in the channel.  (Bertrand Russell says somewhere that he'd rather be remembered through the attacks of his harshest _philosophical_ critic than the sympathy of friends ignorant of philosophy...)]]></description>
<dc:subject>track_down_references book_reviews tradition cultural_transmission modernity all_that_is_solid_melts_into_air color_me_skeptical</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:4c39386d98d3/</dc:identifier>
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<item rdf:about="https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5747/The-Evolution-of-TechniquesRigidity-and">
    <title>The Evolution of Techniques- Rigidity and Flexibility in Use, Transmission, and Innovation | Books Gateway | MIT Press</title>
    <dc:date>2024-04-29T19:51:32+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5747/The-Evolution-of-TechniquesRigidity-and</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["A novel, interdisciplinary exploration of the relative contributions of rigidity and flexibility in the adoption, maintenance, and evolution of technical traditions.
"Techniques can either be used in rigid, stereotypical ways or in flexibly adaptive ways, or in some combination of the two. The Evolution of Techniques, edited by Mathieu Charbonneau, addresses the impacts of both flexibility and rigidity on how techniques are used, transformed, and reconstructed, at varying social and temporal scales. The multidisciplinary contributors demonstrate the important role of the varied learning contexts and social configurations involved in the transmission, use, and evolution of techniques. They explore the diversity of cognitive, behavioral, sociocultural, and ecological mechanisms that promote and constrain technical flexibility and rigidity, proposing a deeper picture of the enablers of, and obstacles to, technical transmission and change.
"In line with the extended evolutionary synthesis, the book proposes a more inclusive and materially grounded conception of technical evolution in terms of promiscuous, dynamic, and multidirectional causal processes. Offering new evidence and novel theoretical perspectives, the contributors deploy a diversity of methods, including ethnographies, field and laboratory experiments, cladistics and phylogenetic tree building, historiography, and philosophical analysis. Examples of the wide range of topics covered include field experiments with potters from five cultures, stability and change in Paleolithic toolmaking, why children lack flexibility when making tools, and cultural techniques in nonhuman animals.
"The volume's three thematic sections are:
"• Timescales of technical rigidity and flexibility
"• Rigid copying to flexible reconstruction
"• Exogenous factors of technical rigidity and flexibility"]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted downloaded cultural_criticism cultural_transmission sperber.dan re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
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<item rdf:about="https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/1/15686/files/2021/11/Cultural_sociology_meets_the.pdf">
    <title>Cultural sociology meets the cognitive wild: advantages of the distributed cognition framework for analyzing the intersection of culture and cognition</title>
    <dc:date>2022-03-14T18:16:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/1/15686/files/2021/11/Cultural_sociology_meets_the.pdf</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition sociology cultural_transmission via:? social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a637f938ccb8/</dc:identifier>
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<item rdf:about="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-072320-095202">
    <title>Rethinking Culture and Cognition | Annual Review of Sociology</title>
    <dc:date>2021-08-03T04:39:02+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-072320-095202</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Paul DiMaggio's (1997) Annual Review of Sociology article urged integration of the cognitive and the cultural, triggering a cognitive turn in cultural sociology. Since then, a burgeoning literature in cultural sociology has incorporated ideas from the cognitive sciences—cognitive anthropology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience and philosophy—significantly reshaping sociologists’ approach to culture, both theoretically and methodologically. This article reviews work published since DiMaggio's agenda-setting piece—research that builds on cross-disciplinary links between cultural sociology and the cognitive sciences. These works present new ideas on the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of culture, on how forms of personal culture interact, on how culture becomes shared, and on how social interaction and cultural environments inform cognitive processes. Within our discussion, we point to research questions that remain unsettled. We then conclude with issues for future research in culture and cognition that can enrich sociological analysis about action more generally."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB sociology cultural_transmission</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
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<item rdf:about="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-090320-103012">
    <title>Whatever Happened to Socialization? | Annual Review of Sociology</title>
    <dc:date>2021-08-03T04:36:52+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-090320-103012</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Socialization is a key mechanism of social reproduction. Yet, like the functionalists who introduced the concept, socialization has fallen out of favor, critiqued for ignoring power and agency, for its teleology and incoherence, and for a misguided link to “culture of poverty” arguments. In this review, we argue for a renewed, postfunctionalist use of socialization. We review the concept's history, its high point under Parsons, the reasons for its demise, its continued use in some subfields (e.g., gender, race and ethnicity, education), and alternative concepts used to explain social reproduction. We then suggest that something is lost when socialization is avoided or isolated in particular subfields. Without socialization, conceptions of social reproduction face problems of history, power, and transferability. We close by outlining a postfunctionalist agenda for socialization research, providing a framework for a new theory of socialization, one that builds off of cognitive science, pragmatism, the study of language, the reinterrogation of values, and the development of ideology in political socialization."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB sociology cultural_transmission</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:2a489ac67306/</dc:identifier>
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<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>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
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	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
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<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>
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<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://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6528/503">
    <title>Cultural transmission of vocal dialect in the naked mole-rat | Science</title>
    <dc:date>2021-02-05T22:22:16+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6528/503</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) form some of the most cooperative groups in the animal kingdom, living in multigenerational colonies under the control of a single breeding queen. Yet how they maintain this highly organized social structure is unknown. Here we show that the most common naked mole-rat vocalization, the soft chirp, is used to transmit information about group membership, creating distinctive colony dialects. Audio playback experiments demonstrate that individuals make preferential vocal responses to home colony dialects. Pups fostered in foreign colonies in early postnatal life learn the vocal dialect of their adoptive colonies, which suggests vertical transmission and flexibility of vocal signatures. Dialect integrity is partly controlled by the queen: Dialect cohesiveness decreases with queen loss and remerges only with the ascendance of a new queen."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_transmission shibboleths</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:67485eacd3e4/</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_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:shibboleths"/>
</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/cultural-adaptation-is-maximised-when-intelligent-individuals-rarely-think-for-themselves/9C06326BEAB863A1F165C5E592F839BB">
    <title>Cultural adaptation is maximised when intelligent individuals rarely think for themselves | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core</title>
    <dc:date>2020-12-16T19:51:31+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/cultural-adaptation-is-maximised-when-intelligent-individuals-rarely-think-for-themselves/9C06326BEAB863A1F165C5E592F839BB</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Humans are remarkable in their reliance on cultural inheritance, and the ecological success this has produced. Nonetheless, we lack a thorough understanding of how the cognitive underpinnings of cultural transmission affect cultural adaptation across diverse tasks. Here, we use an agent-based simulation to investigate how different learning mechanisms (both social and asocial) interact with task structure to affect cultural adaptation. Specifically, we compared learning through refinement, recombination or both, in tasks of different difficulty, with learners of different asocial intelligence. We find that for simple tasks all learning mechanisms are roughly equivalent. However, for hard tasks, performance was maximised when populations consisted of highly intelligent individuals who nonetheless rarely innovated and instead recombined existing information. Our results thus show that cumulative cultural adaptation relies on the combination of individual intelligence and ‘blind’ population-level processes, although the former may be rarely used. The counterintuitive requirement that individuals be highly intelligent, but rarely use this intelligence, may help resolve the debate over the role of individual intelligence in cultural adaptation."

]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB collective_cognition social_life_of_the_mind cultural_transmission re:democratic_cognition color_me_skeptical</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f73b60c11b72/</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:collective_cognition"/>
	<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_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:color_me_skeptical"/>
</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://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122418797576">
    <title>Beyond Social Contagion: Associative Diffusion and the Emergence of Cultural Variation - Amir Goldberg, Sarah K. Stein, 2018</title>
    <dc:date>2019-11-11T00:15:16+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122418797576</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Network models of diffusion predominantly think about cultural variation as a product of social contagion. But culture does not spread like a virus. We propose an alternative explanation we call associative diffusion. Drawing on two insights from research in cognition—that meaning inheres in cognitive associations between concepts, and that perceived associations constrain people’s actions—we introduce a model in which, rather than beliefs or behaviors, the things being transmitted between individuals are perceptions about what beliefs or behaviors are compatible with one another. Conventional contagion models require the assumption that networks are segregated to explain cultural variation. We show, in contrast, that the endogenous emergence of cultural differentiation can be entirely attributable to social cognition and does not require a segregated network or a preexisting division into groups. Moreover, we show that prevailing assumptions about the effects of network topology do not hold when diffusion is associative."

--- Preprint version: https://web.stanford.edu/~amirgo/docs/beyond.pdf

(I'm not sure that this _is_ really an alternative explanation.  Or, rather, it would be an explanation for cultural polarization wtihin a densely-connected community, but not an explanation for associations between cultural traits and social identities.  Also, I think their conclusion that small-world networks lead to less "meaningful" cultural differentiation than do scale-free networks may be an artifact of the way they're using mutual information.  If there was one community and everyone in it enacted the same practices, they'd get an MI of 0, but that wouldn't make them meaningless....)]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB social_influence contagion homophily cultural_transmission cultural_differences sociology re:do-institutions-evolve have_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f5b68cc828f8/</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_influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:contagion"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:homophily"/>
	<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:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
</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="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="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30382-0">
    <title>Reply to ‘Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves are Good Indicators of Conformist Transmission’ | Scientific Reports</title>
    <dc:date>2018-09-19T12:50:06+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30382-0</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["In the Smaldino et al. study ‘Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves are Good Indicators of Conformist Transmission’, our original findings regarding the conditional validity of using population-level sigmoidal acquisition curves as means to evidence individual-level conformity are contested. We acknowledge the identification of useful nuances, yet conclude that our original findings remain relevant for the study of conformist learning mechanisms."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_transmission to_read re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:96477cc98713/</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_transmission"/>
	<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://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30248-5">
    <title>Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves Are Good Indicators of Conformist Transmission | Scientific Reports</title>
    <dc:date>2018-09-19T12:49:34+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30248-5</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The potential for behaviours to spread via cultural transmission has profound implications for our understanding of social dynamics and evolution. Several studies have provided empirical evidence that local traditions can be maintained in animal populations via conformist learning (i.e. copying the majority). A conformist bias can be characterized by a sigmoidal relationship between a behavior’s prevalence in the population and an individual’s propensity to adopt that behavior. For this reason, the presence of conformist learning in a population is often inferred from a sigmoidal acquisition curve in which the overall rate of adoption for the behavior is taken as the dependent variable. However, the validity of sigmoidal acquisition curves as evidence for conformist learning has recently been challenged by models suggesting that such curves can arise via alternative learning rules that do not involve conformity. We review these models, and find that the proposed alternative learning mechanisms either rely on faulty or unrealistic assumptions, or apply only in very specific cases. We therefore recommend that sigmoidal acquisition curves continue to be taken as evidence for conformist learning. Our paper also highlights the importance of understanding the generative processes of a model, rather than only focusing solely on the patterns produced. By studying these processes, our analysis suggests that current practices by empiricists have provided robust evidence for conformist transmission in both humans and non-human animals."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_transmission to_read re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:dc6ac6a2c5ba/</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_transmission"/>
	<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://www.nature.com/articles/srep36068">
    <title>Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures | Scientific Reports</title>
    <dc:date>2018-09-19T12:49:06+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36068</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Conformist transmission, defined as a disproportionate likelihood to copy the majority, is considered a potent mechanism underlying the emergence and stabilization of cultural diversity. However, ambiguity within and across disciplines remains as to how to identify conformist transmission empirically. In most studies, a population level outcome has been taken as the benchmark to evidence conformist transmission: a sigmoidal relation between individuals’ probability to copy the majority and the proportional majority size. Using an individual-based model, we show that, under ecologically plausible conditions, this sigmoidal relation can also be detected without equipping individuals with a conformist bias. Situations in which individuals copy randomly from a fixed subset of demonstrators in the population, or in which they have a preference for one of the possible variants, yield similar sigmoidal patterns as a conformist bias would. Our findings warrant a revisiting of studies that base their conformist transmission conclusions solely on the sigmoidal curve. More generally, our results indicate that population level outcomes interpreted as conformist transmission could potentially be explained by other individual-level strategies, and that more empirical support is needed to prove the existence of an individual-level conformist bias in human and other animals."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_transmission to_read re:do-institutions-evolve</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:047a939c67ef/</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_transmission"/>
	<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://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="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300223453/minds-make-societies">
    <title>Minds Make Societies | Yale University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2018-05-16T12:06:32+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300223453/minds-make-societies</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["“There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book.
"Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as, Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted social_theory epidemiology_of_representations evolutionary_psychology anthropology boyer.pascal evolution_of_cooperation cultural_transmission re:do-institutions-evolve books:owned</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:28923fdbb275/</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:social_theory"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:anthropology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:boyer.pascal"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolution_of_cooperation"/>
	<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:books:owned"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/content/115/13/3308">
    <title>Measuring discursive influence across scholarship | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</title>
    <dc:date>2018-03-27T18:36:02+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/115/13/3308</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Assessing scholarly influence is critical for understanding the collective system of scholarship and the history of academic inquiry. Influence is multifaceted, and citations reveal only part of it. Citation counts exhibit preferential attachment and follow a rigid “news cycle” that can miss sustained and indirect forms of influence. Building on dynamic topic models that track distributional shifts in discourse over time, we introduce a variant that incorporates features, such as authorship, affiliation, and publication venue, to assess how these contexts interact with content to shape future scholarship. We perform in-depth analyses on collections of physics research (500,000 abstracts; 102 years) and scholarship generally (JSTOR repository: 2 million full-text articles; 130 years). Our measure of document influence helps predict citations and shows how outcomes, such as winning a Nobel Prize or affiliation with a highly ranked institution, boost influence. Analysis of citations alongside discursive influence reveals that citations tend to credit authors who persist in their fields over time and discount credit for works that are influential over many topics or are “ahead of their time.” In this way, our measures provide a way to acknowledge diverse contributions that take longer and travel farther to achieve scholarly appreciation, enabling us to correct citation biases and enhance sensitivity to the full spectrum of scholarly impact."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB text_mining influence topic_models blei.david bibliometry sociology_of_science cultural_transmission to_read</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:48124efa5115/</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:text_mining"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:topic_models"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:blei.david"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bibliometry"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology_of_science"/>
	<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://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980150">
    <title>Cognitive Gadgets — Cecilia Heyes | Harvard University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2018-01-30T16:55:06+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980150</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists over the course of centuries. One explanation widely accepted today is that humans have special cognitive instincts. Unlike other living animal species, we are born with complicated mechanisms for reasoning about causation, reading the minds of others, copying behaviors, and using language.
"Cecilia Heyes agrees that adult humans have impressive pieces of cognitive equipment. In her framing, however, these cognitive gadgets are not instincts programmed in the genes but are constructed in the course of childhood through social interaction. Cognitive gadgets are products of cultural evolution, rather than genetic evolution. At birth, the minds of human babies are only subtly different from the minds of newborn chimpanzees. We are friendlier, our attention is drawn to different things, and we have a capacity to learn and remember that outstrips the abilities of newborn chimpanzees. Yet when these subtle differences are exposed to culture-soaked human environments, they have enormous effects. They enable us to upload distinctively human ways of thinking from the social world around us."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB books:noted human_evolution cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools cultural_transmission psychology cognitive_development</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:78eae312fce1/</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:human_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:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_development"/>
</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/114/30/7790.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/114/34/9140.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/113/16/4530.abstract.html">
    <title>Culture shapes the evolution of cognition</title>
    <dc:date>2016-04-27T20:51:51+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/4530.abstract.html</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["A central debate in cognitive science concerns the nativist hypothesis, the proposal that universal features of behavior reflect a biologically determined cognitive substrate: For example, linguistic nativism proposes a domain-specific faculty of language that strongly constrains which languages can be learned. An evolutionary stance appears to provide support for linguistic nativism, because coordinated constraints on variation may facilitate communication and therefore be adaptive. However, language, like many other human behaviors, is underpinned by social learning and cultural transmission alongside biological evolution. We set out two models of these interactions, which show how culture can facilitate rapid biological adaptation yet rule out strong nativization. The amplifying effects of culture can allow weak cognitive biases to have significant population-level consequences, radically increasing the evolvability of weak, defeasible inductive biases; however, the emergence of a strong cultural universal does not imply, nor lead to, nor require, strong innate constraints. From this we must conclude, on evolutionary grounds, that the strong nativist hypothesis for language is false. More generally, because such reciprocal interactions between cultural and biological evolution are not limited to language, nativist explanations for many behaviors should be reconsidered: Evolutionary reasoning shows how we can have cognitively driven behavioral universals and yet extreme plasticity at the level of the individual—if, and only if, we account for the human capacity to transmit knowledge culturally. Wherever culture is involved, weak cognitive biases rather than strong innate constraints should be the default assumption."

--- "must conclude ... is false" is too strong, surely?]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read cultural_evolution cultural_transmission cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools cultural_universals evolutionary_psychology evolution_of_cognition</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6e181ab32bb0/</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: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:cultural_universals"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolution_of_cognition"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://pps.sagepub.com/content/11/2/280.abstract">
    <title>Born Pupils? Natural Pedagogy and Cultural Pedagogy</title>
    <dc:date>2016-03-29T16:53:17+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://pps.sagepub.com/content/11/2/280.abstract</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The theory of natural pedagogy is an important focus of research on the evolution and development of cultural learning. It proposes that we are born pupils; that human children genetically inherit a package of psychological adaptations that make them receptive to teaching. In this article, I first examine the components of the package—eye contact, contingencies, infant-directed speech, gaze cuing, and rational imitation—asking in each case whether current evidence indicates that the component is a reliable feature of infant behavior and a genetic adaptation for teaching. I then discuss three fundamental insights embodied in the theory: Imitation is not enough for cumulative cultural inheritance, the extra comes from blind trust, and tweaking is a powerful source of cognitive change. Combining the results of the empirical review with these insights, I argue that human receptivity to teaching is founded on nonspecific genetic adaptations for social bonding and social learning and acquires its species- and functionally specific features through the operation of domain-general processes of learning in sociocultural contexts. We engage, not in natural pedagogy, but in cultural pedagogy."]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools evolutionary_psychology education cultural_evolution cultural_transmission psychology via:rvenkat re:democratic_cognition re:do-institutions-evolve in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:dcfdc9b4cb80/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<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:evolutionary_psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:education"/>
	<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:psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:rvenkat"/>
	<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:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674503830">
    <title>Trusting What You're Told — Paul L. Harris | Harvard University Press</title>
    <dc:date>2015-08-13T17:06:39+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674503830</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["If children were little scientists who learn best through firsthand observations and mini-experiments, as conventional wisdom holds, how would a child discover that the earth is round—never mind conceive of heaven as a place someone might go after death? Overturning both cognitive and commonplace theories about how children learn, Trusting What You’re Told begins by reminding us of a basic truth: Most of what we know we learned from others.
"Children recognize early on that other people are an excellent source of information. And so they ask questions. But youngsters are also remarkably discriminating as they weigh the responses they elicit. And how much they trust what they are told has a lot to do with their assessment of its source. Trusting What You’re Told opens a window into the moral reasoning of elementary school vegetarians, the preschooler’s ability to distinguish historical narrative from fiction, and the six-year-old’s nuanced stance toward magic: skeptical, while still open to miracles. Paul Harris shares striking cross-cultural findings, too, such as that children in religious communities in rural Central America resemble Bostonian children in being more confident about the existence of germs and oxygen than they are about souls and God.
"We are biologically designed to learn from one another, Harris demonstrates, and this greediness for explanation marks a key difference between human beings and our primate cousins."

--- Well, _scientists_ take most of their knowledge on trust from others...
--- ETA: Review by Danny Yee, http://dannyreviews.com/h/Trusting_What_Told.html]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted social_life_of_the_mind cognitive_development cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools cultural_transmission re:democratic_cognition in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d83d860ef7ba/</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:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_development"/>
	<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:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-4-431-55363-2_10">
    <title>Experimental Studies of Cumulative Culture in Modern Humans: What Are the Requirements of the Ratchet? - Springer</title>
    <dc:date>2015-04-30T21:08:52+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-4-431-55363-2_10</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["The success of Homo sapiens as a species may be explained, at least in part, by their learning abilities. The archaeological record suggests that the material culture of humans during the Palaeolithic was fluid and diverse. Social learning abilities may therefore have allowed Homo sapiens to adapt rapidly to novel or changeable environmental conditions. A capacity for cumulative cultural evolution is certainly apparent in all contemporary human societies, whereas it appears either absent or extremely rare in other extant species. Here I review laboratory studies of cumulative culture in modern adult humans, designed to shed light on the social information required for this type of learning to occur. Although it has been suggested that cumulative culture may depend on a capacity for imitation, we found that imitation (at least in the narrow sense of action copying) was not necessary for human participants to exhibit ratchet-like effects of improvement over learner generations. We discuss the need for high fidelity reproduction in cumulative culture (independent of action copying)."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB cultural_evolution experimental_psychology experimental_sociology cultural_transmission social_life_of_the_mind re:do-institutions-evolve epidemiology_of_representations</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:f32274f48af4/</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:experimental_psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:experimental_sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<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:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo12789830">
    <title>The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, Whitehead, Rendell</title>
    <dc:date>2015-01-04T03:20:28+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo12789830</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>books:noted to:NB cultural_transmission cetaceans</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3bb7120e2728/</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:to:NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cetaceans"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10047.html">
    <title>Hoppitt, W. and Laland, K.N.: Social Learning: An Introduction to Mechanisms, Methods, and Models.</title>
    <dc:date>2013-07-31T19:14:20+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10047.html</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Many animals, including humans, acquire valuable skills and knowledge by copying others. Scientists refer to this as social learning. It is one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of behavioral research and sits at the interface of many academic disciplines, including biology, experimental psychology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience. Social Learning provides a comprehensive, practical guide to the research methods of this important emerging field. William Hoppitt and Kevin Laland define the mechanisms thought to underlie social learning and demonstrate how to distinguish them experimentally in the laboratory. They present techniques for detecting and quantifying social learning in nature, including statistical modeling of the spatial distribution of behavior traits. They also describe the latest theory and empirical findings on social learning strategies, and introduce readers to mathematical methods and models used in the study of cultural evolution. This book is an indispensable tool for researchers and an essential primer for students."]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted social_life_of_the_mind cultural_transmission cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools biology psychology re:democratic_cognition in_NB books:owned</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:b47c7fcc5283/</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:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<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:biology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:psychology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:democratic_cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:books:owned"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6131/485.full?rss=1">
    <title>NETWORK-BASED DIFFUSION ANALYSIS REVEALS CULTURAL TRANSMISSION OF LOBTAIL FEEDING IN HUMPBACK WHALES</title>
    <dc:date>2013-04-26T00:10:58+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6131/485.full?rss=1</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["We used network-based diffusion analysis to reveal the cultural spread of a naturally occurring foraging innovation, lobtail feeding, through a population of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) over a period of 27 years. Support for models with a social transmission component was 6 to 23 orders of magnitude greater than for models without. The spatial and temporal distribution of sand lance, a prey species, was also important in predicting the rate of acquisition. Our results, coupled with existing knowledge about song traditions, show that this species can maintain multiple independently evolving traditions in its populations. These insights strengthen the case that cetaceans represent a peak in the evolution of nonhuman culture, independent of the primate lineage."]]></description>
<dc:subject>to:NB to_read whales social_influence diffusion_of_innovations social_networks re:homophily_and_confounding cultural_transmission</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:89dca760a0ce/</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:whales"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_influence"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:diffusion_of_innovations"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:homophily_and_confounding"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/brain-and-culture">
    <title>Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change</title>
    <dc:date>2013-01-19T17:42:04+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/brain-and-culture</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Research shows that between birth and early adulthood the brain requires sensory stimulation to develop physically. The nature of the stimulation shapes the connections among neurons that create the neuronal networks necessary for thought and behavior. By changing the cultural environment, each generation shapes the brains of the next. By early adulthood, the neuroplasticity of the brain is greatly reduced, and this leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and the environment: during the first part of life, the brain and mind shape themselves to the major recurring features of their environment; by early adulthood, the individual attempts to make the environment conform to the established internal structures of the brain and mind.
"In Brain and Culture, Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality. These difficulties are evident in bereavement, the meeting of different cultures, the experience of immigrants (in which children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations), and the phenomenon of interethnic violence.
"Integrating recent neurobiological research with major experimental findings in cognitive and developmental psychology—with illuminating references to psychoanalysis, literature, anthropology, history, and politics—Wexler presents a wealth of detail to support his arguments. The groundbreaking connections he makes allow for reconceptualization of the effect of cultural change on the brain and provide a new biological base from which to consider such social issues as "culture wars" and ethnic violence."]]></description>
<dc:subject>in_NB books:noted neuroscience cultural_transmission ideology cognitive_development</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6d5438e92759/</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:neuroscience"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:ideology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_development"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3764#comments">
    <title>Language Log » Cultural diffusion and the Whorfian hypothesis</title>
    <dc:date>2012-02-15T20:58:41+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3764#comments</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>cultural_transmission galtons_problem bad_data_analysis liberman.mark</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:dc85d7e70fc0/</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:galtons_problem"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bad_data_analysis"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:liberman.mark"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781598742169-1">
    <title>The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach by Ruth Mace - Powell's Books</title>
    <dc:date>2012-02-05T17:31:42+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781598742169-1</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["Virtually all aspects of human behavior show enormous variation both within and between cultural groups, including material culture, social organization and language. Thousands of distinct cultural groups exist: about 6,000 languages are spoken today, and it is thought that a far greater number of languages existed in the past but became extinct. Using a Darwinian approach, this book seeks to explain this rich cultural variation. There are a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural diversification might be tree-like, that is phylogenetic: material and non-material culture is clearly inherited by descendants, there is descent with modification, and languages appear to be hierarchically related. There are also a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural evolution is not tree-like: cultural inheritance is not Mendelian and can indeed be vertical, horizontal or oblique, evidence of borrowing abounds, cultures are not necessarily biological populations and can be transient and complex. Here, for the first time, this title tackles these questions of cultural evolution empirically and quantitatively, using a range of case studies from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia and America. A range of powerful theoretical tools developed in evolutionary biology is used to test detailed hypotheses about historical patterns and adaptive functions in cultural evolution. Evidence is amassed from archaeological, linguist and cultural datasets, from both recent and historical or pre-historical time periods. A unifying theme is that the phylogenetic approach is a useful and powerful framework, both for describing the evolutionary history of these traits, and also for testing adaptive hypotheses about their evolution and co-evolution. Contributors include archaeologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists and linguists, and this book will be of great interest to all those involved in these areas."]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted phylogenetics evolutionary_biology human_evolution cultural_evolution cultural_transmission cultural_differences in_NB</dc:subject>
<dc:source>https://pinboard.in/</dc:source>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:ca18c82b51b9/</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:phylogenetics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_biology"/>
	<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"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_differences"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:in_NB"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16512">
    <title>The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization</title>
    <dc:date>2010-11-11T12:49:27+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16512</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>cultural_transmission re:do-institutions-evolve to_read via:blattman</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3ba5803e3bc6/</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:re:do-institutions-evolve"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:to_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:blattman"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://magistraetmater.blog.co.uk/2010/06/19/tweeting-the-assembly-carolingian-texts-and-social-media-8830535/">
    <title>Tweeting the assembly: Carolingian texts and social media - Magistra et Mater</title>
    <dc:date>2010-06-22T13:35:39+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://magistraetmater.blog.co.uk/2010/06/19/tweeting-the-assembly-carolingian-texts-and-social-media-8830535/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["(Attention Conservation Notice: this is an unholy mashup between historical speculation and experience from 23 Things, exacerbated by too much checking footnotes and not enough sleep)."
]]></description>
<dc:subject>social_life_of_the_mind medieval_european_history social_media cultural_transmission magistra</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:d57044d99015/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<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:medieval_european_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_media"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:magistra"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-propagation-of-false-news-in-wartime/">
    <title>The propagation of false news in wartime. « The Edge of the American West</title>
    <dc:date>2009-03-21T13:34:08+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-propagation-of-false-news-in-wartime/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Eric Rauchway describes, with excerpts, an essay by on this subject by Maurice Bloch, with illustrations from WWI.  Sounds astonishingly like Dan Sperber, only with an unfortunate collectivist overlay.
]]></description>
<dc:subject>war cultural_transmission rauchway.eric historiography historical_myths bloch.maurice rumors epidemiology_of_representations</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:633e4d04d7de/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:war"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:rauchway.eric"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:historiography"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:historical_myths"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bloch.maurice"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:rumors"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:epidemiology_of_representations"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=9033">
    <title>Narrative Social Structure: Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Network, 610-1505 - Recep Senturk</title>
    <dc:date>2009-03-14T00:41:38+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=9033</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Added: the reviewer for the _Journal of Interdisciplinary History_ was unimpressed with the theorizing (which does sound like a lot of heavy breathing...), and points to basic arithmetic errors (!).  May still be worth looking at.  Might the data set be available?
]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:noted social_life_of_the_mind cultural_transmission networks islam hadith</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:6399acfa6d22/</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:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:networks"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:islam"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:hadith"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/the-history-of-the-world-part-i-or-why-i-love-dengue-fever/">
    <title>The History of the World Part I, or, Why I Love Dengue Fever « orgtheory.net</title>
    <dc:date>2008-12-10T13:03:44+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/the-history-of-the-world-part-i-or-why-i-love-dengue-fever/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Don't ask me what the title means.  Papers may be worth tracking down.  Huge causal inference problems implicit here.

Update: thanks to Wolfgang for telling me that "Dengue Fever" is the name of a California-based Cambodian rock band.

Update 2: They're on emusic and they sound pretty good.
]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution cultural_transmission music genres sociology track_down_references</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:47456835fd29/</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:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:music"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:genres"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:track_down_references"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=247:phil-trans-b-issue-on-cultural-transmission-and-the-evolution-of-human-behaviour&amp;catid=3:publications&amp;Itemid=5">
    <title>Phil. Trans. B issue on cultural transmission and the evolution of human behaviour</title>
    <dc:date>2008-11-13T16:49:28+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=247:phil-trans-b-issue-on-cultural-transmission-and-the-evolution-of-human-behaviour&amp;catid=3:publications&amp;Itemid=5</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Looks great, but unfortunately the library doesn't subscribe.  Waah.  (Update: thanks to readers T. and W. for copies!)
]]></description>
<dc:subject>cultural_evolution cultural_transmission cultural_transmission_of_cognitive_tools experimental_sociology social_life_of_the_mind</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3f43d737eb13/</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: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:experimental_sociology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:social_life_of_the_mind"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3100">
    <title>[0807.3100] Influence of geography on language competition</title>
    <dc:date>2008-07-25T14:36:24+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3100</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>cultural_transmission geography re:homophily_and_confounding</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:30ea265391c5/</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:geography"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:homophily_and_confounding"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=341">
    <title>Language Log » The cognitive technology of number</title>
    <dc:date>2008-07-11T20:34:08+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=341</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>cognitive_development cultural_transmission piraha domestication_of_the_savage_mind numeracy</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:e6bb2735ff8b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_development"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:piraha"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:domestication_of_the_savage_mind"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:numeracy"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.idih.org/wiki/Joseph_Richmond_Levenson">
    <title>Joseph Richmond Levenson - IDIH</title>
    <dc:date>2008-05-14T02:28:19+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.idih.org/wiki/Joseph_Richmond_Levenson</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[_Confucian China and Its Modern Fate_ is one of the best works of history I have ever read.
]]></description>
<dc:subject>china tradition cultural_transmission cultural_exchange great_transformation modernity confucianism history_of_ideas world_history lives_of_the_scholars levenson.joseph_r</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:4739879bbb4b/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:china"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:tradition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_exchange"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:great_transformation"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:modernity"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:confucianism"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:history_of_ideas"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:world_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:lives_of_the_scholars"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:levenson.joseph_r"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.labyrinthbooks.com/sale_detail.aspx?isbn=9780521530927">
    <title>Rational Herds: Economic Models of Social Learning - Chamley (@ Labyrinth)</title>
    <dc:date>2008-05-07T00:57:57+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.labyrinthbooks.com/sale_detail.aspx?isbn=9780521530927</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Truly excellent book on mathematical models of herding, information contagion, etc. under rational choice, by a friend of family.
]]></description>
<dc:subject>books:recommended chamley.christophe herding social_life_of_the_mind economics game_theory information_cascades kith_and_kin cultural_transmission finance probability martingales bayesianism self-organization</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:de76fadbb4ac/</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:chamley.christophe"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:herding"/>
	<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:economics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:game_theory"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:information_cascades"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kith_and_kin"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:finance"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:probability"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:martingales"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bayesianism"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:self-organization"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.wireless.is/projects/crows/">
    <title>A Vending Machine for Crows: An Experiment in Corvid Learning and Resource Acquisition Strategy Transmission</title>
    <dc:date>2008-03-15T21:45:42+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.wireless.is/projects/crows/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA["create a device that will autonomously train crows. So far we've trained captive crows to deposit dropped coins they find on the ground in exchange for peanuts. The next step is to see how quickly we can get wild crows to learn the system, and then how q
]]></description>
<dc:subject>crows cognition cultural_transmission adaptive_behavior funny:geeky via:light_reading</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:3f75eccb0936/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:crows"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognition"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:adaptive_behavior"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:funny:geeky"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:light_reading"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://philpaine.com/mycenea/modules/content/index.php?id=51">
    <title>philpaine.com -&quot;I Called the New World to Redress the Balance of the Old&quot;... A Final Word on the European Neolithic.</title>
    <dc:date>2008-03-15T20:07:42+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://philpaine.com/mycenea/modules/content/index.php?id=51</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Fascinating, but way beyond my competence to evaluate.
]]></description>
<dc:subject>archaeology agriculture horses american_history world_history ancient_trade neolithic_revolution cultural_transmission via:jbdelong indo-european</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:54408b691c31/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:archaeology"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:agriculture"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:horses"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:american_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:world_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:ancient_trade"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:neolithic_revolution"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:via:jbdelong"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:indo-european"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005323.html">
    <title>Language Log: Après Fish, le déluge?</title>
    <dc:date>2008-01-15T23:33:43+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005323.html</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>liberman.mark fish.stanley humanities cultural_transmission academia education</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:0e68904889ad/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:liberman.mark"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:fish.stanley"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:humanities"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:academia"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:education"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/45/17588">
    <title>Phylogenetic analyses of behavior support existence of culture among wild chimpanzees -- Lycett et al. 104 (45): 17588</title>
    <dc:date>2007-11-14T02:57:14+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/45/17588</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>chimpanzees cultural_transmission evolutionary_biology</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:59fb0aec12a9/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:chimpanzees"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_biology"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.springerlink.com/content/055386786n6045n0/">
    <title>Conformity and Dissonance in Generalized Voter Models (Page, Sander and Schneider-Mizell)</title>
    <dc:date>2007-11-01T23:29:32+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.springerlink.com/content/055386786n6045n0/</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><dc:subject>cognitive_dissonance cultural_transmission re:homophily_and_confounding have_read page.scott voter_model kith_and_kin</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:5d8a06a3aa69/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cognitive_dissonance"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:re:homophily_and_confounding"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:have_read"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:page.scott"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:voter_model"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:kith_and_kin"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/318/5849/394.pdf">
    <title>Genetically Capitalist? (Samuel Bowles reviews Gregory Clark in _Science_)</title>
    <dc:date>2007-10-27T19:57:00+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/318/5849/394.pdf</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Making the obvious points that (1) his Malthusian mechanisms were at work in a lot of places, not just England, and (2) even if you take the heritability of personality traits at face value, it's very weak
]]></description>
<dc:subject>bowles.samuel clark.gregory farewell_to_alms cultural_transmission evolutionary_economics inequality economic_history great_transformation</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:a402e88a055d/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bowles.samuel"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:clark.gregory"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:farewell_to_alms"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_economics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:inequality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:economic_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:great_transformation"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.santafe.edu/~bowles/clark.pdf">
    <title>Sam Bowles on Gregory Clark: background memo</title>
    <dc:date>2007-10-27T19:54:56+00:00</dc:date>
    <link>http://www.santafe.edu/~bowles/clark.pdf</link>
    <dc:creator>cshalizi</dc:creator><description><![CDATA[Some supporting details for Bowles's review
]]></description>
<dc:subject>bowles.samuel clark.gregory farewell_to_alms cultural_transmission evolutionary_economics inequality economic_history great_transformation</dc:subject>
<dc:identifier>https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/b:14aece62f77c/</dc:identifier>
<taxo:topics><rdf:Bag>	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:bowles.samuel"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:clark.gregory"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:farewell_to_alms"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:cultural_transmission"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:evolutionary_economics"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:inequality"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:economic_history"/>
	<rdf:li rdf:resource="https://pinboard.in/u:cshalizi/t:great_transformation"/>
</rdf:Bag></taxo:topics>
</item>
</rdf:RDF>