I see three levels at which we could try to fix cultural drift: specific cultural trends, cultural evolution process parameters, and meta mechanism/institutions.
> "I had no idea people thought complex law and tolerance of mental problems were such big problems. Or that they’d think reversing mental issues, and too much school and democracy, were so doable."
What was the exact phrasing of the poll question? In my interpretation based on the wording in this post, changing the amount of cultural acceptance/tolerance of mental problems is a much easier task than that of *fixing* them. Although whether or not tolerance is a good thing probably depends a lot on exactly which varieties of mental instability and how they manifest.
"Mental Problems" as a category seems insufficiently granular to be very useful. Someone might read that and think "I'm compassionate about depression sufferers" vs "Nobody should tolerate sociopathic behavior!". Mental Problems as a single axis is so broad you could probably get entirely different results just by priming respondents to think of more or less sympathetic examples respectively.
The real problem is that we are living on the wrong side of a genetic takeover - or a "memetic takeover", as I prefer to call it.
The decline of DNA-based organisms seems inevitable. DNA offers poor random access capabilities. It's a one-size-fits all data storage solution. Engineers will do better.
I don't think we will have much impact by tinkering with cultural evolution. It's not as though we are in charge of that in the first place. IMO, our best shot at persisting our values into the engineered future is likely to be some sort of merger with machines - likely starting with deepening today's man-machine symbiosis.
Decades ago, there may have been another option - to engineer ourselves and our descendants. However, it is debatable whether that was ever a viable path - and it certainly doesn't look very viable today.
The last genetic takeover likely took place almost 4 billion years ago. The most recent one we can make out involved the switch from the RNA world to the DNA world. Not many RNA-based organisms made it through. We will likely face similarly tough times.
The problem where some rapidly-evolving inherited information spreads and evolves faster than the genes of the dominant organism may well continue into an engineered future. That describes parasitism. Today, it is our memes that are out-evolving our nuclear DNA, to the detriment of the latter. However, the general phenomenon of the genes of large organisms facing competition from small, rapidly evolving agents is an ancient one. Slow-reproducing organisms typically fight back by using rapid evolution of specialized cells in their immune system - and of course there are a cultural analogs in the form of scepticism, etc.
Parasites don't usually wipe out their hosts, though. It is an unusual configuration - where the cutural parasites have multiple host species (humans and machines) - that puts humans at greater-than-normal risk- where one host species is treated as being expendable. Species barriers seem likely to be less significant in the future. In which case our angelic descendants may not face the same sort of risk again. There will likely still be parasites, but they will be less likely to cause a large-scale wipe-out.
It's not that maladaptive culture is the same as parasitism. It's that maladaptive culture is mostly cultural parasitism.
To recap, in symbiology, interactions between organisms are classified as: mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, neutralism, amensalism, or competition - according to who is harmed and who benefits. The interactions where the host suffers are competition, amensalism and parasitism - but amensalism is relatively rare, and the memes typically benefit from the association (or else go extinct) - so most deleterious memes can be classsified as parasites. "Viruses of the mind" - as Richard Dawkins once colorfully put it.
If you don't accept cultural epidemiology in the first place, and deny that the obesity epidemic, the smoking epidemic and so on are real epidemics, then you may need a more remedial explanation. However, most of the pioneers of cultural evolution started out with models adapted from epidemiology - including Boyd, Richerson, Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman. The mathematics is a good fit. Playground crazes spread through schools in a manner closely resembling coronaviruses - and can be modeled using very similar tools.
I'm writing a review of The Dawn of Everything (which explores the diversity of ancient cultures, and tries to answer the question of how we became "stuck"). This and other posts have been very helpful. Thank you.
Our models of human behavior previously explained variance in terms of heritage, incentives, and religion, but now also include mental problems, including those induced by trauma. We have experts to credential people has having such problems, that excuses behavior.
> "I had no idea people thought complex law and tolerance of mental problems were such big problems. Or that they’d think reversing mental issues, and too much school and democracy, were so doable."
What was the exact phrasing of the poll question? In my interpretation based on the wording in this post, changing the amount of cultural acceptance/tolerance of mental problems is a much easier task than that of *fixing* them. Although whether or not tolerance is a good thing probably depends a lot on exactly which varieties of mental instability and how they manifest.
"Mental Problems" as a category seems insufficiently granular to be very useful. Someone might read that and think "I'm compassionate about depression sufferers" vs "Nobody should tolerate sociopathic behavior!". Mental Problems as a single axis is so broad you could probably get entirely different results just by priming respondents to think of more or less sympathetic examples respectively.
I gave these links to the polls in the text:
https://x.com/robinhanson/status/1941530017059537225
https://x.com/robinhanson/status/1941551029490942111
My bad I didn't look hard enough 😅
The real problem is that we are living on the wrong side of a genetic takeover - or a "memetic takeover", as I prefer to call it.
The decline of DNA-based organisms seems inevitable. DNA offers poor random access capabilities. It's a one-size-fits all data storage solution. Engineers will do better.
I don't think we will have much impact by tinkering with cultural evolution. It's not as though we are in charge of that in the first place. IMO, our best shot at persisting our values into the engineered future is likely to be some sort of merger with machines - likely starting with deepening today's man-machine symbiosis.
Decades ago, there may have been another option - to engineer ourselves and our descendants. However, it is debatable whether that was ever a viable path - and it certainly doesn't look very viable today.
The last genetic takeover likely took place almost 4 billion years ago. The most recent one we can make out involved the switch from the RNA world to the DNA world. Not many RNA-based organisms made it through. We will likely face similarly tough times.
AI will plausibly still suffer from cultural drift, unless they do something big to solve it.
The only maladaptive trend of current cultural drift you've identified so far is low fertility.
Is there any reason to worry about it with regard to AIs?
Or you suggest cultural drift in AIs will cause some other maladaptation?
Cultural drift generically causes many maladaptions, so yes we should expect more.
The problem where some rapidly-evolving inherited information spreads and evolves faster than the genes of the dominant organism may well continue into an engineered future. That describes parasitism. Today, it is our memes that are out-evolving our nuclear DNA, to the detriment of the latter. However, the general phenomenon of the genes of large organisms facing competition from small, rapidly evolving agents is an ancient one. Slow-reproducing organisms typically fight back by using rapid evolution of specialized cells in their immune system - and of course there are a cultural analogs in the form of scepticism, etc.
Parasites don't usually wipe out their hosts, though. It is an unusual configuration - where the cutural parasites have multiple host species (humans and machines) - that puts humans at greater-than-normal risk- where one host species is treated as being expendable. Species barriers seem likely to be less significant in the future. In which case our angelic descendants may not face the same sort of risk again. There will likely still be parasites, but they will be less likely to cause a large-scale wipe-out.
The problem I'm worried about is not at all well summarized as parasitism.
It's not that maladaptive culture is the same as parasitism. It's that maladaptive culture is mostly cultural parasitism.
To recap, in symbiology, interactions between organisms are classified as: mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, neutralism, amensalism, or competition - according to who is harmed and who benefits. The interactions where the host suffers are competition, amensalism and parasitism - but amensalism is relatively rare, and the memes typically benefit from the association (or else go extinct) - so most deleterious memes can be classsified as parasites. "Viruses of the mind" - as Richard Dawkins once colorfully put it.
This classification scheme is explained in more detail on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_interaction
If you don't accept cultural epidemiology in the first place, and deny that the obesity epidemic, the smoking epidemic and so on are real epidemics, then you may need a more remedial explanation. However, most of the pioneers of cultural evolution started out with models adapted from epidemiology - including Boyd, Richerson, Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman. The mathematics is a good fit. Playground crazes spread through schools in a manner closely resembling coronaviruses - and can be modeled using very similar tools.
I'm writing a review of The Dawn of Everything (which explores the diversity of ancient cultures, and tries to answer the question of how we became "stuck"). This and other posts have been very helpful. Thank you.
Can you say more about what you mean by "tolerating mental problems"? Or give examples? In some sense, mental problems may be adaptive: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/susceptibility-to-mental-illness-may-have-helped-humans-adapt-over-the-millennia/
Our models of human behavior previously explained variance in terms of heritage, incentives, and religion, but now also include mental problems, including those induced by trauma. We have experts to credential people has having such problems, that excuses behavior.
The audience is whomever can see there's a problem and is tempted to do something about it.