" Though this process may at times also average over noisily-adaptive norms to extract a more reliable adaptive signal, if prior norm contexts being merged had a similar enough underlying adaptive structure. "
Holy frack, ! i need an interpreter just to read this...
This is why we need an entrepreneurial global market in jurisdictions, legal systems, culture, community, and education.
The nascent startup cities/charter cities etc. is one dimension of this.
In the US, the movement towards Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) that allow a wide range of diverse sorts of education to receive funding will be a different early version of this.
Longer term, talent and capital will be attracted to locations that allow for valuable cultural capital to be developed. In order to develop valuable cultural capital long term, communities must have the freedom to enforce particular sets of legal norms (jurisdictions and legal systems) thereby leading to distinctive forms of culture and community, in part through education (which should be largely focused on the cultivation of norms - the entire "academic" side of schooling is and should be seen as a side show in the bigger picture of things).
Given rising material prosperity, and decreasing costs of both goods and service, the opportunity to raise one's children in communities with positive cultural norms that enhance cultural capital will increase in demand. This is why I see the entrepreneurial creation of law, governance, cultural, and community as the most important ventures of the 21st century.
I agree with this: "norm enforcers often care more about burnishing their image as norm enforcers than about getting the tradeoffs and consistency of norms right re their key function of shaping behaviors."
But what does this mean --> "Thus our norms have been smoothed, likely losing many context-specific adaptive details created by millennia of prior cultural evolution." Does being smoothed mean that there is less cross-cultural variance in norms? And/or less variability in norms in subcultures? What is a context-specific detail?
I'm wondering if you mean a context-spectific detail as in this example. Consider the norm that children cannot be left unsupervised in cars. This norm is intended to prevent deaths when a parent arrives at work, forgetting that the morning routine was changed when their spouse asked them to drop the child at daycare en route to work. The child suffocates to the horror of all.
The context-sensitive detail is that it is expedient and ideal for both parent and child if a toddler is stays sleeping in a car seat, when the parent stops at a grocery store to get a few items. Yet when a norm enforcer observes this in the parking lot, the norm enforcer satisfies their outrage and identifies as a good person by calling the police.
I suspect you don't care very much about this example, but at least it has a context-specific detail.
"Does being smoothed mean that there is less cross-cultural variance in norms? And/or less variability in norms in subcultures? What is a context-specific detail?" Yes, all of that. Yes, a vibed norm would let toddler sleep in car for shot stop, but our new norm regime does not.
And there's little incentive to maintain norms. Communities used to maintain norms to forestall parasitism and dysfunction and social harm... but most people no longer live in such communities. Seen in this context, the modern condition of fast-eroding norms around marriage, sex, public behavior, dress, affect, modesty, temperance, etc. are less cultural trends in themselves and more a symptom of technologized atomization. Try enforcing the old and eminently useful norm against premarital pregnancy, for example - even in the comments on a social media post. I dare you.
I agree with most of what you said describing the modern situation and how it came to be but it seems incorrect to say:
"As a result, we end up seeing little variation on which cultural evolution can act."
Rather, the problem you describe seems to be exactly that this net negative sum behavior is actually adaptive at the memetic and group level. It's not that the norms are becoming less adaptive in the sense of cultural mimetic evolution rather it's just a selfish gene style situation in which the most memeticly adaptive practices in the current context aren't good for us as a species.
That's why we need to take advantage of the other human superpower of being able to understand and analyze the situation and try to shift the direction of cultural evolution.
" Though this process may at times also average over noisily-adaptive norms to extract a more reliable adaptive signal, if prior norm contexts being merged had a similar enough underlying adaptive structure. "
Holy frack, ! i need an interpreter just to read this...
This is why we need an entrepreneurial global market in jurisdictions, legal systems, culture, community, and education.
The nascent startup cities/charter cities etc. is one dimension of this.
In the US, the movement towards Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) that allow a wide range of diverse sorts of education to receive funding will be a different early version of this.
Longer term, talent and capital will be attracted to locations that allow for valuable cultural capital to be developed. In order to develop valuable cultural capital long term, communities must have the freedom to enforce particular sets of legal norms (jurisdictions and legal systems) thereby leading to distinctive forms of culture and community, in part through education (which should be largely focused on the cultivation of norms - the entire "academic" side of schooling is and should be seen as a side show in the bigger picture of things).
Given rising material prosperity, and decreasing costs of both goods and service, the opportunity to raise one's children in communities with positive cultural norms that enhance cultural capital will increase in demand. This is why I see the entrepreneurial creation of law, governance, cultural, and community as the most important ventures of the 21st century.
Social norming.
I agree with this: "norm enforcers often care more about burnishing their image as norm enforcers than about getting the tradeoffs and consistency of norms right re their key function of shaping behaviors."
But what does this mean --> "Thus our norms have been smoothed, likely losing many context-specific adaptive details created by millennia of prior cultural evolution." Does being smoothed mean that there is less cross-cultural variance in norms? And/or less variability in norms in subcultures? What is a context-specific detail?
I'm wondering if you mean a context-spectific detail as in this example. Consider the norm that children cannot be left unsupervised in cars. This norm is intended to prevent deaths when a parent arrives at work, forgetting that the morning routine was changed when their spouse asked them to drop the child at daycare en route to work. The child suffocates to the horror of all.
The context-sensitive detail is that it is expedient and ideal for both parent and child if a toddler is stays sleeping in a car seat, when the parent stops at a grocery store to get a few items. Yet when a norm enforcer observes this in the parking lot, the norm enforcer satisfies their outrage and identifies as a good person by calling the police.
I suspect you don't care very much about this example, but at least it has a context-specific detail.
"Does being smoothed mean that there is less cross-cultural variance in norms? And/or less variability in norms in subcultures? What is a context-specific detail?" Yes, all of that. Yes, a vibed norm would let toddler sleep in car for shot stop, but our new norm regime does not.
And there's little incentive to maintain norms. Communities used to maintain norms to forestall parasitism and dysfunction and social harm... but most people no longer live in such communities. Seen in this context, the modern condition of fast-eroding norms around marriage, sex, public behavior, dress, affect, modesty, temperance, etc. are less cultural trends in themselves and more a symptom of technologized atomization. Try enforcing the old and eminently useful norm against premarital pregnancy, for example - even in the comments on a social media post. I dare you.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-war-on-norms
I agree with most of what you said describing the modern situation and how it came to be but it seems incorrect to say:
"As a result, we end up seeing little variation on which cultural evolution can act."
Rather, the problem you describe seems to be exactly that this net negative sum behavior is actually adaptive at the memetic and group level. It's not that the norms are becoming less adaptive in the sense of cultural mimetic evolution rather it's just a selfish gene style situation in which the most memeticly adaptive practices in the current context aren't good for us as a species.
That's why we need to take advantage of the other human superpower of being able to understand and analyze the situation and try to shift the direction of cultural evolution.