"world of tradition, ignorance, war, poverty, and strong selection pressures"
You have grouped terms here that do not necessarily belong together. A world of tradition is not necessarily one of ignorance, of war, or of poverty. Tradition is literally a means of conserving the good and implementing persistent solutions to persistent problem sets, it's the lack thereof that guarantees the eventual downfall of any culture. It should surprise no one that when we neglect to maintain our culture it breaks down under continuing friction.
Consider a very simple thought experiment: If you lived in a perfect culture, one that you knew by whatever standard of proof you want that it could not be improved further in any significant way without opportunity costs and trade-offs that are worse on net, wouldn't you reasonably, rationally, attempt to conserve it as it is, to teach others to likewise conserve that best of all possible worlds, whether they fully understand the reasons that it works or not? Would you not discourage those who clearly do NOT understand why it works from transgressing the rules that exist for their own protection and benefit?
True. Our government and institutions, despite the drift, are pretty decent and historically still probably top 1% of everything that has been gone before. If we decide to replace them with something new, odds are good that we end up worse off.
Don't a lot of animals have some amount of learning or culture-like behavior propagation? I think the complexity of such things and the balance of instinct vs learned is more of a continuum. Of course, we don't have enough data to know the shape of the curve, or even the units we'd measure in. I hypothesize that humans are orders of magnitude more learning-oriented than cats, say, but I can't tell if it's linear, exponential, or logistical (s-shaped) for hypothetical future beings.
As far as we know, only humans are self-reflective enough to examine and vocalize what we're learning (and what others are learning from us). That too may be a continuum, or it may be a threshold effect.
Regardless, the amount of choice available to individuals over what they've already learned/absorbed is very debatable, and how to decide to try to shift what they're teaching others is heavily dependent on what they've learned culturally. It's kind of obvious that if large groups had "better" equilibria and cultural beliefs, they'd be more successful (by whatever definition they prefer). But it's not obvious at all how choice works in the first place.
One hypothesis is that youth cultures are 1) very fickle and malleable, 2) moral intuitions can be relatively easily hijacked, and 3) abstract reasoning often gives way to primal instincts; therefore, conscious steering (points 1 & 2) with good looking influencers (points 1 & 3) could create pronatalist youth cultures. Caplan's arguments that kids don't need to cost a lot (in money, stress, etc.) yet have huge return on investment of joy if looked at in the right way could be the meta-steering.
Lifespan and automation are also workarounds assuming they're not snake oil. Namely, if the longevity escape velocity thing actually plays out it doesn't matter how low the birthrate among secular westerners gets since anything above zero is still positive population growth and if we automate everything, our civilization can keep running even if we're all dead.
"world of tradition, ignorance, war, poverty, and strong selection pressures"
You have grouped terms here that do not necessarily belong together. A world of tradition is not necessarily one of ignorance, of war, or of poverty. Tradition is literally a means of conserving the good and implementing persistent solutions to persistent problem sets, it's the lack thereof that guarantees the eventual downfall of any culture. It should surprise no one that when we neglect to maintain our culture it breaks down under continuing friction.
Consider a very simple thought experiment: If you lived in a perfect culture, one that you knew by whatever standard of proof you want that it could not be improved further in any significant way without opportunity costs and trade-offs that are worse on net, wouldn't you reasonably, rationally, attempt to conserve it as it is, to teach others to likewise conserve that best of all possible worlds, whether they fully understand the reasons that it works or not? Would you not discourage those who clearly do NOT understand why it works from transgressing the rules that exist for their own protection and benefit?
True. Our government and institutions, despite the drift, are pretty decent and historically still probably top 1% of everything that has been gone before. If we decide to replace them with something new, odds are good that we end up worse off.
New [at random]*
Don't a lot of animals have some amount of learning or culture-like behavior propagation? I think the complexity of such things and the balance of instinct vs learned is more of a continuum. Of course, we don't have enough data to know the shape of the curve, or even the units we'd measure in. I hypothesize that humans are orders of magnitude more learning-oriented than cats, say, but I can't tell if it's linear, exponential, or logistical (s-shaped) for hypothetical future beings.
As far as we know, only humans are self-reflective enough to examine and vocalize what we're learning (and what others are learning from us). That too may be a continuum, or it may be a threshold effect.
Regardless, the amount of choice available to individuals over what they've already learned/absorbed is very debatable, and how to decide to try to shift what they're teaching others is heavily dependent on what they've learned culturally. It's kind of obvious that if large groups had "better" equilibria and cultural beliefs, they'd be more successful (by whatever definition they prefer). But it's not obvious at all how choice works in the first place.
One hypothesis is that youth cultures are 1) very fickle and malleable, 2) moral intuitions can be relatively easily hijacked, and 3) abstract reasoning often gives way to primal instincts; therefore, conscious steering (points 1 & 2) with good looking influencers (points 1 & 3) could create pronatalist youth cultures. Caplan's arguments that kids don't need to cost a lot (in money, stress, etc.) yet have huge return on investment of joy if looked at in the right way could be the meta-steering.
> a sacred gold
I believe "gold" should be "goal".
> If so, our current industrial will
Is that missing the word "era" before "will"?
Going "bust" is a common result of going "all-in" when gambling, so it's slightly odd to have them as contrasts.
Fixed; thanks
Are you proposing some sort of Platonic "Forms of the Good" as a road map for choosing a cultural adaptive strategy?
I don't see how.
Lifespan and automation are also workarounds assuming they're not snake oil. Namely, if the longevity escape velocity thing actually plays out it doesn't matter how low the birthrate among secular westerners gets since anything above zero is still positive population growth and if we automate everything, our civilization can keep running even if we're all dead.
Cultural drift is not solved by immortality or automation, though some of its symptoms would be alleviated
Defeating aging wouldn't be quite the same as defeating death, though it would be a major step in that direction.