Lessons From Cultural

Evolution

Hi, my name is Jordan Greenhall and I’m quite pleased that Bela invited be to this event - and
intrigued by the opportunity of making a presentation.

First, the name of this presentation is a bit of a misnomer - but a frutiful one. Perhaps a
better name would be “plucking a few strings from cultural evolution” and trying to see if
there is any tune to be found.
 “I would rather be
wrong than boring.”

Second, I am not a scientist and, in spite of the fact that I have grown a beard specifically to
add that scientific gravitas to my demeanor, my background is closer to a joker or a thief
than to a scientist.

What follows, then, will be far from scientific. I hope it will be provocative and at least
interesting. At worst, I trust that it will not be boring.

So, onward to the topic at hand.

 Cultural Evolution

When you talk about Cultural Evolution, one of the first things you find is that you are stuck
being highly metaphorical unless you do a real harm to the language of evolutionary biology.

In that vein, then, I’d like to start by briefly introducing the vocabulary that I use when I’m
thinking about cultural evolution and, frankly, about evolution in general.

Putting first things first, our ontological primitive - the “what” that evolves.
 An Event

An Event. An event is something that happens.

A flash of lightening.
A flap of a wing.
A metabolic pathway.
A turn of a galaxy.

The key point is that an event is dynamic all the way down. We are working with actions, not
things.

There are many different kinds of events, most of which are notable only for the beauty of
their passing. But we want to focus down on a special class of events:
 A Consistent Event

A consistent event is a something that happens consistently. I mean this both in the sense of
predictable and in the sense of “viscosity” - “hanging together”.
As it changes and flows through a dynamic relationship with an environment, a consistent
event continues (somehow) to be what it is.

I want to stay away from specific mechanisms. This is a strictly statistical theory.
If an event is a “chance encounter”, a consistent event is an encounter that keeps on coming
back.

In a sense, an event is able to be consistent because it stacks chance in its favor.

But I don’t care how it hangs together, just that it does and does so predictably.
When you have a consistent event, you have something that is able to consistently engage
with its environment. that is, it have an effect on the environment as “an event”.

The way that a consistent event can grasp (or be grasped by) its environment is what I will
call its .
 Strategies

“strategies”. A strategy is what an event "can do”, it is the what that an event "events"
It turns out that Sun Tsu’s was right - a good strategy it isn’t locked into any particular scale
or set of assumptions. A strategy can be anything - depending on its circumstances.
To push the concept, think of an electron as a consistent event. The electron has a pretty
simple portfolio of strategies: it has a very specific charge, mass, wavelength and spin and it
can select a spacetime coordinate, etc.

This isn’t much of a strategic portfolio, but its what it's got and it is what differentiates it
from everything its not. If you do this (and only this) you are an electron, if you do not, then
you aren't.
It is through its strategies that an event interacts with its environment. You can even
describe a consistent event as its portfolio of strategies, because it is precisely its portfolio of
strategies that makes it a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Note that not every strategy in a portfolio of strategies needs to be activated all the time.
Under certain conditions, water might encounter its environment as a liquid,
under other conditions as a gas. Both are strategies that are in its overall portfolio - different
ways that it can encounter its environment while still being what it is.

Through their strategies, consistent events encounter their environment; changing it and
being changed in their turn. Certain strategies are activated, others are modulated,
and of course an events consistency can be disrupted altogether.

Now, while all consistent events certainly change and develop, they do not yet rise to the
criterion that we want to reserve for the term
 Evolve

“evolve”. For this we require more.

In order to “evolve”, a consistent event has to not only change as a result of its encounter with
its environment, it must be able to somehow “explore” several different possible changes and
“select” the changes that optimize its continuing consistency.

In other words, it has to have a fitness function.

 F(TS1, TE1) = TS2, TE2

That looks kind of like this: The “total strategy” of a consistent event, encounters its total
environment. The result is a new total strategy and a new total environment. Where,
 F(TS1, TE1) = TS2, TE2
where
CTS2, TE2 ~O CTSx, TEx

the continuing consistency of the new Total Strategy approaches optimality over all possible
alternative selections. Which is to say that it is consistently consistent.
 So what does this get us?

This vocabulary helps in a couple of ways.

1. It helps us talk about evolution without worrying too much at the start about mechanism.
2. It lets us grasp any real phenomenon without being tied to the language of biology
3. It lets us talk about the formation of dynamic consistencies from seemingly heterogenous
conjugations (alliances)

We can think about how events can conjugate into consistencies as the result of total
strategies optimizing against fitness landscapes. Like the conjunction of “mitochondira” and
“nuclear cell”. Or the conjunction of “fruit” and “primate”.

Or That point somewhere around 20,000 years ago or so where

The consistent event Homo Sapiens encountered Canis Lupus Familiaris. Each of these were
consistent events that had been surfing their total strategies against their total environment
for quite some time, but then found a new consistency: Man + Dog. A new total strategy
presented a more optimal fitness against the total environment. One that has been robust
enough that even though the original utility of that alliance has long passed, over the
millennia the alliance has led to:
and this, and this. This last is a labradoodle, a so-called “designer dog”. It can’t hunt. It
can’t guard. But (at great expense) homo sapiens has crafted the next generation of Dog
which is hypoallergenic, perfectly ok with indoor living and is extremely smart. i.e.,
compatible with the modern homo sapiens so as to continue the optimality of the the Man +
Dog alliance.

That is what I call a heterogenous conjunction. We see a lot of those in culture, in fact, one
might say that culture is made up of nothing but these.

All right, so now we can talk about.

and this, and this. This last is a labradoodle, a so-called “designer dog”. It can’t hunt. It
can’t guard. But (at great expense) homo sapiens has crafted the next generation of Dog
which is hypoallergenic, perfectly ok with indoor living and is extremely smart. i.e.,
compatible with the modern homo sapiens so as to continue the optimality of the the Man +
Dog alliance.

That is what I call a heterogenous conjunction. We see a lot of those in culture, in fact, one
might say that culture is made up of nothing but these.

All right, so now we can talk about.

and this, and this. This last is a labradoodle, a so-called “designer dog”. It can’t hunt. It
can’t guard. But (at great expense) homo sapiens has crafted the next generation of Dog
which is hypoallergenic, perfectly ok with indoor living and is extremely smart. i.e.,
compatible with the modern homo sapiens so as to continue the optimality of the the Man +
Dog alliance.

That is what I call a heterogenous conjunction. We see a lot of those in culture, in fact, one
might say that culture is made up of nothing but these.

All right, so now we can talk about.

The Evolution of Culture
 What is Culture?

Culture is a consistent event. The strategies that define it are many, but include strategies
for
producing food,
distributing bodies in space,
allocating power,
enforcing that power internally,
and externally
forming knowledge,
and perpetuating itself through the process of “enculturation.” We can, and should, pull apart
any of these strategies to learn more about culture, but right now I want to focus on
enculturation.

Thus far, the principal strategy of the cultural event has been to produce enculturated
humans who are simultaneously the product of culture and its producer.
As a consequence, the dynamic of cultural evolution has been tightly linked to the dynamic of
human development. Namely that we are born, pass through several life stages and,
eventually, die taking our personal slice of culture with us..

It is during our earliest years that we are principally being enculturated -

From birth until through puberty, our brains are highly plastic and are doing their level best
to optimize to whatever their total experience is.
If you develop in a culture where the ability to signal detect letters and words is important,
your brain optimizes to that set of strategies. If not, then it optimizes to a different set of
strategies. At an individual level, this process of development and optimization is about the
formation of . . .
 Meaning Architectures

These are our complete models (both heuristics and valuations) that allow us to make sense
of the world and take actions in that world. They consist of three interacting layers.
 The Biological

At birth, we already have the baseline homo sapiens portfolio of strategies that we deploy in
our environment. Certain things attract our attention, others elicit emotional responses. We
have strategies for extracting consistencies from our environment, for recording them and
for linking them together with other experiences including our own emotional state. This
then lays the foundation for . . .
At birth, we already have the baseline homo sapiens portfolio of strategies that we deploy in
our environment. Certain things attract our attention, others elicit emotional responses. We
have strategies for extracting consistencies from our environment, for recording them and
for linking them together with other experiences including our own emotional state. This
then lays the foundation for . . .
 The Experiential

As we go through life making linkages like “stove is hot-pain” or “you can’t breathe water”,
we begin cutting out concepts and consistencies from our environment and creating more
abstract models and valuations. These nest and ramify and become a whole constellation of
emotional cognitive linkages: all oriented towards how to act optimally in our cultural
environment. What works, what doesn’t work. This layer then becomes the foundation
for. . .
As we go through life making linkages like “stove is hot-pain” or “you can’t breathe water”,
we begin cutting out concepts and consistencies from our environment and creating more
abstract models and valuations. These nest and ramify and become a whole constellation of
emotional cognitive linkages: all oriented towards how to act optimally in our cultural
environment. What works, what doesn’t work. This layer then becomes the foundation
for. . .
 The Symbolic

In a social context our concepts values and heuristics come not only from direct personal
experience, but through indirect dramatization. This can be both active (grandma telling
morality tales around the fire) or passive (deducing values from observing the actions and
behaviour of evaluated individuals).

Collectively, these three layer forms our “meaning architectures” --- our complete model of
what is, how it works and how it ought to work. As we age past childhood, we increasingly
impose our meaning architectures on the other people around us, moving from being strictly
enculturated to being agents of enculturation,
In a social context our concepts values and heuristics come not only from direct personal
experience, but through indirect dramatization. This can be both active (grandma telling
morality tales around the fire) or passive (deducing values from observing the actions and
behaviour of evaluated individuals).

Collectively, these three layer forms our “meaning architectures” --- our complete model of
what is, how it works and how it ought to work. As we age past childhood, we increasingly
impose our meaning architectures on the other people around us, moving from being strictly
enculturated to being agents of enculturation,
Our actions and evaluations becoming part of the total experience of other people in the
culture, sometimes reinforcing certain concepts and valuations, other times diluting or
confusing them.
Synthesizing into a comprehensive aesthetic/moral field: the total strategy of our culture.
 Media Evolves

The fitness functions of each discrete human event flowing into a larger scale cultural fitness
function.

This is a complex event, no doubt, but it does have structure that drives its evolution.
One of which is the fact that at any given moment in a culture there will be individuals at
different stages of development - meaning that they formed their meaning architectures at
different moments in the dynamic of the culture.

Each cohort is consistent with itself inasmuch as it is participating in the same developmental
stage in the same cultural field. But, by this same fact, each cohort is different from the
others - creating a gradient that can’t help but drive change.
Take for example this snapshot of an average Manhattan advertising agency in 1960. Take
just the three men at three different stages of life. (I don’t want to even begin to peel the
onion around the different meaning architectures formed by the ladies in this picture.)
Don Draper - born 1925.
He was forming his meaning architectures at the peak of the great depression, absorbing the
technology, aesthetics and moral lessons of that period. His childhood was a world of crisis
where many of the fundamentals of his culture were at maximum question.
Roger Sterling - born 1907
His meaning architectures were formed in a completely different world. Different capabilities,
different consequences. His childhood almost completely pre-dated radio and saw the first
emergence of the automobile. His childhood experience routinely included elders who
personally fought in the Civil War and he saw the soldiers going off to fight WWII as “boys”
younger than himself.
Pete Campbell on the other hand was born in 1935. He barely even really remembers the
depression and he recalls the soldiers returning from WWII
not even as regular Joes, but as heroes, larger than life - one aesthetic imprint among many
that he took away from his enculturation.
Here they are, seemingly the same kind of person but really three quite different meaning
architectures in encounter with each-other. Though they might simultaneously encounter the
same piece of material culture, they will each experience something quite different. For
Sterling, the medium of radio is innovative, for Draper it is obvious, for Campbell it is
obsolete. As a consequence they will pull (largely along with their entire cohorts) in different
directions.
Culture is the oscillating process of us creating ourselves.
Our total experience creating us and then simultaneously being created by us.
In an ever moving dynamic cycle. Now, the human event has some particularities that have
so far driven the dynamic of culture.
And this cycle goes all the way back. At some point, this was innovative. Someone started-
out with the bright idea that it is possible to reorganize atoms in space to cause an otherwise
ephemeral set of ideas and information to endure. It was a great idea at the time.
But for a generation born and raised surrounded by language, that idea wasn’t novel - it just
was. And with brains “optimized” for literacy, they couldn’t help but push the envelope in
ways that their parents couldn’t imagine.
Creating different capabilities that changed the “resonance frequency” of their culture - and
gave rise to entirely new strategies.
Each new capability bridging and linking with other capabilities in a continuing dance with
the fitness landscape
The event constantly morphing - knowledge feeding into economy, economy feeding into
military. Everything feeding into a culture that is constantly trying to integrate each of its
strategies into the most effective total strategy.
The more effective total strategies expand and fertilize entirely new consistencies.
Sometimes these new admixtures increase the consistency of the event and lead to its
expansion into the fitness landscape
Other times for reasons internal and external the consistency fails and the subsequent
change in the total environment leads to an explosive experimentation of strategies.
A dynamic of interpenetrating dimensions, strategies constantly pushing against and allying
with each other seeking that optimal consistency against an equally fluid total environment.
As innovations pile on innovations and strategies form new alliances, the line between
strategy and environment is constantly blurred. Like a diamond waiting to be cut. A slight
change in the total environment can result and a dramatic shift in the fitness landscape.
As innovations pile on innovations and strategies form new alliances, the line between
strategy and environment is constantly blurred. Like a diamond waiting to be cut. A slight
change in the total environment can result and a dramatic shift in the fitness landscape.
Creating new opportunities into which particularly fit strategies rush, reshaping the balance
of the larger assemblage.
Creating new opportunities into which particularly fit strategies rush, reshaping the balance
of the larger assemblage.
Generation following generation.
Generation following generation.
New capabilities change the rules of the game and other portions of the culture adapt as best
they can.
Strategies like family, government, economy stretching or breaking as their internal
consistencies dictate
New capabilities driving who we are - and who we are driving new capabilities
With each developing generation optimizing around their perspective of the culture and then,
ultimately dragging the rest of the culture along with them.
The culture itself evolving.
 Cultural Evolution

It might be tempting to reduce all of this to technological evolution and I want to emphasize
that I am talking about cultural evolution. The whole thing.
Yes, absolutely, technology is evolving - and this is a big piece of the overall puzzle.
But the evolution of culture happens in all of its dimensionality. A generation that grows up
watching this, becomes capable of creating
this. Which is watched by a generation that creates
this; and
A generation that grows up watching this, becomes capable of creating
This which is then watched by a generation that comes to create
This. The total experience of each generation serves as the pallette and reference of the next
generation in a constant struggle and surge.
Its a matter of consistency. What connects with what and how? Which conjugations of events
hang together and which drift apart? Which alliances of strategies find themselves at the top
of the strategic landscape, and which find themselves on the wrong side of the fitness
function?
 What Comes Next?

So, given that - what comes next? To gesture in that direction we have to grasp as best we
can the total environment and understand the overall topography of the fitness landscape to
which our total strategy is attempting to optimize.
Its an environment where, increasingly over time, old constraints like physical geography are
becoming mapped to new dynamics.
And, freed from the inertia of space, these new dynamics are evolving at an incredible rate.
Where old models of identity are increasingly fluid.
Where connection, interactivity and
participation are part of the innovations of the past generation that are fast moving into the
mainstream.
Its an environment of the increasing self awareness of culture as culture.
of the very thin line between reality and imagination.
and of perhaps the complete collapse between imagination and myth.
This is an environment that is becoming aware of the possibility of forming a conjugation
between total strategy and total environment. A merger between fitness function and fitness
landscape.
And of the increasing necessity of that new formation.
If I had to put my chips on the table, I’d say that what comes next depends on which culture
most effectively grasps and is able to act on the concept that acceleration is not just
technological or biological, but
must be absolutely comprehensive, embracing the entire dimensionality of culture and all
that that implies.