Cultural evolution + group selection = a disaster in the making

Cultural evolution has fought for acceptance for over a century - against fierce opposition from anthropologists, philosophers - and even some evolutionary biologists.

Now, as the penny shows signs of finally starting to drop, some proponents of cultural evolution seem to have got the idea that it is a good move to link the theory to another controversial theory: group selection.

I think this is likely to be a disaster for the public understanding of science. Such a link will cause confusion for lay scientists attempting to understand the theory. It is likely to result in delays is the adoption of cultural evolution. It is also likely to result in misapplications of the theory of cultural evolution.

Linking one controversial theory to another one just risks compounding confusion - and let's face it, cultural evolution is a much more important than a methodological squabble about what accounting method to use in which organisms share heritable information. Modern versions of kin selection and group selection don't even make different predictions. Scientifically speaking, the issue is a bit of a storm in a teacup.

About the only possible favourable outcome I can see is that the controversy associated with group selection might add to the eyeballs scrutinizing cultural evolution. However, group selection is a dodgy theory which adds no new predictions to our existing understanding of science - and it has a long association with junk science - due to it being systematically applied to the cases where kin selection doesn't obviously work.

I think that a much bigger risk is that cultural evolution will be tarred by its association with group selection. Exhibit A for this is the 2012 "Stephen Pinker" controversy. Stephen Pinker is obviously a smart cookie - but he doesn't understand cultural evolution or group selection. However he does know enough about group selection to realize that it is dodgy. Richard Dawkins described it as "A Cumbersome, Time-Wasting Distraction". Not "wrong" - but not very good either.

Anyway, I wish that cultural evolution enthusiasts would put group selection down. They adopted it in an atmosphere of confusion - without a good understanding why group selection was in the dog house. For example, Henrich (2004) wrote in his defense of using the "group selection" terminology:

Concerns and confusions related to Wynne-Edwards (1962) work of over 40 years ago should, in my view, be relegated to history books

However - alas - it isn't as easy as that for group selection to clean up its act. Group selection was driven into the fringes of science by kin selection. It is consistently applied by advocates to cases where relatedness is low - and so the theory doesn't work. It is systematically not applied to cases where relatedness is high - and it is obvious to everyone that "kin selection" did it.

Given group selection's ongoing association with junk science it is just the sort of thing we don't want linked to cultural evolution. Cultural evolution faces strong resistance from within anthropology. One of the many complaints is that those seeking to biologize culture are using naive biological theories, and are doing it wrong - with the potentially significant costs associated with applying these theories to humans. Of course this is a pretty feeble excuse for rejecting Darwinism entirely - but looking at Wilson-style sociobiology, they were partly right - the treatment of culture by these theorists was hopeless. Looking at modern evolutionary psychology they are partly right again - the treatment of culture by these theorists is equally hopeless. Only memetics (and similar theories) take cultural variation seriously as an evolutionary phenomenon - and so has a hope of eventually being accepted by anthropologists. Tying cultural evolution to group selection just creates another opportunity for anthropologists to reject it as "bad science". It's surely a bad strategy which will only hold the field back. Forget about group selection. It's completely unnecessary - and it will just create endless confusion - as it has been doing now for decades. Surely that is the last thing we all want.

Misrepresentation of kin selection by group selection advocates

Group selection enthusiasts have repeatedly argued that: kin selection can only explain cooperation between close relatives; that humans cooperate in groups in which the humans are not closely related. Since kin selection can't have been responsible, group selection is needed.

This argument has been made innumerable times. It is completely mistaken. Boyd and Richerson made this argument in Not By Genes Alone. Today, we will look at Joe Henrich's expression of this argument in the 2004 paper Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation. The argument can be found in section 3.2. Joe writes:

Kin-based mechanisms should be designed to focus benefits only on close relatives, and thus kin selection does not help us to solve the problem of cooperation among large groups of unrelated individuals unless our kin-psychology is making a lot of big mistakes by confusing large numbers of non-relatives and strangers with close relatives.

Cultural kin selection is based on shared memes - not shared genes. Cooperation between strangers in military, religious and organizational settings is not a mistake from the point of view of the memes involved. They are recognizing their kin and directing resources towards their kin accordingly.

From the point of view of the genes of the human host the resource allocation does look like more of a mistake. Or rather: it benefits some humans at the expense of others. The genes in the factory bosses no doubt benefit if their workers behave like sisters in an ant nest - and cooperate for the common good. However the genes in the factory workers are probably not doing so well. The workers probably wouldn't wear the blue suits unless they were made to do so - and might treat their co-workers worse as a result. In short they are victims of manipulation who put up with the situation because they are wage slaves who can't find better jobs.

In other cases, the uniform wearers seem to don their robes enthusiastically. Sometimes, religions folk and tribe members seem to love the garb that makes them all appear as though they are brothers and sisters. It seems pretty speculative to argue that their DNA benefits from this - but you can imagine cases where the interests of the memes involved and the interests of the host DNA are more closely aligned. In such cases, cultural kin selection can be invoked to explain the cooperation that results - without the situation necessarily being a "big mistake" from the perspective of the host DNA.

In the paper, Joe continues:

This version of the “big mistake hypothesis” (Boyd and Richerson, 2002a) suggests that, because our psychology supposedly evolved in small groups with high degrees of interrelatedness, kin selection (along with reciprocity, see next section) favored a psychology in humans that is designed to generously bestow benefits on members of their groups. According to this idea, natural selection apparently neglected to provide humans with the ability to distinguish kin and long-term reciprocators from anonymous strangers in ephemeral interactions. Thus, in the novel world of large-scale, complex societies, this once adaptive psychological propensity misfires, giving us large-scale cooperation (Tooby and Cosmides, 1989).

That hypothesis might explain why we don't have better defenses against kinship-related manipulation. However it simply isn't the main kinship-based explanation of why humans are so cooperative! Humans mostly cooperate with other humans which they share memes with because they are manipulated into doing so - via cultural kin selection. The manipulation is typically mediated by memes, but it often serves the interests of the genes of other humans. For example, the politicians and generals spread the patriotism memes - but it's the infantrymen that are killed by them. It isn't a "big mistake" for the memes involved - or for the humans that benefit from the manipulation.

Joe criticizes this so-called "big mistake hypothesis", apparently writes off kin selection and then goes on to advocate group selection for much of the rest of the paper. To his credit, Joe does actually acknowledge the equivalence of kin selection and group selection in this paper (section 4.3). However, his treatment of kin selection seems shoddy to me.

If you want to reject decades of work on kin selection, and advocate an alternative approach, IMO, you should first understand how to apply the standard approach and then go on to explain why your approach is better. In the case of cultural evolution, this involves kin selection applied to cultural variation. IMO, Joe Henrich fails at this project on the first hurdle, by apparently not understanding how to apply the main rival theory: kin selection. This seems like a weak position to launch an alternative approach from.

The modern wave of group selection in the social sciences is built on shoddy foundations like these. Those involved didn't properly understand how to apply kin selection to memes. They thought that kin selection didn't work - for all the wrong reasons. We can now see that they were mistaken. I think that the next issue is how best to clean up the mess they have created.

Getting what makes cultural evolution different wrong

Many students of cultural evolution seem to have an idea about the thing that makes cultural evolution different. In today's paper from 2009 - by Strimling, Enquist and Eriksson - it is the ability of culture to be rejected and reacquired that makes cultural evolution different. In their words:

Although genetic information is acquired only once, cultural information can be both abandoned and reacquired during an individual's lifetime. Therefore, cultural evolution will be determined not only by cultural traits' ability to spread but also by how good they are at sticking with an individual; however, the evolutionary consequences of this aspect of culture have not previously been explored.

The problem here is that this is totally mistaken. Genetic information - information in DNA - can also be abandoned and reacquired during an individual's lifetime. It is common for individuals to be infected with DNA-based pathogens on multiple occasions. Immunity doesn't always last - and often vaccinations need to be regularly repeated. Many parasites can attack the same host many times throughout that host's lifespan. Cold and flu viruses are familiar examples. For pathogens, success often depends on how good they are at sticking with their hosts. This is true for DNA-based pathogens - as well as cultural ones.

My estimate is that: 9 times out of 10 when academics play the game of picking the thing that makes cultural evolution different, they come up with answers that are just wrong. The differences between cultural and DNA-based evolution remain widely exaggerated. That is not to say that cultural evolution and organic evolution are exactly the same - just that wide-reuse of principles from the organic realm is possible. Often differences between the realms turn out to be quantitative - rather than qualitative.

Failure to appreciate the similarities between the realms leads to a failure to reuse existing work - and to pointlessly reinventing the wheel. A failure to appreciate the similarities between cultural and organic evolution is one of the most persistent problems for the field. Most scientists don't understand the similarities at all. Only a small percentage have got as far as understanding that both realms obey Darwinian rules.

You might think that this would lead to academics flaunting their understanding of the similarities - to demonstrate that they understand the topic. However, more often than not the temptation associated with detecting some difference - and then developing a theory about it - seems to be too powerful.

Robert Boyd: Coordinated, contingent punishment is group beneficial and can increase when rare

Robert Boyd: The First Great Divergence

Peter Richerson: Cultural Group Selection and the Origin of Institutions and Norms

Marketing of memetics

A recent popular history of evolutionary psychology purports to explain "how evolutionary psychology went viral". The gist of the article is that E.P. hitchhiked to success on the back of sex-related memes and controversial content. This is essentially the same marketing strategy that The Naked Ape used - back in its day.

I've previously speculated that evolutionary psychology's biggest drawback - the failure of most of its practitioners to get to grips with culture and cultural evolution - has also contributed to its popularity. Ignoring human differences and concentrating on human commonalities has made evolutionary psychology less offensive and more politically correct. This is in stark contrast to memetics - which is all about the differences between humans.

Can memeticists learn anything from the evolutionary psychology marketing strategy? Memetics, like evolutionary psychology, studies human behaviour - a topic which most people are interested in. Where evolutionary psychology has historically studied human commonalities, memetics studies human differences. It is an essential sidekick for evolutionary psychology. Memetics has historically been controversial. It hasn't been linked to sexual content very much so far - though Susan Blackmore managed to write several chapters about that topic in The Meme Machine. The volume of sexual content on the internet suggests that there is plenty of content there to be studied. However, memetics has its own associated popular content (which evolutionary psychology lacked) - namely: internet memes. Hitchhiking on this content is the most obvious route to popularity for memetics, IMO.

Articles like: Indiana University Will Devote $1 Million to the Study of Internet Memes indicate that interest is out there.

Saving the world - with evolutionary theory

An NSF-sponsored paper is currently doing the rounds, claiming the evolutionary biology can help to "save the world". The associated NSF press materials are even titled: "How evolutionary principles could help save our world".

The full paper is accessible here. It's contents are reasonable: it points out how important evolutionary theory is in the modern world. However, one of the interesting things about the paper to me is that it only discusses blinkered Darwinism. Universal Darwinism - to my mind the best and truest version of Darwinian evolution - doesn't get referenced. There's no mention of the idea that culture also evolves.

If the authors understood that Darwinism applied to technology, science, economics, medicine, politics, law - and many other areas - the article would surely have had to put an even greater value on the topic.

I don't know how much longer we'll be seeing these blinkered Darwinism papers. The scientific community evidently has a lot of inertia. From my side of the paradigm shift, blinkered Darwinism looks pretty stupid. Presumably eventually it will become a matter of scientific embarrassment that well-educated humans were so slow to understand the full scope of Darwin's discovery.

Emotional contagion

It is well known that stress states such as fear, panic, and hysteria are socially communicable.

However, it is turning out that other mental illnesses have a component of social contagion implicated in their genesis as well. For example, the following articles deal with the contagiousness of depression and loneliness.

• Is Depression Contagious?
• Depression and Loneliness Are More Contagious Than You Think
• Depression Is Contagious: How the Most Common Mood Disorder Is Spreading Around the World and How to Stop It
• Could Depression Actually Be a Form of Infectious Disease?

Emotional contagion may be a widespread phenomenon. Of course, social contagion alone doesn't prove that memes are implicated. Manipulation by transmissible DNA-based pathogens is also a possibility. However memes are surely the number one suspects in such cases.

A significant study that illustrates social contagion of emotions was recently conducted by Facebook. Such social networking studies have the potential to distinguish meme-based contagion from gene-based contagion - because they can filter out short-distance relationships, leaving long-distance ones - where only meme-based social contagion is likely.

Emotional contagion seems important to understand - because of the extent of its social significance. For example, many organizations would probably prefer to manipulate their workers into states conducive to a positive working environment - and not have them too depressed or stressed.

Daniel Dennett: A Darwinian view of religion in the 21st century

This presentation dates from August, 2014. The video starts out discussing the effects of "transparency". Most of the second half of the video is about Dennett's studies of religion.