The refinement paradox and cumulative cultural evolution: Complex products of collective improvement favor conformist outcomes, blind copying, and hyper-credulity
Social learning is common in nature, yet cumulative culture (where knowledge and technology increase in complexity and diversity over time) appears restricted to humans. To understand why, we organized a computer tournament in which programmed entries specified when to learn new knowledge and when to refine (i.e. improve) existing knowledge. The tournament revealed a 'refinement paradox': refined behavior afforded higher payoffs as individuals converged on a small number of successful behavioral variants, but refining did not generally pay. Paradoxically, entries that refined only in certain conditions did best during behavioral improvement, while simple copying entries thrived when refinement levels were high. Cumulative cultural evolution may be rare in part because sophisticated strategies for improving knowledge and technology are initially advantageous, yet complex culture, once achieved, favors conformity, blind imitation and hyper-credulity.
Authors
- Kevin N. Laland (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2457-0900)
- Daniel Cownden (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5348-4841)
- Stuart Murray (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2871-8375)
- Elena Miu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0846-2491)
- Luke Rendell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1121-9142)
- Richard McElreath (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0387-5377)
- Timothy Lillicrap (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8918-486X)
- Kimmo Eriksson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7164-0924)
- Marcus W. Feldman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0664-3803)
- Magnus Enquist (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0198-1288)
- James Ounsley
- Sam Bowles
- Rob Boyd
Institutions
- Marine Scotland (GB)
- Santa Fe Institute (US)
- Stockholm University (SE)
- University of St Andrews (GB)
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Capital Regional District (CA)
- Google DeepMind (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Google (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (DE)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PLoS Computational Biology
- Published
- 2024-09-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012436
- Citations
- 5
- Primary Topic
- Language and cultural evolution
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 21.45
Funders
- European Research Council
- Fogarty International Center