
Does Culture Really Evolve Like Organisms Do? - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/does-culture-really-evolve-like-organisms-do
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robotresearcher
Evolution occurs when:

1) entities exist and replicate 2) changes occur during replication 3)
selection processes pertain that mean some entities replicate more than others

If culture meets those criteria then it is evolving. That may not help you
understand the details or make any useful predictions. You probably need all
kinds of additional models and theories to get to grips with culture. There
may be other non-evolution processes happening as well. But to decide if it is
evolving, just determine if these criteria apply, and you are done.

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zby
That is natural selection - evolution can happen without natural selection.

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robotresearcher
Which of these things can be omitted and evolution remains?

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jqm
At points in human history there was almost certainly natural selection for
certain behaviors and cultural practices.

Certainly the parallels with biological evolution aren't completely accurate,
but throughout history, cultures have conquered and displaced others and were
able to do so (in part at least) because they were doing something different
(presumably "better" from survival standpoint). So from this perspective
cultures have certainly "evolved" partially through a natural selection
process.

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zby
Organisms evolve through natural selection - culture evolves in a different
way. Memes might be similar in some ways to genes - but there is no natural
selection of cultures.

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fennecfoxen
Isn't there? A culture, idea or a meme that doesn't spread from person to
person in some way isn't going to exist after the people participating in it
die. When you get down to it, "natural selection" is just a similar
application of population dynamics.

The real differences are in the radically different composition of an organism
and an idea/meme/culture/institution, with implications for the way these
ideas are transmitted and transformed.

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astazangasta
It's obvious this idea is crap if you think about fads. These are ideas that
propagate rapidly until they become quite popular and then mysteriously
vanish. This flies in the face of an inherent superiority driving the
propagation of the idea.

As an evolutionary biologist and a student of cultural transmission this idea
(memetics) has always annoyed me from both ends. It is a bad idea, and I wish
it would die. It's even more annoying that it somehow manages to add to
Dawkins' misplaced prestige.

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greggyb
A biological analog that pops into mind is fermentation. Bacteria produce
alcohol in an environment until the alcohol reaches toxic levels and all the
bacteria die.

I am not saying they are equivalent, just that the propagation of a fad has
similarities to the propagation of alcohol-producing bacteria in a closed
environment.

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astazangasta
So now the analogy is to growth and dying off rather than selection, and the
analog of the meme is the bacterial population, rather than a gene?

Why are we trying to make these ham-fisted analogies at all? Ideas do not
behave anything like genes; they have almost no properties in common with
genes.

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anti-shill
yes, culture does evolve.

The question is to what degree has the overclass evolved our culture in ways
that best suits the financial interests of the overclass (e.g., plutocrats,
large corporations etc)?

Has our culture been domesticated by the overclass through overclass influence
on educational curricula?

If so, this would seem to be a strong argument against common core.

