Jukka Aakula’s Reviews > The Origin and Evolution of Cultures > Status Update

Chapter 14 is kind of conclusion. What is the tribal instinct hypothesis and what are the evidence for that hypothesis. Niina Junttila et al talks about "laumavietti" in Finnish in their new book "Miksi ihminen tarvitsee toisia - laumavietti ihmisen ydintarpeena". Herd instinct maybe in English or why not tribal instinct. Theory of Homo Economicus is silent about the preferences - takes them as exogenous.

B&R models used to be neutral on culture - e.g. in "Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (1992)" but it changed. When?

The evolution of social learning and conformist bias is the subject of the first part. Why do human groups differ strongly even in identical ecological conditions and same genes.

Much research has happened after Boyd and Richerson defined this program of research. They themselves studied how cultural evolution affected human cooperation.

How to define maladaptation. Simplified version: Failure of population to survive. Failure to provide well-being of members.

Why a mixture of social learning and individual learning is ESS. Also: why imitation increases the fitness of the population (under certain conditions) and, why thus culture increases human adaptability.

Started rereading or rere...rereading the book because there is growing interest for social learning as a mechanism.

E.g. why Harari was wrong about how evolution of cooperation and culture happened and why Henrich was right - see the substack "In Due Course" by Joseph Heath post "Harari vs. Henrich".

Reading again. I remember Ilkka Pyysiiäiinen linking me to this book for 20 years ago and especially to the role of altruistic punishment in establishing variation between human groups and thus enabling cultural group selection as a force.