In a continued attempt to drill down into cultural evolution, I examine whether, in addition to cultural evolution, if there's a separate phenomenon which deserves the label memetic evolution. I conclude there is a phenomenon, but that a better label for it is "memetic accumulation" and that there are some worrying things happening with the speed and diversity of this accumulation.  

I recently read the book Alone, by Michael Korda. It was about the opening months of World War II, and he said that at the time the French had the reputation as the world's preeminent military power. This obviously turned out to not be the case, but in the past they had been. Is there anything where we're overemphasizing our view of the past, and overlooking that what might happen in the future will almost certainly be completely different. I think there is...

Books Reviewed:

1. Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond
2. Then It Fell Apart by Moby
3. Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
4. To Live and Die in LA (Podcast) Hosted by Neil Strauss
5. Left For Dead: 30 Years On - The Race is Finally Over by Nick Ward and Sinead O'Brien
6. Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat into Victory by Michael Korda
7. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon
8. Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

We've discussed cultural evolution, and everyone knows about evolution by natural selection, but is something different happening now? Some people have said that we have transitioned to a different a third type of evolution, memetic evolution. Is this just an improvement to cultural evolution in the same way that cultural evolution was an improvement on genetic evolution? Or is it an entirely different beast? Does it allow us to adapt faster? Or does it make all adaptation more difficult?

It seems obvious that there are certain traditions which work to improve the survival of the culture in which they exist. It seems equally obvious that some traditions are pointless. How do we tell the difference? As it turns out it may be harder and take longer than you think. Also reason might help you less than you think. In this episode I consider four factors which might be helpful:

1. The duration of the tradition. How long has it been around?
2. The strength of enforcement for the tradition. How severe are the penalties for going against it?
3. The frequency of the tradition among the various cultures. How widespread is it? Is it present in many different cultures?
4. The domain of the tradition. Is the tradition related to something which could impact survival or reproduction?

A review of Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond.

It's not Guns, Germs and Steel, but he does put forth an interesting list of factors for how nations successful navigate crisis. My assessment of these factors is that they're useful, but that they also serve to illustrate the depths of the current crises faced by the US and the world.

Lots of trends associated with the modern world seem to be increasing at an exponential rate. This includes things like energy use, CPU speed, and even scientific publications. But what if rather than being a exponential curve, all of these trends are really the bottoms of S-curves? Curves that start out looking like exponential curve, but which taper off at the top and plateau as constraints kick in. What would that mean for the ongoing progress people have come to count on, and what might be some potential examples of this?

I review a bunch of books:

• The Collapsing Empire
• Porcelain: A Memoir
• Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
• The Inevitable Apostasy and the Promised Restoration (Religious)
• The City & The City
• 13 Ways of Going on a Field Trip: Stories about Teaching and Learning
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
• The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto)

I had not intended to revisit abortion so soon, but the previous post generated some interesting comments on a wide range of issues, so I decided to collect them and answer in the form of a post. In particular I should have paid more attention to the actual women involved in what is objectively a horrible decision to have to make. But there are other nuances as well that deserve more space.

I was reading the Iliad recently and I was struck by the fact that while there were a lot of horses that no one rode them, they were all used to pull chariots. Horses had been domesticated for thousands of years but no one thought to ride them. And it would be another couple thousand years before someone came up with the idea of a stirrup. This illustrates that a technology can be around for a long time and then suddenly someone will figure out a new way of using it which ends up being incredibly effective. Could this happen with Nukes?