From: jimruttshow8596
Culture is presented as a refined, often automatic, and less deliberative layer of human understanding and behavior [00:55:50]. It develops from ideas that work well when tested in the world, becoming an accepted orthodoxy at the population level, much like an individual being “in the zone” [00:56:02].
Defining Culture
Culture is defined as the application of refined ideas to circumstances for which they are adapted [00:55:54]. These ideas, when successful, become “driven into a more automatic, less deliberative layer” [00:55:50]. This means that while innovation often occurs in conscious minds, once something is mastered and doesn’t require active thought, it has moved into the cultural layer [00:56:49]. Therefore, culture acts as a “compiled version of a program” [00:58:19], being inherently backward-looking as it reflects solutions to past challenges [00:58:27].
The Omega Principle: Genes and Culture
The Omega Principle describes a necessary relationship between genes and culture [01:16:47]. Culture, as an epigenetic regulator, is considered “superior to genes” in its flexibility and ability to adapt more quickly, with cultural change happening within generations rather than just between them [01:18:01]. However, these epigenetic regulators “evolve to serve the genome” [01:18:18]. This means that anything cultural that has persisted and is complex and variable in extent is considered evolutionary and ultimately serves genetic interests [01:19:01].
Culture in a Hyper-Novel World
The rapidly accelerating pace of change in the 21st century creates a hyper-novel world [01:11:17], where the rate of change itself is changing exponentially [01:11:47]. This poses a significant problem for culture, which is inherently backward-looking [00:58:27]. As a result, there will be “ever less from the past that the young will find a value as they move forward into the future” [00:59:14].
Culture provides stability and a through-line from the past, and elements that worked in unchanging environments should be kept [00:59:23]. However, elements that worked in past domains but are now outdated due to changes in the modern world should be discarded [00:59:43]. The challenge lies in discerning which is which, a process prone to error [00:59:48].
The “Suckers’ Fallacy”
A common mechanism observed in human society, which can be catastrophic when widely applied, is the “suckers’ fallacy” [01:00:07]. This is the tendency for concentrated short-term benefits to “obscure risk and long-term costs” and drive acceptance even when the net analysis is negative [01:00:09]. This short-term “hill climbing” dominates the evolution of culture [01:00:40].
When the rate of change is slow, short-term benefits might still lead to stable outcomes over generations [01:00:48]. However, in a hyper-novel world, relying on short-term interests becomes problematic [01:01:20]. Human brains did not evolve to deal with slow-moving, long-term problems like climate change [01:01:38]; their primary evolutionary constraint was immediate survival [01:01:31].
Historically Adaptive but Harmful Cultures
While the Omega Principle suggests that persistent cultural elements are adaptive, this does not imply they are inherently good or honorable [01:20:33]. Practices like war, slavery, and rape, though historically ubiquitous and adaptive, are recognized as “terrible blights on human history” [01:20:10]. The naturalistic fallacy — that what is ought to be — is rejected [01:20:52].
The hopeful message is that while some aspects of human nature or history may seem immutable, human behavior exhibits tremendous plasticity [01:20:58]. Humans are capable of changing what has been adaptive and can strive to be better going forward [01:21:38].
The Fourth Frontier: Proactive Cultural Design
Given the challenges of population growth, climate change, and global instability [01:23:34], a new approach is needed, termed the “fourth frontier” [01:26:29]. Unlike geographic or technological frontiers, or even resource transfer (theft) [01:26:02], this new frontier involves proactively understanding humanity and navigating societal complexities [01:26:37].
The goal is to move towards a future where humans can live “beautifully, productively, sustainably” [01:27:00], allowing individuals to discover and offer their unique contributions to the world with minimal reliance on luck [01:27:32]. This requires taking ownership of culture, moving from a backward-looking, “compiler-oriented” style to a proactive, forward-looking form [01:22:50] that can adapt to the hyper-novel environment [01:22:58].