How communities evolve

This week, I dabbled into cultural transmission—broadly, how a community learns. I find the subject quite fascinating. If you don‘t mind, let me blather on that subject a bit.

First, why is cultural learning important to us? Well, it is an efficient shortcut process that helps individuals get up to speed with their surroundings with minimal time and effort. Just think about every little thing we do daily to conform to our community. We put on faces according to our emotions. We frown, smile, open our mouths in shock. We don‘t take time to agree on what face we should do for every situation with anyone, yet we are understood by all. These are social cues - behaviours we intuitively adopt. Social cues are varied and many. Why we cross our arms, how we use eye contact, what posture we adopt - they are all social cues. But, according to Tomasello‘s work, social cues are not limited to humans and not to primates either. Ants learn the path to the colony through similar “social“ cues (using pheromones in their case). Birds learn their bird song by hearing their parents. Rats eat only what their parents eat. Children learn to speak like their parents. Cultural learning came about naturally through evolution and is in reality an important part of it.

Yet, we differ from other animals. Broadly speaking, humans are cultural learner experts. This has led us to a critical phenomenon: cumulative cultural evolution. We can not only create new cultural behaviours but also transmit them faithfully and for a long time. It is that latter aspect that many other animals struggle with. They can create new behaviors (think about sheep learning to roll over barble fences or monkeys learning to use tools) but they rarely transmit it to their peers and, even if they do, not too many and not for a long time. At least, not long enough for it to stick just enough for the next evolution to merge with it. Humans for their part can share new behavior quickly and efficiently. So, when the next innovation comes about, it can both be shared and added to previous innovations. That is cumulative cultural evolution - our secret weapon. Innovation and imitation are two sides of the same coin.

I need to stress just how optimized for that process we are. We do it ALL the time (subconsciously) and can even juggle multiple different behaviours adapted to different groups. How we talk, how we act, how we think changes intuitively whether we are with friends, colleagues or family. That cultural learning process is ingrained so deep that we can even do it in our sleep. Even babies do it from (almost) the day of their birth. We digest and internalize social cues we see and shape our behaviour to it. When we see someone “apparently“ sad, we will feel sad even without talking. Our senses are fine-tuned for it. Next time you talk to someone fix your gaze on their mouth. You will quickly realize that every single word becomes clearer. Remember that we can also read words just by knowing their length, their first letter and last letter.

But we differ mentally in other ways with even our closest relatives (primates). One such difference touched on by Tomasello I find fascinating is our ability to “understand others as intentional agents“. This is something we learn around the age of one - others around us can think differently than us, have different goals, in a word: BE different from us. Primates can understand some basic relationships - like mother-child relations - but not much else. The missing puzzle piece for them is understanding the intentions of others. This is a difference more crucial than you might realize. To better picture it, here are a few examples of behaviours humans do naturally that primates would never do intuitively: point to others, hold an object to show it to someone, bring someone to see something, offer things to others and, most importantly, teach things to others. Sure, some primates can mimic such behaviours in a lab with Pavlovian training but it is hard and definitely not made on its own accord. Every single human child does so continuously.

This is the core of our cognition and induction. Our main strength.

It also explains some other behaviours ubiquitous to human societies. Since we understand that there are intentions outside of us, we needlessly look out for them - even when they don‘t exist. In that way, we can associate intentionality to animals, elements and the World itself largely outside of their own capacity for it. This, I suspect, explains in part our native curiosity but also our innate sense for myths, legends and religion.

Much of cumulative cultural evolution is shared by all humans, but the details of it vary from one society to the next. The most obvious way it does is with language. Some other aspects are universal but their depth and breadth aren‘t. This is the case for mathematics. Some cultures have complex mathematical systems (with algebra, various numerical systems and surreal numbers) others limit themselves to quite basic numerical counting. In that way, Tomasello found evidence that mathematics is innate to us, but not our modern system of it. Probably related to differences in the needs and resources of individuals and their societies. After all, necessity is the mother of all invention. Food for thought.

Ok: that‘s enough gibberish for a day. Hope it was at least a bit comprehensible and inspiring. In any case, have a great and fulfilling day.

See you next time.

References

The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, Michael Tomasello, 1999, Harvard University Press.