Related papers: Cultural commons and cultural evolution
Collective cooperation drives the dynamics of many natural, social, and economic phenomena, making understanding the evolution of cooperation with evolutionary game theory a central question of modern science. Although human interactions…
This brief discusses evolutionary game theory as a powerful and unified mathematical tool to study evolution of collective behaviours. It summarises some of my recent research directions using evolutionary game theory methods, which include…
Axelrod's model for culture dissemination offers a nontrivial answer to the question of why there is cultural diversity given that people's beliefs have a tendency to become more similar to each other's as people interact repeatedly. The…
There is surely some truth to the notion that culture evolves, but the Darwinian view of culture is trivial. Gabora does two things in this paper. First, she levels a reasoned and devastating attack on the adequacy of a Darwinian theory of…
The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of…
Cultural algorithm is a kind of evolutionary algorithm inspired from societal evolution and is composed of a belief space, a population space and a protocol that enables exchange of knowledge between these sources. Knowledge created in the…
Although definitions of technology exist to explain the patterns of technological innovations, there is no general definition that explain the role of technology for humans and other animal species in environment. The goal of this study is…
Intelligent machines with superhuman capabilities have the potential to uncover problem-solving strategies beyond human discovery. Emerging evidence from competitive gameplay, such as Go and chess, demonstrates that AI systems are evolving…
Substantial empirical research has shown that the level of individualism vs. collectivism is one of the most critical and important determinants of societal traits, such as economic growth, economic institutions and health conditions. But…
We present an individual based model of cultural evolution, where interacting agents are coded by binary strings standing for strategies for action, blueprints for products or attitudes and beliefs. The model is patterned on an established…
Whether or not to change strategy depends not only on the personal success of each individual, but also on the success of others. Using this as motivation, we study the evolution of cooperation in games that describe social dilemmas, where…
Can we describe social systems quantitatively and predictively, when we know all the actions, interactions, and states of individuals? We interpret human societies as co-evolutionary systems of individuals and their interactions. Based on…
Organisms from microbes to humans engage in a variety of social behaviors, which affect fitness in complex, often nonlinear ways. The question of how these behaviors evolve has consequences ranging from antibiotic resistance to human…
An evolving population, in which individual members (`agents') adapt their behaviour according to past experience, is of central importance to many disciplines. Because of their limited knowledge and capabilities, agents are forced to make…
Language is a powerful communicative and cognitive tool. It enables humans to express thoughts, share intentions, and reason about complex phenomena. Despite our fluency in using and understanding language, the question of how it arises and…
EVOC is a computer model of the EVOlution of Culture. It consists of neural network based agents that invent ideas for actions, and imitate neighbors' actions. EVOC replicates using a different fitness function the results obtained with an…
Addressing both natural and societal challenges requires collective cooperation. Studies on collective-risk social dilemmas have shown that individual decisions are influenced by the perceived risk of collective failure. However, existing…
Predicting the future direction of community evolution is a problem with high theoretical and practical significance. It allows to determine which characteristics describing communities have importance from the point of view of their future…
Computational modelling with multi-agent systems is becoming an important technique of studying language evolution. We present a brief introduction into this rapidly developing field, as well as our own contributions that include an…
Many species engage in acts that could be called creative. However, human creativity is unique in that it has transformed our planet. Given that the anatomy of the human brain is not so different from that of the great apes, what enables us…