for - article - The End of Scarcity? From ‘Polycrisis’ to Planetary Phase Shift - Nafeez Ahmed - gene-culture coevolution - adjacency - indyweb dev - individual / collective evolutionary learning - provenance - tracing the evolution of ideas - gene-culture coevolution

adjacency - between - indyweb dev - individual / collective evolutionary learning - provenance - tracing the evolution of ideas - gene-culture coevolution - adjacency relationship - As DNA and epigenetics plays the role of transmitting biological adaptations, language and symmathesy play the role of transmitting cultural adaptations

• for: cultural evolution, cultural evolution - Bruce Hood, cumulative cultural evolution, CCE, gene-culture coevolution

• paraphrase

  • Our evolving technology allowed us to expand into new territories and manipulate the environment in ways that gave us an edge.
  • Places like this remind me about how harsh nature can be.
  • We're so used to living in air conditioning, and having the comfort of the modern world, but when you go out into nature and experience it first hand, you're reminded very powerfully about how weak we are as an animal.
  • And this is because we are fundamentally a cultural species.
  • Culture is our life support system.
  • Our cumulative culture allows us to
    • cushion ourselves against the harsh realities of the environment and to
    • reshape the environment.

• for: for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power, gene culture coevolution
• key finding
  • paraphrase
    • In AET,
      • multi-level selection acting on the genome and
      • occurring in concert with selective and non-selective mechanisms acting on culture and technology
    • results in a species that is prone to
      • niche construction and
      • ecosystem engineering,
    • and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises.
    • This increasing scale
      • coupled with human propensity for niche construction
    • leads to human unsustainability

• for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power
• paraphrase
  • to Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection
    • from the individual level
    • to the group level.
  • Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt
    • driven by the imperative to produce surplus

• for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

• Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

• Author: Brian F. Snyder

• Abstract

• Summary
• Paraphrase
  • Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
  • While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
    • climate change,
    • biodiversity loss,
    • population growth
  • the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
  • Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
    • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
  • Here, we integrate this theory with
    • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
  • and propose a model linking
    • energy extraction from the environment with
    • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
  • to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
  • Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
    • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
    • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
  • These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
  • in all species,
  • but in humans, they are also determined by
    • technology and
    • culture.
  • If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
    • the ability of an individual or social group
  • to increase its carrying capacity,
  • then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
  • Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
    • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.

Best known example of gene-culture coevolution - co-evolution of pastoralism and lactose intolerance - the adoption of dairying set up a modified niche - in which the ability to digest lactose into adulthood was an advantage. - ancestors who were lactose tolerant could take advantage of a new source of calories. - Hence it is the learned acquisition of dairying which explains the natural selection of genes favoring lactase persistence, - the continued production of the enzyme lactase beyond weaning - Dual inheritance theory (Gene-culture coevolution) typically uses this example to explain - Dairying is inherited via a cultural channel - lactase persistence is inherited via a genetic channel - Recent supporters of this also make recent claims that it is not possible to distinguish between - what is biological from what is cultural

It has been suggested that - the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI).

there is disagreement about - how to apply the ETI framework to our species - and whether culture is implicated - as either cause or consequence.

Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) i- s - also poorly understood.

argued that - culture steers human evolution,

Others proposed - genes hold culture on a leash.

After review of the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans - emerge a set of common themes. - First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance - and is probably driving human evolution. - The evolutionary impact of culture occurs - mainly through culturally organized groups, - which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. - Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, - increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential. -Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by - an evolutionary transition in inheritance - from genes to culture - which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Research on GCC should focus on the possibility of - an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

• Title: Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality
• Author: Herbert Gintis

//Abstract - Summary - Human characteristics are the product of gene–culture coevolution, - which is an evolutionary dynamic involving the interaction of genes and culture - over long time periods. - Gene–culture coevolution is a special case of niche construction. - Gene–culture coevolution is responsible for: - human other-regarding preferences, - a taste for fairness, - the capacity to empathize and - salience of morality and character virtues.

• Title: Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus
• Author:
  • Jeremy Kendal
  • Jamshid J. Tehrani
  • John Oding-Smee
• Abstract
  • summary
  • Niche construction is an endogenous causal process in evolution,
• reciprocal to the causal process of natural selection.
  • It works by adding ecological inheritance,
  • comprising the inheritance of natural selection pressures previously modified by niche construction,
  • to genetic inheritance in evolution.
  • Human niche construction modifies selection pressures in environments in ways that affect both human evolution, and the evolution of other species.
  • Human ecological inheritance is exceptionally potent
  • because it includes the social transmission and inheritance
  • of cultural knowledge, and material culture.
  • Human genetic inheritance
  • in combination with human cultural inheritance
  • thus provides a basis for gene–culture coevolution,
  • and multivariate dynamics in cultural evolution.
  • Niche construction theory potentially integrates the biological and social aspects of the human sciences.
  • We elaborate on these processes,
  • and provide brief introductions to each of the papers published in this theme issue.

!- conclusion : GCC - very important finding - nobody knows the implications of such a profound shift - it means we are profoundly dependent on culture, on artificial human-created adaptations for our survival !- in other words : GCC - we no longer genetically evolve to adapt, but rather cognitive create solutions to adapt!

!- Question : Genetic Evolution

Does this mean that our predominantly cultural evolution threatens to freeze our genetic evolution? This is possible, since genetic evolution takes place on time scales that are orders of magnitudes larger than cultural evolution Unless theoretically proposed, it may have escaped detection for a long time

!- for : Cultural Evolution - the findings of this paper point to culture is displacing genetic adaptive potential as the main driver of evolution. This is a very profound finding!

The Palette of Being is a very useful idea that is related to Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE) and autopoiesis. From CCE, humans are able to pass on new ideas from one generation to the next, made possible by the tool of inscribed language.

Peter Nonacs group at UCLA as well as Stuart West at Oxford research Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET) West elucidates that modern hominids integrate the remnants of four major stages of MET that have occurred over deep time. Amanda Robins, a researcher in Nonacs group posits the idea that our species of modern hominids are undergoing a Major Systems Transition (MST), due specifically to our development of inscribed language.

CCE emerges new technologies that shape our human environments in time frames far faster than biological evolutionary timeframes. New human experiences are created which have never been exposed to human brains before, which feedback to affect our biological evolution as well in the process of gene-culture coevolution (GCC), also known as Dual Inheritance theory. In this way, CCE and GCC are entangled. "Gene–culture coevolution is the application of niche-construction reasoning to the human species, recognizing that both genes and culture are subject to similar dynamics, and human society is a cultural construction that provides the environment for fitness-enhancing genetic changes in individuals. The resulting social system is a complex dynamic nonlinear system. " (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048999/)

This metaphor of experiences constituting different colors on a Palette of Being is a powerful one that can contextualize human experiences from a deep time framework. One could argue that language usage automatically forces us into an anthropomorphic lens, for sophisticated language usage at the level of humans appears to be unique amongst our species. Within that constraint, the Palette of Being still provides us with a less myopic, less immediate and arguably less anthropomorphic view of human experience. It is philosophically problematic, however, in the sense that we can speculate about nonhuman modalities of being but never truly experience them. Philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote his classic paper "What it's like to be a bat" to illustrate this problem of experiencing the other. (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf)

We can also leverage the Palette of Being in education. Deep Humanity (DH) BEing Journeys are a new kind of experiential, participatory contemplative practice and teaching tool designed to deepen our appreciation of what it is to be human. The polycrisis of the Anthropocene, especially the self-induced climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have precipitated the erosion of stable social norms and reference frames, inducing another crisis, a meaning crisis. In this context, a re-education of embodied philosophy is seen as urgent to make sense of a radically shifting human reality.

Different human experiences presented as different colors of the Palette of Being situate our crisis in a larger context. One important Deep Humanity BEing journey that can help contextualize and make sense of our experiences is language. Once upon a time, language did not exist. As it gradually emerged, this color came to be added to our Palette of Being, and shaped the normative experiences of humanity in profound ways. It is the case that such profound shifts, lost over deep time come to be taken for granted by modern conspecifics. When such particular colors of the Palette of Being are not situated in deep time, and crisis ensues, that loss of contextualizing and situatedness can be quite disruptive, de-centering, confusing and alienating.

Being aware of the colors in the Palette can help us shed light on the amazing aspects that culture has invisibly transmitted to us, helping us not take them for granted, and re-establish a sense of awe about our lives as human beings.