Rob Boyd & Pete Richerson - Cultural Evolution, Human Brain Increases, AGI, & Fertility Declines
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson are anthropologists based in America. Their partnership was central to the development of Dual-Inheritance Theory, a framework that applies Darwinian evolution to culture and explains how genes and culture have intertwined to shape our species.
This is their first ever joint interview.
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TIMESTAMPS
(00:00:49) - How likely is it that cumulative cultural evolution actually began with australopithecines?
(00:20:26) - By when was cumulative cultural evolution achieved among Homo?
(00:23:31) - Rob and Pete explain (1) cultural evolution, (2) cumulative cultural evolution, and (3) gene-culture coevolution.
(00:31:57) - "Culture, not natural selection, has been the main force shaping human genetic evolution for the last 1-2 million years." How do we know this?
(00:37:00) - Examples of gene-culture coevolution.
(00:43:05) - The chaotic climate of the Pleistocene (2.6 million - 11,700 years ago).
(00:48:26) - How did Pete and Rob know the climate was so variable in the Pleistocene?
(00:51:51) - Culture was an adaptation to Pleistocene climate variation.
(00:58:52) - How Pete and Rob came up with their explanation for how cultural brains evolved (as an adaptation to climate variation).
(01:02:16) - Increasing climate variation may actually have been driving brain size increases on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
(01:08:14) - Earth's climate variation was probably driven by its orbital perturbations, caused by Jupiter's gravitational pull, and mediated by the Earth's oceans and atmosphere.
(01:13:34) - How contingent was the evolution of cultural brains?
(01:22:46) - Has human brain size been shrinking over the last 10,000 years?
(01:27:50) - Will technologies that obviate natural birth mean that human brain size (relieved of the constraint of the birth canal) resume their trend of large increases, or has cumulative culture reduced the selection pressure on brain size?
(01:34:18) - How cultural evolution explains the fertility crisis.
(01:43:19) - Which specific force of cultural evolution is the biggest cause of declining fertility?
(02:02:13) - If global population peaks and then shrinks, say by mid century, how do we sustain a technologically advanced civilisation?
(02:09:10) - Does Rob and Pete's understanding of how human intelligence evolved give them any unique insights into how artificial intelligence might be grown?
(02:14:57) - How do Rob and Pete think about their partnership, and what makes scientific dyads so productive?
Was shocked to learn this was Pete and Rob's first ever joint interview, and glad I could bring them together for it (all of us had to travel to make it happen!).
Their work is super underrated outside of their field, yet it provides one of the most powerful frameworks I've yet found for explaining so much of humanity's trajectory.
Hope you all enjoy!
Joe
Epic mate, great job.
🙏
Where is the interview recorded? It looks like the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco.
correct! mentioned in the text overlay at the very start :)
Cool! How did you end up there?