As wealth and frictionless communication unify societies, macro-level cultural evolution loses the selection pressures that once filtered maladaptive norms. Rapid, activist-led shifts become random relative to survival needs, pushing societies into a 'decay mode' despite technological progress. Resistant subcultures may preserve adaptive traits through the decline.
— It reframes globalization and activist-driven change as potential sources of civilizational fragility rather than automatic progress.
Robin Hanson
2025.09.25
70% relevant
Hanson explicitly treats today’s world as a single integrated civilization and invokes his prior 'cultural drift' reasoning to argue global integration raises collapse risk; this echoes the 'monoculture → fragility/decay' thesis by linking worldwide cultural unification to systemic decline.
Kristen French
2025.09.17
50% relevant
Both pieces center culture’s evolutionary role. Waring and Wood argue culture now 'eats genetic evolution for breakfast,' while the existing idea warns global monoculture weakens cultural selection pressures. Together they frame a debate over whether culture’s dominance enhances or degrades adaptive evolution.
Robin Hanson
2025.09.09
90% relevant
Hanson argues a global elite monoculture plus frequent youth‑led activism drives fast, non‑adaptive cultural change—one of four 'parameters' he says have gone bad—closely echoing the existing thesis that activist‑led shifts become random relative to survival needs in a unified culture.
Matthew Gasda
2025.08.20
75% relevant
The article argues 'tradition has been replaced by representation' and that five‑second clips and algorithmic identities now shape male norms, echoing the idea that homogenizing media weaken adaptive cultural selection and drive societal drift.
Robin Hanson
2025.08.20
85% relevant
Hanson claims modern civilization has 'broken' cultural evolution at the whole‑culture level and that small insular high‑fertility subcultures will replace the mainstream—echoing the argument that unified monoculture erodes adaptive selection.
Robin Hanson
2025.08.04
100% relevant
The article argues that 'hundreds of thousands of peasant cultures have merged into a monoculture' and cites the Amish and Haredim as potential lifeboats.