When you’re uncertain which values best support long‑run success, treat the survival of traditions as evidence of adaptive fitness and be cautious about dismantling them. Pursuing moral ideals that reduce group adaptiveness can select your values out of the future.
— This reframes culture‑war reforms by imposing an evolutionary and demographic constraint—moral change must pass the survival test, not just the righteousness test.
Kristin McTiernan
2026.01.09
81% relevant
The author’s defense of Victorian customs as protective boundaries mirrors the existing idea that longstanding cultural practices can be adaptive and should not be dismissed by present‑day moralizing; the article uses historical norms (mourning dress, introductions) as evidence that tradition can solve coordination problems.
κρῠπτός
2026.01.08
48% relevant
Banica’s Eliade conversation—questioning casual acceptance of 'history' and elevating myth/tradition—relates to the idea that surviving traditions can be read as adaptive signals; the podcast reframes how we should treat traditions and historical narratives when crafting public policy and civic education.
Bradley J. Birzer
2026.01.06
72% relevant
The review highlights Nisbet’s argument that community and traditional institutions have functional adaptive value—i.e., norms and local institutions are historically contingent guards of social order—echoing the idea that surviving traditions often encode adaptive social information.
Alan Schmidt
2026.01.05
72% relevant
The piece defends an older coaching philosophy (smash‑mouth football, emphasis on brute conditioning and fundamentals) as adaptive and valuable despite critics; that echoes the existing idea that traditions can function as preserved, adaptive practices rather than mere superstition, and that dismantling them can have unintended consequences for social cohesion and capability.
Aris Roussinos
2026.01.03
60% relevant
The essay treats Arthurian myth and the Land as adaptive cultural resources that provide solace and cohesion in crisis—echoing the prior idea that surviving traditions encode functional social information and so are politically consequential rather than merely quaint.
Vincent Li
2025.12.01
80% relevant
The article cites Han Fei’s explicit rejection of Confucian appeals to a golden past and his claim that ‘past and present have different customs,’ which directly maps to the existing idea that surviving traditions should be treated as evidence of adaptive fitness rather than as moral exemplars—Han Fei offers an ancient, proto‑empirical statement of that heuristic for governance.
Robin Hanson
2025.10.10
100% relevant
Hanson’s claim: 'practices existing is more evidence that they are adaptive' and that ignoring adaptiveness means 'your descendants may just disappear.'