Saturday, August 25, 2018

Multi-level selection and Cultural Evolution

I recently had the chance to learn of a new theoretical model on Evolution called multi-level selection. I will try to describe it and provide my first impressions on the different interpretations / uses of that theory from the community and its rejection from mainstream social sciences.
( I wanted to make a more thorough research on the subject, but currently it is not possible.)

Now, the main idea of multi level selection is very simple but this simple idea has profound implications for our society. It goes against mainstream theories that were built to support the premises of Capitalism, basically, the notion of the individual selfish actor. Social sciences have thus been victims of the system they belong to.

Let us first describe the mainstream mechanism of Evolution.

A. The actor is an individual organism to whom we attach a fitness function with which we measure its ability to survive.

B. We perform a simulation and then compute the fitness results with which we remove actors that have not performed well. This could mean for example that those actors have not been able to acquire enough food to survive.

C. We introduce random mutations that change the behavior of actors.

D. We perform the above multiple times.

We assume that natural selection works in the same way. Actors that have favorable mutations increase in number while others perish.

The important thing to note is A. The fitness function applies on the individual. This means that behaviors that increase the fitness of the individual are the ones selected. This leads us to conclude that only selfish behaviors are evolutionary selected.

This is consistent with the mainstream economic theory of an actor that is super rational and selfish. Since it is on our nature to be selfish, any other  theory that does not conceive the individual as the actor leads to failure.

Consider the case where we have a common piece of land where everyone can herd his sheep. Since the amount of grass is limited, it is best for each individually to overgraze his sheep. This eventually leads to the destruction of the land, not providing grass to anyone and the whole economy around it collapses. It is because of this that it has been suggested that individual property is the only way to govern resources.

Now, this is not true. Let us start with genetic evolution before switching to cultural evolution. Random mutations can propose any form of behavior, and it is selection that promotes those that increase survivability. Consider then the case that a specific mutation leads to an increase in the fitness of another organism whose behavior also increases the fitness function of the other. An increase of of the population of one organism leads to an increase of the other and vice versa. This is an example of a selection process that promotes a non-selfish behavior.

Mainstream evolutionary scientists will tell you that this is reciprocity, thus this only proves the selfishness of the individual actor. Note though that this is incorrect. Organisms do not necessarily have the capacity to judge actions. A selfish action here is defined as an action that directly increases the fitness of itself.

Multi-level selection thus proposes that a specific number of individual actors interact in such a way that their survivability depends on other. In such a case, we could consider the group as an actor that behaves in a specific way and which has its own fitness function. Individual mutations that increase the fitness of the group are thus selected while those that that do the opposite perish because the group perishes.

This formulation of evolutionary theory allows the existence of altruism, something that obviously exist in Human Society.

If we now return our gaze into culture , we will see that the main ideas of multi-level evolution also apply here. Elinor Ostrom's work is important here. Elinor studied communities whose livelihood depended on a common pool of resources like the one I described before. She found that depending on the case , the members created rules to govern the common resource. They imposed restrictions on its use and they checked that each member behaved accordingly. Some groups were more effective than others. This lead to an evolution of the rules of governance based on a group fitness function.

Let me now link the above ideas with my work. It is only recently that I learned about multi-level selection but it is directly related to what I am searching.

In essence, I am searching for a digital language that describes the rules of a group / community , that will have the same functionality as the DNA in organisms.

A. The DNA is interpreted so as to determine the structure of proteins
    This language will be compiled to create communication tools that permit the behaviors that the rules allow.
B. DNA can be copied and transfered into another organism.
     The digitization of the rules will permit a group to copy the institutional rules of another without any errors.
C.  DNA contains information about the organism that is subject to the effects of evolution.
      Similarly, each group will be able to mutate its rules and will be subject to a fitness function.

What I hope with this is that the complexity of the rules of community institutions will increase to the point that their effectiveness will surpass that of the state or the undemocratic corporations.
This digital language is hoped to increase the speed of the cultural evolution of institutions.

Unfortunately for me, the rules describe the concurrent interactions of agents and there isn't any widely accepted theory around distributed concurrent execution.
Thus my main research is on Computer Science rather than on Social Sciences.

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