The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines

Human societies are collective brains. People within every society have cultural brains—brains that have evolved to selectively seek out adaptive knowledge and socially transmit solutions. Innovations emerge at a population level through the transmission of serendipitous mistakes, incremental improvements and novel recombinations. The rate of innovation through these mechanisms is a function of (1) a society's size and interconnectedness (sociality), which affects the number of models available for learning; (2) fidelity of information transmission, which affects how much information is lost during social learning; and (3) cultural trait diversity, which affects the range of possible solutions available for recombination. In general, and perhaps surprisingly, all three levers can increase and harm innovation by creating challenges around coordination, conformity and communication. Here, we focus on the ‘paradox of diversity’—that cultural trait diversity offers the largest potential for empowering innovation, but also poses difficult challenges at both an organizational and societal level. We introduce ‘cultural evolvability’ as a framework for tackling these challenges, with implications for entrepreneurship, polarization and a nuanced understanding of the effects of diversity. This framework can guide researchers and practitioners in how to reap the benefits of diversity by reducing costs. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Paradox of diversity in the collective brain

Schimmelpfennig

Razek

Schnell

et al. 2021

“…The authors suggest that the introduction of completely novel material represents an upper limit to song learning, as an entire song must be rapidly learnt, not just a few new components. The increase in complexity during evolutionary periods has been interpreted by others [ 1 , 45 ] as anecdotal evidence for cumulative cultural evolution in humpback whales. These authors suggest that an increase in complexity illustrates the collective contributions of different animals’ innovations to cumulative culture change [ 45 ], by linking individual embellishment with complexity, despite [ 55 ] suggesting caution in such an interpretation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The increase in complexity during evolutionary periods has been interpreted by others [ 1 , 45 ] as anecdotal evidence for cumulative cultural evolution in humpback whales. These authors suggest that an increase in complexity illustrates the collective contributions of different animals’ innovations to cumulative culture change [ 45 ], by linking individual embellishment with complexity, despite [ 55 ] suggesting caution in such an interpretation. Finally, the building blocks to allow for cumulative cultural evolution in birdsong are explored by [ 56 ]; the structural components they identify (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Given the historical debate surrounding cumulative cultural evolution (where reports of cumulative culture in animals are refuted as subjective, circumstantial, or ‘simple’ [ 28 , 45 ]), a set of core and extended criteria were suggested by [ 27 ] to allow evaluation of the phenomenon regardless of the species (human or otherwise) involved. The four core criteria include [ 27 ]: Introduction of behavioural variation through either the modification of an existing behaviour or emergence of an entirely new behaviour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

When does cultural evolution become cumulative culture? A case study of humpback whale song

Garland

Garrigue

Noad

2021

Self Cite

Culture presents a second inheritance system by which innovations can be transmitted between generations and among individuals. Some vocal behaviours present compelling examples of cultural evolution. Where modifications accumulate over time, such a process can become cumulative cultural evolution. The existence of cumulative cultural evolution in non-human animals is controversial. When physical products of such a process do not exist, modifications may not be clearly visible over time. Here, we investigate whether the constantly evolving songs of humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) are indicative of cumulative cultural evolution. Using nine years of song data recorded from the New Caledonian humpback whale population, we quantified song evolution and complexity, and formally evaluated this process in light of criteria for cumulative cultural evolution. Song accumulates changes shown by an increase in complexity, but this process is punctuated by rapid loss of song material. While such changes tentatively satisfy the core criteria for cumulative cultural evolution, this claim hinges on the assumption that novel songs are preferred by females. While parsimonious, until such time as studies can link fitness benefits (reproductive success) to individual singers, any claims that humpback whale song evolution represents a form of cumulative cultural evolution may remain open to interpretation. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

“…The phenomenon is thus inherently a collective one, insofar as a learner is influenced not by any single individual, but instead exploits the accumulated knowledge consolidated in ‘majority opinion’ expressed in their social world. Conformity can thus be regarded as a counterpart in social learning to collective decision-making in animal groups [ 29 , 30 ], such as when a swarm of bees opts for a particular new hive location once a majority are preferring to fly back and forth to it, sometimes described as ‘bee democracy’ [ 31 ]. Our recent studies suggest new twists in the way conformity operates among chimpanzees [ 32 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective knowledge and the dynamics of culture in chimpanzees

Whiten

Harrison

McGuigan

et al. 2021

Self Cite

Social learning in non-human primates has been studied experimentally for over 120 years, yet until the present century this was limited to what one individual learns from a single other. Evidence of group-wide traditions in the wild then highlighted the collective context for social learning, and broader ‘diffusion experiments’ have since demonstrated transmission at the community level. In the present article, we describe and set in comparative perspective three strands of our recent research that further explore the collective dimensions of culture and cumulative culture in chimpanzees. First, exposing small communities of chimpanzees to contexts incorporating increasingly challenging, but more rewarding tool use opportunities revealed solutions arising through the combination of different individuals' discoveries, spreading to become shared innovations. The second series of experiments yielded evidence of conformist changes from habitual techniques to alternatives displayed by a unanimous majority of others but implicating a form of quorum decision-making. Third, we found that between-group differences in social tolerance were associated with differential success in developing more complex tool use to exploit an increasingly inaccessible resource. We discuss the implications of this array of findings in the wider context of related studies of humans, other primates and non-primate species. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.