Cultural selection drives the evolution of human communication systems

Human communication systems evolve culturally, but the evolutionary mechanisms that drive this evolution are not well understood. Against a baseline that communication variants spread in a population following neutral evolutionary dynamics (also known as drift models), we tested the role of two cultural selection models: coordination- and content-biased. We constructed a parametrized mixed probabilistic model of the spread of communicative variants in four 8-person laboratory micro-societies engaged in a simple communication game. We found that selectionist models, working in combination, explain the majority of the empirical data. The best-fitting parameter setting includes an egocentric bias and a content bias, suggesting that participants retained their own previously used communicative variants unless they encountered a superior (content-biased) variant, in which case it was adopted. This novel pattern of results suggests that (i) a theory of the cultural evolution of human communication systems must integrate selectionist models and (ii) human communication systems are functionally adaptive complex systems

Convergence science in the Anthropocene: Navigating the known and unknown

Rapidly changing ecological and social systems currently pose significant societal challenges. Navigating the complexity of social-ecological change requires ap- proaches able to cope with, and potentially solve, both foreseen and unforeseen societal challenges. The emergent field of convergence addresses the intricacies of such challenges, and is thus relevant to a broad range of interdisciplinary issues. This paper suggests a way to conceptualize convergence research. It discusses how it relates to two major societal challenges (adaptation, transformation), and to the generation of policy-relevant science. It also points out limitations to the further development of convergence research

Multi-level evolution in population games

In this paper, we analyze a generalization of the evolutionary model of Kandori, Mailath, & Rob (1993) where the population is partitioned into groups and evolution takes place "in parallel" at the following two levels: (i) within groups, at the lower level; among groups, at the higher one. Unlike in their context, efficiency considerations always overcome those of risk-dominance in the process of selecting the long-run equilibrium. This provides an explicitly dynamic basis for a conclusion reminiscent of those put forward in the biological literature by the so-called theories group selection. From a normative viewpoint, it suggests the potential importance of "decentralization", here understood as local and independent interaction