Cultural Evolution of Practices
Useful practices can spread because groups imitate whoever thrives, even when neither group understands what caused the advantage. Selection preserves the successful bundle—effective behavior mixed with accidental ritual—before theory can separate the two.
A tribe begins doing something random. By chance, that behavior helps it prosper. Its neighbours do not need an explanation: they see the thriving tribe and copy what it does.
E1Success selects before understanding does
The moving parts are variation, unequal outcomes, and imitation. Groups develop different practices, some deliberately and some accidentally. When one group becomes visibly more successful, others copy its behaviour; repetition then carries the practice forward as culture. In this way, survival can preserve useful knowledge without anyone possessing a causal theory of why it works—a process extended by Culture as Accumulated Imitation.
E1The whole bundle gets copied
Visible success does not reveal which behaviour produced it. Imitators may preserve the useful practice, irrelevant habits, and pure superstition together. Cultural persistence is therefore evidence that something survived a selection process, not proof that every inherited detail is functional.
E1Test the bundle before cutting it apart
When an inherited practice looks irrational, identify the successful group or outcome that once made it worth copying, then vary one component at a time. That lets you search for the hidden function without treating the entire ritual as either sacred truth or disposable noise.
E1Episodes that teach this
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Why Superstition is Smarter Than Science - Chesterton’s Fence Explained - Future IQ
· explained at 5:52
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"Imagine two tribes... the random thing this tribe starts doing... is doing something good. Over a long enough period... this tribe just looks more and more successful and so this tribe copies."