One argument for the ecological approach to culture I wish the authors had made: it has an established track record in economics, which explains “culture” (markets, institutions) by appeal to individual decision-making under incentives, and not by cultural variants replicating.

@DavidPinsof I just don’t see the contradiction here. People have different incentives depending on which institutions there are

@hanno_sauer It’s not so much a contradiction as it is an example of an approach to “culture,” continuous with the ecological approach, being more useful, predictive, and explanatory than the dual inheritance approach. Implying dual inheritance is unnecessary/overrated.

@DavidPinsof Again, I don’t get this. Seems compatible to me! What’s a city? I would say that’s a separate kind of inheritance

@hanno_sauer Yea agreed that some of the debate is just semantics. But the more substantive part of the debate is whether we should view cultural variants as having interests or being beneficiaries of behavior. And I’m not sure we should (instead of just considering individuals + incentives).

@DavidPinsof Need to look into this more. I’m quite sympathetic to the Californians — cumulative culture, imitation and copying, opacity of culture, gene/culture coevolution etc