Robin Hanson@robinhanson
Culture Change Causes Polls
Consider “cultural” aspects of human behavior, i.e., ones that are harder to evaluate and to change individually, like game theory equilibria, conformity, norms, sacred, aesthetics, meaning, coordination, and status markers. While all behavior has been changing faster for many centuries, at “modernism” ~1900 “cultural” aspects suddenly started changing much faster than before.
Here are 16 factors to help explain such culture changes:
Elite Youth Culture - Rise of high school and college, youth culture and movements; changes had to appeal to elite youths.
Lazy/Myopic/Selfish/Pleas - Revert to be more lazy, myopic, selfish, pleasure-oriented.
Forager Reversion - Revert to forager styles: more art, leisure, democracy, and equality, and less religion, fertility, and domination.
Individualism, Authentic - Rise in status of individualism, authenticity: think for yourself, follow your heart, be true to yourself.
Innovate, Explore, Create - Rise in status of innovation, exploration, creativity.
Abstract Concept, Reason - Rise in status of more abstract concepts and reasoning.
Rich, Safe, Trade/Talk - Stuff that appeals more to people who are richer and safer, with more/wider talk/travel/trade.
Merging Culture Appeal - Stuff accessible to and can appeal to the wide range of cultures merging in this period.
Fashion/Elite Displace - Rise in fashion as change process; changes must appeal to elites seeking to displace other elites.
Media/Word Legibile - Legibility of change symbols to spread via words and mass media.
Big Org/Inst. Codify - New stuff can be seen and codified by our new large orgs and institutions.
Sounds Good, Short-Run - Prefer stuff that sounds good and shows visible short-run gains.
Visible Sacrifice - Visible sacrifices show allegiance; we figure we value what we’ve seen recent big visible sacrifices for.
Lose Religion/Fragment - Loss of religion and traditions as core cultural glues induce fragmentation, divergence.
Low War/Internal Polarize - Less war and outside threats make more wealth inequality, stronger internal conflict, polarization.
Adapt Tech/Demography - Sensible adaptation to other behavior changes, not of culture type, eg, tech, demographic, and business practices.
The first 8 polls are about the years 1900-2025.
