Cultural Evolution 2: Thanks For The Meme-Rise

A follow-up synthesizing comment points on whether cultural evolution is real and strong enough to justify Chesterton's-Fence conservatism (keep traditions you can't explain). Scott lays out five mechanisms and their limits: (1) super-innovations let one culture overwhelm others (agriculture, industrialization) -- but only with huge fitness advantages, not generalizing to small beneficial tweaks; (2) differential fertility (the Amish outbreeding) -- but few historical examples without military conquest; (3) subcultures (Goths, hipsters) as faster-evolving smaller units -- but a modern phenomenon with no ancient cases of a subculture going dominant; (4) accretion of things that work -- but this requires intelligence to NOTICE what's working, otherwise it collapses back to ultra-slow intercultural selection (undermining the 'we don't know why we do this but should keep doing it' Chesterton's-Fence use); (5) deep-prehistory had time for cultural evolution -- but can we trust traits selected when 'how do we not get eaten by bears' was the issue? Conclusion: cultural evolution has potential but isn't a strong standalone argument for preserving inherited traits absent knowing why we want them. Careful and thoughtful, but a short comment-gleanings follow-up.

Quality 63 · Strong. Low-Strong (63): a careful, genuinely analytical treatment (the five-mechanism taxonomy plus a well-reasoned skeptical conclusion about cultural-evolution-as-Chesterton's-Fence-justification) that advances a real question. Held in the low-Strong band because it's short and a comment-synthesis follow-up rather than a developed standalone piece.

Claude’s paradigm shift 42 · Moderate. Moderate (42): the taxonomy of when cultural evolution can actually operate, and the skeptical conclusion about its load-bearing capacity for traditionalism, are a modest fresh contribution building on the prior post and its comments.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A careful five-mechanism taxonomy of cultural evolution and its limits as a Chesterton's-Fence justification; an analytical comment-synthesis within the discourse, no material reach → RWI 2.