Faith in cultural inheritance improves survival only in cumulative-culture species

Evidence

As shown above, dropping seemingly unnecessary steps from one’s cultural repertoire can result in neurological disorders, paralysis, pellagra, reduced hunting success, pregnancy problems, and death. In a species with cumulative cultural evolution, but only in such a species, faith in one’s cultural inheritance often favors greater survival and reproduction. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 358

Crucial to making cultural adaptations like manioc, corn, or nardoo processing work is not only faithfully copying all the steps, but also sometimes actually avoiding putting much emphasis on causal understandings that one might build on the fly, on one’s own. As shown above, dropping seemingly unnecessary steps from one’s cultural repertoire can result in neurological disorders, paralysis, pellagra, reduced hunting success, pregnancy problems, and death. In a species with cumulative cultural evolution, but only in such a species, faith in one’s cultural inheritance often favors greater survival and reproduction. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 359

Categorization

• XREF: The cost of omitting ritual steps echoes the anti-fragility of sacred/protocol traditions discussed in sacrifice literature (Dido, sati, Ibn Fadlan), where fidelity to inherited form — not function — carries real survival weight. — connects to: Cumulative cultural adaptations cannot be improvised by individuals in years.; Larger interconnected populations counteract the inherent lossiness of cultural copying — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 715; The last common ancestor with chimpanzees had no cumulative culture — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 918 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that willful ignorance of causal mechanisms is selected FOR in a culturally evolving species is a dense, counterintuitive inversion of the usual ‘knowledge is power’ framing, worth sitting with.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 358; Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 359

Broader Connections

• Larger interconnected populations counteract the inherent lossiness of cultural copying #expands (0.78) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 715