Once cultural knowledge accumulates, individuals cannot invent better traits than they can copy

Evidence

To see why there’s no turning back, imagine being a member of Generation 6 in figure 5.1 . Should you focus on inventing a new trait, or on making sure you accurately locate and copy those individuals with T**, T2, and T3? You might invent a good trait, as adaptive as T, but you’ll never invent something as good as the savannah hunting package of T** + T2 + T3. Thus, if you don’t focus on cultural learning, you will lose out to those who do. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 205

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the general selection logic for why conformist/adaptive copying of cumulative packages pays; relevant to baseline for the conformist-bias age question. — connects to: People increasingly rely on copying successful others as problems grow harder or more uncertain — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 155; Selective social learning yields group-level cultural accumulation beyond any individual’s knowledge — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 198; Cultural accumulation locks groups into local optima because traits are integrated (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural accumulation locks groups into local optima because traits are integrated #expands (0.82)
• Individual intelligence alone cannot sustain human survival without cumulative cultural knowledge #corroborates (0.80) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 135
• Individual intelligence results from culturally accumulated tools rather than raw brainpower #corroborates (0.78) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 53