Success-biased social learning outperforms trial-and-error in complex tasks

Evidence

When ever the opportunities were made available, students readily used success-biased cultural learning to help design their arrowheads. When cultural information was available, it rapidly led the group to the optimal arrowhead design and was most effective in more complex, more realistic environments. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 158

Categorization

• XREF: Arrowhead design experiment parallels the reader’s framing of learning biases duplicating-but-outperforming individual learning under task complexity; relevant baseline for setting what conformist bias adds. — connects to: Complex behavior emerges from rewarding successive small approximations — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 660; Conformist transmission evolves robustly across far more conditions than heavy social learning does — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 65

Broader Connections

• Conformist transmission evolves robustly across far more conditions than heavy social learning does #complicates (0.75) — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 65
• Complex behavior emerges from rewarding successive small approximations #complicates (0.70) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 660