Abstract

The striking characteristic of modern humanity is the extent of our accumulated culture. From cities to agriculture to pollution to IQ, the rapid development of culture-borne capacities is apparently unprecedented in evolution, and to some seems inexplicable. In the first part of this talk, I argue that taking a computational perspective can help us understand the biological tradeoffs leading to the diversity of cognitive and cultural approaches we see in nature, including humanity. In the second part of the talk I focus on two extremes of this diversity, bacteria and humans, in order to explain cultural variation (by global region) in a strange human social behaviour – the costly punishment of those who contribute to the public good. Both parts of the talk present computational models as well as reviewing cross-species empirical data.