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Social Capital Paradoxes

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[Credit for horizontally transmitting these ideas to my brain goes mostly to Jennifer RM, except for the bits at the end about Bowling Alone and The Moral Economy. Apologies to Jennifer for further horizontally spreading.] VERTICAL/HORIZONTAL TRANSMISSION The concept of vertical and horizontal transmission felt like a big upgrade in my ability to think about cooperative/noncooperative behavior in practice. The basic idea is to distinguish between symbiotes that are passed on primarily along genetic lines, vs symbiotes which are passed on primarily between unrelated organisms. A symbiote which is vertically transmitted is very likely to be helpful, whereas a symbiote which is horizontally transmitted is very likely to be harmful. (Remember that in biology, "symbiote" means any kind of close relationship between different organisms; symbiosis which is useful to both organisms is mutualistic, while symbiosis which is useful to one but harmful to another is parasitic.) (This is discussed here on LW in Martin Sustrik's Coordination Problems in Evolution.) We can obviously generalize this quite a bit. * Infectious diseases tend to be more deadly the higher their transmission rate is. (Diseases with a low transmission rate need to keep their hosts relatively healthy in order to make contact with other potential hosts.) * Memes which spread vertically are more likely to be beneficial to humans than memes which spread horizontally (at least, beneficial to those human's genes). Religions which are passed through family lines have an incentive to encourage big families, and include ideas which promote healthy, wealthy, sustainable living. Religions which spread primarily to unrelated people have a greater incentive to exploit those people, squeezing every last drop of proselytization out of them. * Long-term interactions between humans are more likely to be mutualistic, while short-term interactions are more likely to be predatory. * In genera

x Social Capital Paradoxes — LessWrong Social & Cultural Dynamics Paradoxes World Modeling World Optimization Frontpage 69 [ Question ] Social Capital Paradoxes by abramdemski 10th Sep 2020 5 min read A 10 24 69 [Credit for horizontally transmitting these ideas to my brain goes mostly to Jennifer RM, except for the bits at the end about Bowling Alone and The Moral Economy. Apologies to Jennifer for further horizontally spreading.] Vertical/Horizontal Transmission The concept of vertical and horizontal transmission felt like a big upgrade in my ability to think about cooperative/noncooperative

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