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Wealth, Reason Weaken Culture - by Robin Hanson

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What could cause rich healthy peaceful societies like ours to so consistently become “decadent”?

What could cause rich healthy peaceful societies like ours to so consistently become “decadent”? The answer may lie in how DNA and cultural evolution differ. Humans pioneered cultural evolution, which is what has allowed us to evolve so fast, into so many different niches. Cultural evolution, however, was layered on top of DNA evolution, which still continues. Thus our behavior often has contributions from both DNA and culture. And as DNA changes much slower than culture, DNA likely contributes more to the relatively stable context-independent stuff, while culture contributes more to the…

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