Evolution of Collective Computational Abilities of (Pre)Historic Societies

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Meeting Description

It has recently been learned that as they evolve, all early human societies first grown in size without developing their information-processing sophistication very much, then they switch to a mode where they develop their information-processing sophistication without growing much, and then they switch back to a mode in which they grow in size. In this working group we will investigate many aspects of this phenomenon: What are the fine-grained details of how the many different kinds of information-processing and different kinds of size growth co-evolve? Do similar “mode-switches” involving information-processing sophistication happen at later stages in the evolution of human societies? How should we best combine the time-series’ of many different societies to glean such high-level characteristics of social development? What underlying theories about how groups of people collectively process information best explain these phenomena.

Agenda

November 2 — 4, 2020