The Jim Rutt Show EP1 Simon DeDeo – The Evolution of Consciousness
Jul 7, 2019
Simon DeDeo, an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and expert in social cognition, dives deep into fascinating topics. He examines the Fermi paradox, questioning why we haven’t encountered extraterrestrial intelligence. DeDeo discusses the evolution of cultural practices and online community dynamics, including challenges like deplatforming. He explores how biological and cultural evolution intertwine, shapes social norms, and critiques Chomsky's theories on language acquisition. The conversation reveals profound insights into consciousness and humanity's quest to understand its place in the cosmos.
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Brains As Cultural Ribosomes
- Simon DeDeo studies how individual cognition scales up into cultural-level patterns using large text archives.
- He treats the brain as the ribosome of culture, translating internal representations into lasting social artifacts.
Great Communication Can Look Like Noise
- Efficient, highly compressed signals can appear maximally random and hide intelligence.
- Extremely good communicators may produce transmissions that look like noise to us.
Social Media Compresses Cultural Time
- Social media speeds cultural evolution by orders of magnitude, collapsing months-long feedback to minutes or seconds.
- That acceleration creates new mechanisms and stresses society's existing institutions.
