Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments May 6, 2023 erstellt
Beschreibung:
Although institutions are humanly devised, they are also emergent phenomena that cannot be closely controlled or predicted. In addition, institutions emerge in coevolutionary dynamic with culture, as well as other evolving systems such as technology, geography and language. The coevolution of culture and institutions, which is the focus of this paper, means that changes in culture alter the fitness of the current designs of institutions, which leads to changes in institutions, which feeds back altering the fitness of current culture, in unpredictable coevolutionary dynamics. I model this process using coupled fitness landscapes and Boolean hypercubes to show how coevolutionary processes cannot be foretold or finetuned, as they exhibit sensitivity to initial conditions, path dependence, non-optimality, multiple-equilibria, instability, uncertainty, mismatch, and non-ergodicity. The paper also explores how human ultrasociality and the collective brain play a role in this coevolutionary process. As an example, the paper explores the Great Enrichment – the rise of modern economic growth – through the coevolution of institutions – such as the Western Church’s Family and Marriage Program, the Republic of Letters, impersonal markets – and culture – such as, individualism, belief in useful knowledge, impersonal prosociality. This analysis highlights the contingent and emergent nature of long-term economic history