1 Matching Annotations
- Aug 2023
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link.springer.com link.springer.com
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for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap
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Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability
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Author: Brian F. Snyder
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Abstract
- Summary
- Paraphrase
- Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
- While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
- climate change,
- biodiversity loss,
- population growth
- the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
- Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
- multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
- Here, we integrate this theory with
- Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
- and propose a model linking
- energy extraction from the environment with
- genetic, technological and cultural evolution
- to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
- Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
- the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
- the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
- These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
- in all species,
- but in humans, they are also determined by
- technology and
- culture.
- If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
- the ability of an individual or social group
- to increase its carrying capacity,
- then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
- Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs
- faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
- then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.
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Tags
- progress trap
- human niche construction
- evolution of polycrisis
- progress trap - cultural evolution
- The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability
- AET
- evolution of our polycrisis
- Brian F Snyder
- niche construction
- evolution of the anthropocene
- unsustainability
- gene-culture coevolution
- conscious cumulative cultural evolution
- Anthroecological theory
- cumulative cultural evolution
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