Parallels and promising directions in the study of genetic, cultural, and moral evolution

Abstract: Experimental evolution has yielded surprising insights into human history and evolution by shedding light on the roles of chance and contingency in history and evolution, and on the deep evolutionary roots of cooperation, conflict and kin discrimination. We argue that an interesting research direction would be to develop computational and experimental systems for studying evolutionary processes that involve multiple layers of inheritance (such as genes, epigenetic inheritance, language, and culture) and feedbacks (such as gene-culture coevolution and mate choice) as well as open-ended niche construction---all of which are important in human history and evolution. Such systems would also be a clear way to motivate evolution and computation to scholars and students across diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as to scholars and students in the social sciences and humanities. In principle, computational models of cultural evolution could be compared to data, given that large-scale datasets already exist for tracking cultural change in real-time. Thus, experimental evolution, as a laboratory and computational science, is poised to grow as an educational tool for people to question and study where we come from, why we believe what we believe, and where we as a species may be headed.