I spoke at The Royal Society at meeting on “The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines”.

Robin Schimmelpfenning and I discussed our co-authored paper on the paradox of diversity in the collective brain. We discuss how the rate of innovation depends on sociality, information fidelity, and cultural trait diversity. While cultural trait diversity offers the largest potential for empowering innovation, it also brings with it potential coordination and cooperation challenges. Diversity, in other words, is both a source of innovation and divisive; a double-edge sword. We then propose using cultural evolvability as a framework for resolving this paradox. 

Our presentation was followed by a discussion session and subsequently a panel discussion chaired by Dominic Abrams.

Many thanks to Andrew Whiten, Dora Biro, Ellen Garland, and Simon Kirby for organizing the event.