Collective behaviour, uncertainty and environmental change
Collective behaviour, uncertainty and environmental change
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DOI：
10.1098/rsta.2014.0461
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发表时间：
2015-11-28
期刊：
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
O'Brien, Michael J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bentley, R. Alexander;O'Brien, Michael J.
文化进化论的一个核心方面涉及人类群体如何应对环境变化。尽管我们用的是粗略的画笔，但可以公平地说，在二十一世纪之前，通过个人和社会学习、累积的文化进化和人口变化的结合，适应往往在多个人类世代中逐渐发生。其结果是人口普遍具有复原力和可持续发展能力。然而，在二十一世纪，相当大的变化发生在人类一代的一小部分人之内，在更大的地理和人口规模范围内，并涉及更大程度的横向学习。作为衡量全球化未来社会对环境变化反应复杂性的一种方法，我们讨论了几种用于理解人类群体如何适应不确定性的理论工具。我们使用我们的分析来估计未来社会变革的可预测性的极限，我们相信知道何时对冲赌注比依赖错误的可预测性要好。
A central aspect of cultural evolutionary theory concerns how human groups respond to environmental change. Although we are painting with a broad brush, it is fair to say that prior to the twenty-first century, adaptation often happened gradually over multiple human generations, through a combination of individual and social learning, cumulative cultural evolution and demographic shifts. The result was a generally resilient and sustainable population. In the twenty-first century, however, considerable change happens within small portions of a human generation, on a vastly larger range of geographical and population scales and involving a greater degree of horizontal learning. As a way of gauging the complexity of societal response to environmental change in a globalized future, we discuss several theoretical tools for understanding how human groups adapt to uncertainty. We use our analysis to estimate the limits of predictability of future societal change, in the belief that knowing when to hedge bets is better than relying on a false sense of predictability.