#369 Alberto Acerbi: Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age

The Dissenter

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Dr. Alberto Acerbi is a Lecturer in Psychology in the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London. He is a cognitive/evolutionary anthropologist with a particular interest in computational science. The main question that drives his research is: is it possible to find some general factors determining why some cultural traits succeed and others do not? He is interested in particular in contemporary cultural phenomena, and he uses a naturalistic, quantitative, and evolutionary approach with different methodologies, especially individual-based models and quantitative analysis of large-scale data. He published a book recently, Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age.

In this episode, we focus on Dr. Acerbi’s book, and go through some of its main topics, like the impact of new technologies on cultural evolution; the similarities and differences between online activity and real life; the impact of celebrities and online influencers; echo chambers and political polarization; post-truth; and the opacity of online algorithms. Toward the end, we also discuss theories in cultural evolution.

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