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Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication

Although the increase in the use of dynamical modeling in the literature on cultural evolution makes current models more mathematically sophisticated, these models have yet to be tested or validated. This paper provides a testable deep active inference formulation of social behavior and accompanying...

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Autores principales: Kastel, Natalie, Hesp, Casper, Ridderinkhof, K. Richard, Friston, Karl J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9868743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36699948
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2022.944986
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author Kastel, Natalie
Hesp, Casper
Ridderinkhof, K. Richard
Friston, Karl J.
author_facet Kastel, Natalie
Hesp, Casper
Ridderinkhof, K. Richard
Friston, Karl J.
author_sort Kastel, Natalie
collection PubMed
description Although the increase in the use of dynamical modeling in the literature on cultural evolution makes current models more mathematically sophisticated, these models have yet to be tested or validated. This paper provides a testable deep active inference formulation of social behavior and accompanying simulations of cumulative culture in two steps: First, we cast cultural transmission as a bi-directional process of communication that induces a generalized synchrony (operationalized as a particular convergence) between the belief states of interlocutors. Second, we cast social or cultural exchange as a process of active inference by equipping agents with the choice of who to engage in communication with. This induces trade-offs between confirmation of current beliefs and exploration of the social environment. We find that cumulative culture emerges from belief updating (i.e., active inference and learning) in the form of a joint minimization of uncertainty. The emergent cultural equilibria are characterized by a segregation into groups, whose belief systems are actively sustained by selective, uncertainty minimizing, dyadic exchanges. The nature of these equilibria depends sensitively on the precision afforded by various probabilistic mappings in each individual's generative model of their encultured niche.
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spelling pubmed-98687432023-01-24 Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication Kastel, Natalie Hesp, Casper Ridderinkhof, K. Richard Friston, Karl J. Front Neurorobot Neuroscience Although the increase in the use of dynamical modeling in the literature on cultural evolution makes current models more mathematically sophisticated, these models have yet to be tested or validated. This paper provides a testable deep active inference formulation of social behavior and accompanying simulations of cumulative culture in two steps: First, we cast cultural transmission as a bi-directional process of communication that induces a generalized synchrony (operationalized as a particular convergence) between the belief states of interlocutors. Second, we cast social or cultural exchange as a process of active inference by equipping agents with the choice of who to engage in communication with. This induces trade-offs between confirmation of current beliefs and exploration of the social environment. We find that cumulative culture emerges from belief updating (i.e., active inference and learning) in the form of a joint minimization of uncertainty. The emergent cultural equilibria are characterized by a segregation into groups, whose belief systems are actively sustained by selective, uncertainty minimizing, dyadic exchanges. The nature of these equilibria depends sensitively on the precision afforded by various probabilistic mappings in each individual's generative model of their encultured niche. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9868743/ /pubmed/36699948 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2022.944986 Text en Copyright © 2023 Kastel, Hesp, Ridderinkhof and Friston. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Kastel, Natalie
Hesp, Casper
Ridderinkhof, K. Richard
Friston, Karl J.
Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication
title Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication
title_full Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication
title_fullStr Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication
title_full_unstemmed Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication
title_short Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication
title_sort small steps for mankind: modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9868743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36699948
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2022.944986
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