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Record W4391577789 · doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae009

The characteristic time scale of cultural evolution

2024· article· en· W4391577789 on OpenAlexaff
Tobias Wand, Daniel Hoyer

Bibliographic record

VenuePNAS Nexus · 2024
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicLanguage and cultural evolution
Canadian institutionsGeorge Brown College
FundersÖsterreichische ForschungsförderungsgesellschaftStudienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes
KeywordsScale (ratio)GeographyCartography

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Numerous researchers from various disciplines have explored commonalities and divergences in the evolution of complex social formations. Here, we explore whether there is a "characteristic" time course for the evolution of social complexity in a handful of different geographic areas. Data from the Seshat: Global History Databank is shifted so that the overlapping time series can be fitted to a single logistic regression model for all 23 geographic areas under consideration. The resulting regression shows convincing out-of-sample predictions, and its period of extensive growth in social complexity can be identified via bootstrapping as a time interval of roughly 2,500 years. To analyze the endogenous growth of social complexity, each time series is restricted to a central time interval without major disruptions in cultural or institutional continuity, and both approaches result in a similar logistic regression curve. Our results suggest that these different areas have indeed experienced a similar course in the their evolution of social complexity, but that this is a lengthy process involving both internal developments and external influences.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.015
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.012

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.015
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.002
Scholarly communication0.0010.002
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.008
GPT teacher head0.287
Teacher spread0.279 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations7
Published2024
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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