AppSciComm Scientist Talks: Cultural Landscapes with Simon DeDeo

Do cultural institutions evolve and change like living organisms? A digital humanities team from Carnegie Mellon University used supercomputing to analyze the history and relationships of over 400 religions worldwide. A “peaks and valleys” model, borrowed from biological evolution, explains the data.

Simon DeDeo is an associate professor in Social and Decision Sciences at CMU and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His Laboratory for Social Minds undertakes empirical investigations and builds mathematical theories of both historical and contemporary phenomena ranging from the centuries-long timescales of cultural evolution to the second-by-second emergence of social hierarchy in non-human animals.

During his talk with AppSciComm, DeDeo will discuss his research that explores how human culture and practices evolve. His team used the Pittsburgh Super Computing Center's Bridges-2 system to show how their cultural "landscape" approach can explain how some religions persist, others change, and still others die out.