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The Ādam Paradox Hypothesis 224
Game Theory of Culture
The weakness of culture-alone becomes sharper when viewed through game
theory.
Cooperation beyond kinship requires shared contracts.
Contracts require symbols (marks, rituals, words) to make promises
durable.
Without symbols, contracts collapse into unstable equilibria — defection
dominates, trust erodes.
This is why cultural traditions before ~70kya do not last. They lacked the
symbolic glue to stabilize them. Once symbols appear, contracts hold, cooperation scales,
and populations expand.
Philosophical Weakness
Like gradualism, culture-alone suffers from a philosophical problem: it
assumes what it must explain.
It explains the sudden explosion of symbols by saying “culture reached
critical mass.
”
But critical mass is only possible if stable symbols already exist.
Culture-alone therefore presupposes the very ignition it is supposed to
explain.
It is circular reasoning disguised as explanation.
A simple example from daily life:
Library Analogy
It’s like saying a library exists because there were already enough books on
the shelves — but you still haven’t explained where the first books came
from.
Snowball Analogy
It’s like claiming an avalanche happened because there was already a huge
snowball rolling — without explaining how the first snowball formed.
Language Analogy
It’s like saying people speak fluently because everyone was already speaking
fluently — skipping the question of how the first words began.