Innovation and cumulative culture through tweaks and leaps in online programming contests

Elena Miu; Ned Gulley; Kevin N. Laland; Luke Rendell

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-04494-0

Innovation and cumulative culture through tweaks and leaps in online programming contests

Elena Miu, Ned Gulley, Kevin N. Laland, Luke Rendell

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The ability to build progressively on the achievements of earlier generations is central to human uniqueness, but experimental investigations of this cumulative cultural evolution lack real-world complexity. Here, we studied the dynamics of cumulative culture using a large-scale data set from online collaborative programming competitions run over 14 years. We show that, within each contest population, performance increases over time through frequent ‘tweaks’ of the current best entry and rare innovative ‘leaps’ (successful tweak:leap ratio = 16:1), the latter associated with substantially greater variance in performance. Cumulative cultural evolution reduces technological diversity over time, as populations focus on refining high-performance solutions. While individual entries borrow from few sources, iterative copying allows populations to integrate ideas from many sources, demonstrating a new form of collective intelligence. Our results imply that maximising technological progress requires accepting high levels of failure.

Original language	English
Article number	2321
Number of pages	8
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04494-0
Publication status	Published - 13 Jun 2018

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Miu_2018_NatComms_tweaksandleaps_CC
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Final published version, 5.8 MBLicence: CC BY

Exploring the Evolutionary Foundations: Exploring the Evolutionary Foundations of Cultural Complexity Creativity and Trust
Lala, K. (PI)
1/09/13 → 30/05/16
Project: Standard

Innovation and cumulative culture through tweaks and leaps in online programming contests (dataset)
Miu, E. (Creator), Gulley, N. (Creator), Laland, K. N. (Creator) & Rendell, L. E. (Creator), Open Science Framework, 28 Feb 2018
https://osf.io/xvtuy/?view_only=48ae607af38249cdb59965d2f11175b6
Dataset

Cite this

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title = "Innovation and cumulative culture through tweaks and leaps in online programming contests",

abstract = "The ability to build progressively on the achievements of earlier generations is central to human uniqueness, but experimental investigations of this cumulative cultural evolution lack real-world complexity. Here, we studied the dynamics of cumulative culture using a large-scale data set from online collaborative programming competitions run over 14 years. We show that, within each contest population, performance increases over time through frequent {\textquoteleft}tweaks{\textquoteright} of the current best entry and rare innovative {\textquoteleft}leaps{\textquoteright} (successful tweak:leap ratio = 16:1), the latter associated with substantially greater variance in performance. Cumulative cultural evolution reduces technological diversity over time, as populations focus on refining high-performance solutions. While individual entries borrow from few sources, iterative copying allows populations to integrate ideas from many sources, demonstrating a new form of collective intelligence. Our results imply that maximising technological progress requires accepting high levels of failure.",

author = "Elena Miu and Ned Gulley and Laland, {Kevin N.} and Luke Rendell",

note = "E.M. was supported by the John Templeton Foundation Grant #40128 {\textquoteleft}Exploring the Evolutionary Foundations of Cultural Complexity, Creativity, and Trust{\textquoteright} and the University of St Andrews School of Biology. L.R. was supported by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTs) pooling initiative funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011).",

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N2 - The ability to build progressively on the achievements of earlier generations is central to human uniqueness, but experimental investigations of this cumulative cultural evolution lack real-world complexity. Here, we studied the dynamics of cumulative culture using a large-scale data set from online collaborative programming competitions run over 14 years. We show that, within each contest population, performance increases over time through frequent ‘tweaks’ of the current best entry and rare innovative ‘leaps’ (successful tweak:leap ratio = 16:1), the latter associated with substantially greater variance in performance. Cumulative cultural evolution reduces technological diversity over time, as populations focus on refining high-performance solutions. While individual entries borrow from few sources, iterative copying allows populations to integrate ideas from many sources, demonstrating a new form of collective intelligence. Our results imply that maximising technological progress requires accepting high levels of failure.

AB - The ability to build progressively on the achievements of earlier generations is central to human uniqueness, but experimental investigations of this cumulative cultural evolution lack real-world complexity. Here, we studied the dynamics of cumulative culture using a large-scale data set from online collaborative programming competitions run over 14 years. We show that, within each contest population, performance increases over time through frequent ‘tweaks’ of the current best entry and rare innovative ‘leaps’ (successful tweak:leap ratio = 16:1), the latter associated with substantially greater variance in performance. Cumulative cultural evolution reduces technological diversity over time, as populations focus on refining high-performance solutions. While individual entries borrow from few sources, iterative copying allows populations to integrate ideas from many sources, demonstrating a new form of collective intelligence. Our results imply that maximising technological progress requires accepting high levels of failure.

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Innovation and cumulative culture through tweaks and leaps in online programming contests

Abstract

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Exploring the Evolutionary Foundations: Exploring the Evolutionary Foundations of Cultural Complexity Creativity and Trust

Kevin Lala

Luke Edward Rendell