Evolution of Society Caused by Collective and Individual Decisions

TL;DR

This paper uses the ViSE model to explore how collective and individual decisions influence societal evolution, revealing cyclic patterns and transitions between conservative and liberal societies based on cooperation and conservatism levels.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamic model linking decision-making parameters to societal evolution, highlighting cyclical patterns and societal transitions not previously characterized.

Findings

Societies can exhibit cyclic evolution patterns in neutral environments.

Highly conservative or low-cooperation societies tend to evolve into more liberal ones.

Mafia groups prevent members from leaving, affecting societal dynamics.

Abstract

Decision-making societies may vary in their level of cooperation and degree of conservatism, both of which influence their overall performance. Moreover, these factors are not fixed -- they can change based on the decisions agents in the society make in their interests. But can these changes lead to cyclical patterns in societal evolution? To explore this question, we use the ViSE (Voting in Stochastic Environment) model. In this framework, the level of cooperation can be measured by group size, while the degree of conservatism is determined by the voting threshold. Agents can adopt either individualistic or group-oriented strategies when voting on stochastically generated external proposals. For Gaussian proposal generators, the expected capital gain (ECG) -- a measure of agents' performance -- can be expressed in standard mathematical functions. Our findings show that in neutral environments, societal evolution with open or democratic groups can follow cyclic patterns. We also find that highly conservative societies or conservative societies with low levels of cooperation can evolve into liberal (less conservative than majoritarian) societies and that mafia groups never let their members go when they want to.