From: yoichi@carson.u.washington.edu (Yoichi Ii)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Recipe (Not Okonomiyaki)
Date: 10 Jan 1993 22:42:22 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

This discussion on culture certainly has been intersting, 
although a little heavy for a light, lunch-time reading :-)

I've been thinking how one might be able find out if there 
are "golden rules", and if there are, what they might be.
I think such task has been too much for my little brain;
it gave an "over flow error" with the following additional
message: "My recipe for finding the golden rule".

Ingredients: 

First you need, say, 10000 worlds.  It's best that these
worlds be independent, so let's say these worlds exist
on separate planets of distinct solar systems.  There
should be 100 types of worlds with different geographical,
climatical, etc features. Let's call this variable EV for
environmental variables.  Also there should be 100 worlds
with identical EV.  Thus we need 100 times 100, or 10000
worlds.

Next you need people to put on these worlds.  I guess
early humans (homo sapiens sapiens) would be most relevant.
One can put variable number of individuals on each world,
but for the sake of simplicity, lets say we put 100000 each.

Now we are ready to start cooking.

Cooking Method:

Well, there's really nothing to do other than leave them
be and see what happens.  I think it would be a good idea
to make a detailed observation once every 1000 years for,
say, 1 million years (1000 observations).

Criteria for Success:

In the collected data one can expect:
1. To see some, perhaps many, worlds parish before the end of 
   the observation period.
2. At each time point, different worlds to have achieved
   different degree of happiness, provided they have survived
   up to that point.  Defining happiness is the hard part, but 
   let's say it would be defined as how well the items on the 
   list posted by Mr. Lambert ("basic human needs") are 
   satisfied.

I think the most important indicator of a success of a culture
is that it can perpetuate itself (ie 1).  If two worlds
have survived equally long, then the "tie breaker" rule is to
look at the well-being (ie 2).

Analysis:

Now we are ready to analyze the data.  Some points of interest:

o Among all the worlds with same EV, some have survived and
  some have parished.  If there are common cultural features
  share among those which have survived, then one can argue that 
  these are golden rules (GR) for this particular EV.  If there
  is no apparent commonality, then there is no GR (or sample
  size too small :).
o If there are commonalities across successful worlds with different 
  EV, then, arguably, these would be _the_ GR we seek.  On the 
  other hand, if the GR differ from EV to EV, then there is no EV 
  independent GR.
o One can also look at the worlds which had parished within, say,
  first 10000 years.  Commonality found among these cultures,
  and not present in long-lived ones, might be called the
  golden rules for failure (GRF).
o More elaborate analyses are also possible. For example, is
  there a commonality to the cultural path (history) of successful
  worlds?  Does certain cultural events have to take place before
  some others in order for the world to be successful? Etc, Etc, ...

However, the really big question remains: Are we part of somebody's
big experiment?  If so, what has this entity found out so far? :-)