Scott examines five potential mechanisms of cultural evolution, discussing their strengths and limitations, and concludes that they don't strongly justify preserving specific cultural features. Longer summary

This post discusses various ways cultural evolution can occur, based on comments from a previous post. It explores five scenarios: super-innovations allowing one culture to dominate others, differential breeding rates between groups, evolution of subcultures, accretion of beneficial practices, and prehistoric cultural evolution. Scott analyzes each scenario, noting their strengths and limitations. He concludes that while cultural evolution has potential to be interesting, it doesn't provide a strong argument for preserving specific cultural features without additional justification. Shorter summary