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{
    "pk": 24644,
    "title": "Quantifying Culture: an Information-Theoretic Measure of how Memes Flow Through Minds",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "Cultural evolution is changing humanity much faster than genetic evolution, but at present we lack a way to empirically ground models of cultural evolution in a quantitative, content-agnostic way analogous to counting alleles in models of genetic evolution. A way to measure what information ends up in which minds would permit quantitative models of the many different processes that govern the flow of memes through minds. We offer a method for estimating the amount of information retained based on previous exposure to a cultural artifact. Entropy estimates that are generated based on a test set from e.g. Harry Potter will differ between a treatment group (Readers, people who have read Harry Potter), and a control group (Non-Readers). This difference is an expression, in bits, of how much information from the book stored in Readers' minds and therefore capable of influencing behavior.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "Anthropology; Linguistics; Psychology; Behavioral Science; Culture; Evolution; Language and thought; Memory; Computer-based experiment"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Abstracts",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20r0h350",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Matthew",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Cashman",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Harvard University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Damian",
            "middle_name": "E",
            "last_name": "Blasi",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Harvard University",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2024-01-01T10:00:00-08:00",
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