> ...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from fl

> ...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from flows across those cultural contrasts and that cultural contrasts require energy to maintain. I think it would produce net value because... Idk. There is a reason to value diversity but it's as far from theoretical as you can get: billions of years of evolution have demonstrated that diversity is the only way for complex ecosystems (civilization, in our case) to exist on any significant timescale. Monocultures are dangerous because the second the environment changes enough, everything dies pretty much all at once instead of transitioning between a mix of cultures best suited to survive the change. I think there's a world of research to be done on how those principles apply to societies, which are driven more by artificial selection, but there's definitely a connection.