To me, these are the big questions. It's also hard to avoid bias, since we have such strong and abstract feelings about "group technologies, such as rule of law

To me, these are the big questions. It's also hard to avoid bias, since we have such strong and abstract feelings about "group technologies, such as rule of law and democracy." Fragility is an interesting question. I think Richard Dawkins' "meme" concept needs some more study. I suspect that "rule of law and democracy" might be extremely antifragile, on some level. The institutions (courts, parliaments) can break. You can even break with the belief system. The memes will still exist though, in some form. They're hard to shake, eve if you want to. Consider money. If society collapsed and reformed, money would certainly still exist. Even if no survivors are experts in money, it will be near impossible to shake the meme. It wouldn't be surprising if the concepts suddenly reemerge years later. Is this because money is inevitable, or is it because memes are resilient? A lot of modern ponderings about "human nature" is framed as "nature vs nurture." Simplistically, nature is inevitable. Nurture is not. It is surprisingly (and frustratingly) difficult to nature and nurture apart, IRL. I would reframe it as "memetic vs genetic." Group technologies are memes. They exist in, and also define culture. This is ultimately YNH's frame for history. Up until point X in time, genes defined humanity. After point X, memes define humanity. Memetics works faster, but in a similar way.