Information, Entanglement, and Emergent Social Norms: Searching for ‘Normal’

Social norms are often regarded as informal rules or strategies. Previously, we have proposed that norms are better understood as information. Social norms represent a behavioral adaptation that identifies and curates the information required to create and maintain a predictable environment. Here, we further demonstrate that social norms act as the leading edge of individual and collective search and optimization processes. These processes provide efficient and effective evolutionary mechanisms for constant adjustment and adaptation to an environment. We show that social norms constitute the forefront of our ability to ingest and process information, and are responsible for the conditions under which social and collective cognition are possible. This new model of social information processing provides not only insight into how humans adapt and evolve to diverse environments, but also provides concrete definitions of human sociality and its distinctions from that of other social animals. Our social constructs and behaviors are not separate from the physical world we inhabit, but are instead the primary means by which we exist within it.