Fantastic paper. I am have been interested in evolution since I was very young, and I got my bachelors in molecular biology from Berkeley. I have spent a an incredible amount of time thinking and reading about evolution (which is how I came to find your blog) and I have come to similar conclusions about cultural evolution vs biological evolution (although not nearly as clearly defined nor thoroughly researched) as you.

However, in my thought experiments, I have always come across this stumbling block: the average person still operates under the biological evolution framework and (at least in the immediate future) are under no selection pressure to change. While reproductive rates have declined in well-educated subpopulations, the uneducated are still over-reproducing and those subpopulations will out-reproduce the educated ones. I teach high school biology (I actually use some of your blogs in my AP class) and I get to directly witness just how few of the students care about their education or improving their minds. The ones that do see the value in education are great, but unfortunately that population is dwarfed by the number of students who don't care. And these poor students are a direct reflection of the values instilled by their parents, so I would argue that they are a decent representation of the community as a whole. And my school isn't even a bad one. I teach in a school right outside of the Silicon Valley and statistically my school is above average. Whether is it fueled by religion or laziness, there are MANY people who do not see the advantage of the investment in knowledge. Perhaps they just don't have the critical thinking skills/capacity to grasp the concept?

Now, you and I know that in the long run, the anti-education strategy is a poor one and can only lead to disaster. In a traditional evolution setting, this disaster means death for those who cannot compete. But from a humanitarian standpoint, we cannot allow all these people to go jobless and homeless or perish. So will we end up with a nationwide reflection of what I see in my school where the few that are educated are dwarfed by the uneducated? What do we do with all those people? I think they are exhibiting what I like to call vestigial behaviors. They operate under the immediate gratification/evolutionarily reinforced reward systems that are no longer applicable in today's world. People are overindulging in things that are good in the short-term but detrimental in the long-term. And it seems as if they either don't see the danger or are just too stubborn to change.