Turning Societies into Collective Brains: A Selection from Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World (2020)
“The secret of our species’ success lies not in our raw intellect or reasoning powers but in our capacity to learn from those around us and then diffuse what we learned outward, through our social networks, and down to future generations. Over time, because we learn selectively from others and integrate insights from diverse individuals and populations, the process of cultural evolution can give rise to an ever-growing and -improving repertoire of tools, skills, techniques, goals, motivations, beliefs, rules, and norms. This body of cultural know-how is maintained collectively in the minds and practices of a community or network. . . .
If this feels off, it’s probably because you’ve been seduced by the ‘myth of the heroic inventor,’ as historians of technology call it. This WEIRD folk model of how innovation works exalts singular acts of invention by geniuses (it’s attractive to individualists). However, four facts drawn from the history of technological development undermine it. First, complex innovations almost always arise from the accumulation of small additions or modifications, so even the most important contributors make only incremental additions. This is why so many blockbuster innovations were developed independently by multiple people at the same time—the key ideas were already out there, scattered among the minds of others, and someone was going to put them together eventually. Second, most innovations are really just novel recombinations of existing ideas, techniques, or approaches; a tool is taken from one domain and applied in another. Third, lucky mistakes, fortunate misunderstandings, and serendipitous insights play a central role in invention and often represent the only difference between famous inventors and anonymous tinkerers. Finally, necessity is certainly not the mother of invention. Over the course of human history, people often ignored life-saving inventions for years, sometimes only realizing how much they needed an invention long after its arrival (e.g., penicillin, nitrous oxide, the wheel). Although plagues, marauders, famines, and droughts have persistently provided humanity with plentiful existential incentives to innovate, Mother Necessity has rarely nurtured human ingenuity to create the crucial inventions. . . .
Innovation is driven by the recombination of ideas, insights, and technologies, along with a healthy dose of serendipity and unintended consequences. As a result, any institutions, norms, beliefs, or psychological inclinations that increase the flow of ideas among diverse minds or open up more opportunities for fortune to show us the way will energize innovation. . . . Cumulative cultural evolution—including innovation—is fundamentally a social and cultural process that turns societies into collective brains.”—Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2020)
