Big Think in the Morning
The splendid Matt Ridley, author, most recently, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, answering the question, "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?"
Brilliant people, be they anthropologists, psychologists or economists, assume that brilliance is the key to human achievement. They vote for the cleverest people to run governments, they ask the cleverest experts to devise plans for the economy, they credit the cleverest scientists with discoveries, and they speculate on how human intelligence evolved in the first place.
They are all barking up the wrong tree. The key to human achievement is not individual intelligence at all....The reason some economies work better than others is certainly not because they have cleverer people in charge, and the reason some places make great discoveries is not because they have smarter people.
Human achievement is entirely a networking phenomenon. It is by putting brains together through the division of labor — through trade and specialisation — that human society stumbled upon a way to raise the living standards, carrying capacity, technological virtuosity and knowledge base of the species. We can see this in all sorts of phenomena: the correlation between technology and connected population size in Pacific islands; the collapse of technology in people who became isolated, like native Tasmanians; the success of trading city states in Greece, Italy, Holland and south-east Asia; the creative consequences of trade.
Human achievement is based on collective intelligence — the nodes in the human neural network are people themselves. By each doing one thing and getting good at it, then sharing and combining the results through exchange, people become capable of doing things they do not even understand. As the economist Leonard Read observed in his essay "I, Pencil' (which I'd like everybody to read), no single person knows how to make even a pencil — the knowledge is distributed in society among many thousands of graphite miners, lumberjacks, designers and factory workers.
That's why, as Friedrich Hayek observed, central planning never worked: the cleverest person is no match for the collective brain at working out how to distribute consumer goods....
If only Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid would read that two or three times, slowly and thoughtfully--or come to think of it, if only they would watch Matt Ridley here.
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Jun '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Timing is important too. Some of the best movie animators alive today can't draw. They can get computers to draw anything you dream up, but they can't draw. Fifty years ago, they'd be painting houses for a living.
Jul '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Matt Ridley appears to be a confused thinker.
Human achievement is through the work of great people. They don't have to be the smartest (Henry Ford, James Watt, Steve Jobs) but it sure doesn't hurt (Antoine Lavoisier, George Stokes, Newton, Isambard Brunel). The history of scientific and engineering achievement is through the works of great scientists and engineers. The history of the world is through the work of great people.
The realm of the economy is different and he again has difficulty teasing out perhaps purposefully by saying he doesn't know what's good for all people. But that's about two paragraphs too long for that.
He should have just repeated this.
Nov '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Unfortunately Obama, Pelosi and Reid will not be persuaded even if they do read Ridley because they don’t want anyone to believe what he says. They want everyone to believe that the world must be run by a few smart people and they are the smart ones who must be in charge.
Nov '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Michael Tee: Matt Ridley appears to be a confused thinker.
Human achievement is through the work of great people.
So why didn’t Henry Ford just build Model T’s in his garage?
Jun '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Ducatista
Michael Tee: Matt Ridley appears to be a confused thinker.
Human achievement is through the work of great people.
So why didn’t Henry Ford just build Model T’s in his garage? · Nov 15 at 9:34am
Really, it's both things happening at the same time. Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com in his garage, but once he started, he found that he needed lots of expert help. Apparently he was very good at picking that help, because he's worth about $19-billion today. Like many modern business ventures, it was either grow or die. If you're stuck in an isolated or corrupt place, where you can't grow, you're done. No amount of personal smarts will save you.
May '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
I have to side with those skeptical of this passage. I suppose it is meaningful up to a point but what, for instance, would Matt Ridley think of a polymath like Richard Epstein?
Apr '11
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Great people maybe the originators of ideas, but the implementation and full fruition of ideas is only achieved in their sharing and elaboration by the collective actions of many other individuals.
Newton may have described the first bit of physics, but the reason he is so seminal and important is because of all the people that came after him that expanded upon his work. Had that expansion never happened his personal brilliance would have been irrelevant. We have no way of knowing how often ideas are independently generated, but like with a biological system innovation is only important if it propagates. Propagation of ideas and inventions requires other people since only people can hold, utilize, and spread them.
Mar '11
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Valiuth:
Newton may have described the first bit of physics, but the reason he is so seminal and important is because of all the people that came after him that expanded upon his work.
Actually, I have to disagree there. Newton's work stands on its own. If nobody had done anything with it, it would remain one of the most brilliant human achievements of all time. The same goes for Einstein.
They are the exceptions that prove the rule, however - most scientists are standing on the shoulders of such giants and make, if they are lucky, small but significant contributions.
Mr Obama, Mr Reid and Ms Pelosi, on the other hand, are unfit to run a lemonade stand (they don't even have a licence).
Edited on Nov 15, 2011 at 10:32amMay '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Michael Tee:
Human achievement is through the work of great people. They don't have to be the smartest (Henry Ford, James Watt, Steve Jobs) but it sure doesn't hurt (Antoine Lavoisier, George Stokes, Newton, Isambard Brunel). The history of scientific and engineering achievement is through the works of great scientists and engineers. The history of the world is through the work of great people.
It's not a coincidence that the vast majority of scientific achievement happened after the invention of the printing press and was facilitated by networking institutions like the Royal Society and the French Academy.
Jun '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
I don't think we have to get twisted into an argument about whether it takes great people or a collective intelligence to make things happen. You need both. The Soviet Union possessed many great scientists, but they didn't have the other half of the equation, a market that could freely exchange goods and services. Thus, many great ideas were laid to waste.
As an aside, as I first started reading the post, I got to thinking about how, at Intel, there is no one person who knows how to make a microprocessor. However, once the same point was made about a pencil, I had to laugh at my complete overshoot of the issue.
Jun '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Hayek elaborates on why central planning won't work in attempting to manage complex market economies here. (I also touched on this in my Ricochet posting: Barry, Lemonade Stands & The Lessons of F.A. Hayek).
I think Ridley may be diminishing the contributions of brilliant or insightful individuals a smidge since they are certainly change agents in civilization but do rely on other teams of talented individuals who can make their ideas real. Innovators like Jobs, Disney, Ford et. al., still had to have the insight to hire the right mix of talented individuals. Walt Disney led and challenged his animation teams to produce some remarkable things that left to their own, arguably would have found it difficult to achieve. Disney also kept changing the pairing of animators with different animators on a routine basis to keep ideas fresh.
Like many of us, I think Ridley is also enamored with the recent democratization of communication that the Internet is providing, enabling experts to exchange ideas with mere mortals.
Mar '11
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Again, Newton was the exception - he was apparently very anti-social, to the point of being obnoxious, and did all his work in isolation. Today he would probably be classified as autistic.
Btw, ask Mr Delingpole what he thinks of today's Royal Society ;-)
Edited on Nov 15, 2011 at 10:51amNov '11
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Don't forget plain old stubborness either. Think of how many inventions would been left unfinished if their inventors had given up on the 10th, 20th, or 100th attempt to get it to work. Without that work ethic there's no way to apply intellect and that is the major factor the U.S. has produced so many noteworthy inventions in its relatively short history.
May '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Dave Molinari:
As an aside, as I first started reading the post, I got to thinking about how, at Intel, there is no one person who knows how to make a microprocessor. However, once the same point was made about a pencil, I had to laugh at my complete overshoot of the issue. · Nov 15 at 10:40am
Haha! That's awesome. It makes you wonder how large is the true difference in complexity between pencils and microprocessors, in the grand scheme of things.
Oct '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
I think the essential contribution of the market and the open society is that it permits the exceptional individual, breakthrough idea, or new means of organising and co-ordinating activities among individuals to be tested and flourish if valid or be rejected if not. The top-down technocratic model preserves the status quo at the expense of disruptive innovations.
Or, as the master, Robert A. Heinlein, put it,
Apr '11
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Richard Epstein is awesome, but if we didn't have the specialization of labor, enabled by trade, that allows us to have universities and other tertiary economical institutions, he would simply be an unusually brilliant subsistence farmer. Perhaps not even a very good one (I am under the impression that he's better at mental exertion than physical). Because we have an unbelievably complex society, there are the institutions and mechanisms in place under which he can access large amounts of information, focus on creating ideas, disseminate his ideas, and not have to worry too much about where the next meal is coming from.
Do you think it is coincidence that so large a portion of the great men that can be termed Richard's peers come from the great trading nations of their time?
Edited on Nov 15, 2011 at 11:37amApr '11
Re: Big Think in the Morning
Brian Watt
Hayek elaborates on why central planning won't work in attempting to manage complex market economies here. (I also touched on this in my Ricochet posting: Barry, Lemonade Stands & The Lessons of F.A. Hayek).
I think Ridley may be diminishing the contributions of brilliant or insightful individuals a smidge since they are certainly change agents in civilization but do rely on other teams of talented individuals who can make their ideas real. Innovators like Jobs, Disney, Ford et. al., still had to have the insight to hire the right mix of talented individuals. Walt Disney led and challenged his animation teams to produce some remarkable things that left to their own, arguably would have found it difficult to achieve. Disney also kept changing the pairing of animators with different animators on a routine basis to keep ideas fresh.
Like many of us, I think Ridley is also enamored with the recent democratization of communication that the Internet is providing, enabling experts to exchange ideas with mere mortals. ·
Ridley's big insights are into stone age and other pre-medieval developments, and into the differences between mankind and chimps and such. The internet is kinda an afterthought.
Jun '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
James Of England
Brian Watt
Like many of us, I think Ridley is also enamored with the recent democratization of communication that the Internet is providing, enabling experts to exchange ideas with mere mortals. ·
Ridley's big insights are into stone age and other pre-medieval developments, and into the differences between mankind and chimps and such. The internet is kinda an afterthought. · Nov 15 at 11:45am
From Peter's extract above: "Human achievement is based on collective intelligence — the nodes in the human neural network are people themselves. By each doing one thing and getting good at it, then sharing and combining the results through exchange, people become capable of doing things they do not even understand."
I don't know...sure sounds like a not-too subtle reference to the Internet to me. The man does live in the 21st century last time I checked...and may even own a computer or two.
Jun '10
Re: Big Think in the Morning
...and given that Ridley is a noted optimist, it's fairly evident that building on his "networking" example that he's optimistic that the Internet will herald in a new age of discovery and enlightenment allowing for the cross-pollenization of ideas not just among elite experts but between and among more ordinary folks.
Re: Big Think in the Morning
He would think (I believe) that a polymath like Richard Epstein illustrates his point. All his life, Richard has remained in the middle of large populations of thinking people--he has spent his entire adult life at Columbia, Oxford, the U. of Chicago, Stanford and NYU--relying on colleagues and students to sharpen his thinking by questioning and challenging him.
Likewise--to comment on an earlier post--Steve Jobs. In all the commentary about Steve since his death, no one seems to have mentioned how little he traveled--aside from a few months at Reed College, and the odd trip here and there, Steve spent his entire life on the San Francisco peninsula. Why? Because Stanford was here. Xerox Parc and HP were here.
Richard Epstein and Steve Jobs. Nodes--especially big and important nodes, of course, but nodes all the same--in the neural network.
Edited on Nov 15, 2011 at 6:43pm