Pagel observes that (despite pop psychological narratives to the contrary), the vast majority of people are neither creative nor inventive. Rather, the vast, vast majority of people are ultrasocial -- they copy what others do exactly as those others do them. This is known as social learning, and it is what allows human beings to live in such huge groups. In fact, if most people were in fact creative or inventive, that would undermine ultrasociality (237).
Yet, it seems obvious that humans are inventive and creative. Look at all the technology we have around us. Look at all of the art and scientific discoveries.
Yes, and look at all the outrage over the latest discoveries. Look at all the outrage over the latest styles in the arts. Look at all the complaints about technology. Most people are reluctant adopters of anything new, and are in many ways Luddites at heart.
Thus, we see the same patterns for science, the arts, and technology. We have the inventor/discoverer. Then we have the early adopters. Then, when enough people adopt it, we have everyone else adopt it -- once they see that it is good, they copy it.
The great innovations are rare. More common are social learning plus mutations, resulting in slow cultural evolution.And truly revolutionary innovations are extremely rare -- and often result in the creator/inventor becoming social outcasts for their trouble. More strategic innovators will tinker on the edges of what we have so that others will accept the new things more easily. Poetic innovations go farther with more people if you introduce them in the context of poetic forms people like and know.
Humans are, overall, very good copiers, but very bad innovators (340). He observes that in game theory models, systems with many innovators tend to do far worse than those with many copiers. The systems that survive best are those in which almost all of the agents copy and there are only one or two innovators. The copiers all free ride off of the innovators, but if that did not happen, there would not be the kinds of complex societies we find in the world. To have spontaneous orders, you need mostly copiers, with few innovators disrupting the system.
I have primarily discussed artists, scientists, and inventors as innovators disrupting things, but there is another kind who also arises: political leaders. Political leaders emerge precisely because most people are strong social learners and, therefore, followers (362). As a result,
the cooperative enterprise of society is always finely balanced between the benefits that derive from cooperation on the one hand and the benefits that derive from trying to subvert the system toward your own gain without being caught or overpowered (363)as all rulers in fact try to do. The difference between scientists, artists, and innovators and politicians is that the latter use their tendency to innovate to try to subvert the system and make it work toward their own advantage, while the former are not working so strategically, and are primarily interested in their narrow interests.
Coincidentally, there are two groups of people widely recognized as being unaffected by social pressures.
There are poor social learners, like those with autism -- whose poor social learning may allow them to be more innovative, since they don't feel the need to adapt to what everyone else is doing. Such people also happen to be rather focused on narrow interests. If this sounds like most scientists, artists, and innovators, it may not be entirely a coincidence.
Then there are the sociopaths, who are good social learners and highly strategic, like the vast majority of people, but who do not have a conscience. They work to subvert the system toward their own gain without being caught or overpowered. We see this in the cheaters of society, those who try to scam people, those who try to get power over others. Governments are full of these people. We elect them all the time.
People from either group lead the world. The rest of the world copies them and their innovations. In the case of the cultural innovators, the result is ever-more wealth for everyone. In the case of the sociopaths in government, the result is ever-more power for themselves.
1 comment:
Robustness is a strength in an unchanging world. But in a highly competitive world, or in a world where the environment is rapidly changing out from under us, robustness can become a liability.
In contrast to robusteness, there is resilience and adaptability, so as to adapt and re-optimize when conditions change. Beyond basic resilience, there is a third level of adaptation known as anti-fragility, meaning that adaptation ends up improving overall functionality and strengthening the level of any underlying robustness or resilience. Anti-fragility is sometimes expressed as, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."
Finding the right balance of robustness, resilience, adaptability, and anti-fragility is important, especially when faced with an existential crisis, competitive stresses, and a changing environment.
In a world where most behavior patterns are directly visible to the senses, mimesis (straightforward copycatting or imitation) is a realistic practice. But in a world dominated by increasingly sophisticated levels of information processing (what humans might call "deep reasoning" and what computer engineers call "algorithms") mimesis runs into a blind alley. Thinking is a learned behavior, but methods of reasoning are not directly visible, and hence problematic to the would-be copycat. The classical story of David and Goliath (e.g. brains vs brawn) illustrates this paradigm shift. Outsmarting the enemy works, in part, because the enemy is behind the 8-ball when it comes to imitating the (invisible) thinking patterns of the smarter player.
In a Darwinian world, where there are multiple competitive stresses, species and cultures which are not agile enough to adapt efficiently and evolve in a timely manner to a new (and more sustainable) level of functionality are very likely doomed. Your old-fashioned metaphor here is the canonical Flood Story, where the obsolescent models are unceremoniously washed away. (Or, if you object to traditional biblical metaphors, consider the dinosaurs who succumbed to the crisis of a giant asteroid slamming into the Yucatan Peninsula.)
In the 21st Century, we face a variety of environmental, social, political, and cultural changes that will test our ability to adapt resiliently. The most resilient, adaptable, and anti-fragile species and cultures will emerge, leaving the less adaptable varieties in the margins at best, and in the graveyards at worst.
To my mind, we need to engage more high-level systems thinking to solve the seemingly intractable problem of the looming existential crises. This is the kind of thinking that Howard Gardner calls Existential Intelligence (the Ninth Intelligence in his catalog of Multiple Intelligences).
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