Alas, Pagel spins a just-so story that is conveniently and charmingly free of reference to historical facts. For example, he ignores the fact that innovation sped up, intensely and supra-liearly, as the number of individuals in a society increased. Agrarian clans and then kingdoms allocated surplus food to specialists, rewarding them for talent and expertise, sometimes in accurate correlation to their effectiveness at innovation.
Competitively striving to attain that status, youths who became scribes, blacksmiths, tool-makers, engineers and priests must have achieved enhanced reproductive ability almost equal to the feudal lords who soon dominated every society. Hence, a proclivity for nerdiness would increase... though not quite in pace with an ever-rising tendency toward oligarchy. ________________________________ From: Pat Mathews <mathew...@msn.com> To: Brin List <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Sat, December 17, 2011 6:03:00 AM Subject: RE: Brin: Infinite Stupidity "Prone to fads" defines every urbanized civilization I've ever heard of, and tribal societies are less given to innovation that he thinks, because the traditional lore is a store of highly specialized local knowledge about conditions whose changes are well understood. Even the odd once-in-a-lifetime events can usually be answered by consulting one of the elders or grandmothers. It's my guess that innovation is the hallmark of an expanding or frontier society where all bets are off and great benefits can be had from it. Or in borderlands where cultures interact. Because a lot of what he describes as "docile copying" and getting our information from the society at large can also be interpreted as "it is not rational to reinvent the wheel!" Unless it's not working for you. And there is the other condition for innovation - to be subject to a clumsy procedure or machine and grit your teeth and mutter "Bad design. VERY bad design. I could do better." And be able to do it. In which case all that culturally accumulated knowledge is there to serve you. http://idiotgrrl.livejournal.com/ > Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 06:54:29 -0600 > From: evil.ke...@gmail.com > To: brin-l@mccmedia.com > Subject: Brin: Infinite Stupidity > > Edge never fails to disappoint. > >http://edge.org/conversation/infinite-stupidity-edge-conversation-with-mark-pagel >l > > --- > "It’s cheap to maintain Lies and expensive to maintain Trvth." > --KZK's Maxim > > _______________________________________________ > http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com >
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