Post by cjm on Sept 17, 2016 17:50:39 GMT
The individual does not really matter. Pushing the socialist angle
Attempts to find out which personal characteristics might explain differences among children in their ability to solve the task have so far been largely inconclusive, says Jackie Chappell of the University of Birmingham, who has worked with birds (including Betty) as well as children. “Only age and vocabulary size are predictive. One possibility is that above a certain level of intelligence, variation in innovation is mostly due to external factors, and it is useless to look for child innovators. We'll see.”
Evolutionary biologist Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia, who recently wrote a book on the role of culture in the success of our species, expects that will indeed turn out to be the case. “I think the idea that innovation depends on individual geniuses is misguided. History shows that inventions invariably build on earlier findings that are recombined and improved upon. Most of the things we use every day are inventions that no single human being could ever design within her lifetime,” he observes. “Rather than the product of individual innovators, these inventions can be thought of as the product of our societies. Innovations rely on individuals learning from others—in that way, human society functions like a collective brain.”
And to an important extent, individual intelligence measures such as IQ may be a product of this exchange of knowledge with other members of society, adds Henrich's collaborator, psychologist Michael Muthukrishna of the London School of Economics. “In this way, sociality may be the mother of invention as well as intelligence: the size and interconnectedness of society, enabling us to connect and share more ideas,” he reflects. Like van Schaik, Henrich and Muthukrishna believe that innovation should benefit from diminishing, rather than increasing, costs of failure. Says Muthukrishna: “By reducing the risk, a social safety net may stimulate innovation.”