The Secret of Our Success | Joseph Henrich | Talks at Google
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited to support the view that human progress comes from networks and social learning.
What it is
Joseph Henrich's Talks at Google presentation of his book. He argues that human success comes from collective brains and cultural learning across generations rather than individual intelligence.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2018 to 2019.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ItsMe000001 · 2018-04 · on “Losing the Nobel Prize”
That is true for any discovery after the stone hand ax. A "true" discovery that can be ascribed to one person 100% instead of to a network of people working jointly in space and time (the dead are involved too!) needs that person to work without using knowledge as well as any tools created by others (in space as well as in time). Humanity is more like a brain - the secret of our success is in the connections between us (again, in space as well as in time). My own conclusion, but I found this in support: [this video] (" Henrich is professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. ") I also recommend this - and please ignore which concrete product was more or less randomly chosen, it d
Cites Karnickel · 2018-01 · on “No, machines can’t read better than humans”
if bots can produce 'worthy set of opinions' we would be totally useless Are you useless because other people write comments? What is the difference between it being a biological human and an artificial human - should we ever get that far? Apart from quality and relevance considerations I'm reminded of the situation where people open businesses that already exist, or people try to get jobs despite other people existing that are actually better. For example, why doesn't BMW stop producing cars, after all, there's Mercedes-Benz (and very close too), or vice versa. Or why is there yet another bakery. Or why do I try to get that programming job and don't even mind to admit that I'm probably not
Cites ThrowMeDown01 · 2018-11 · on “Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)”
There is more to it - the environment, and networking effects (so., the environment, which causes or prevents them). Only some of the human civilizations went all the way to the Internet, we still have people living as hunter/gatherers even today. So the advancement does not come from "inside" alone. In any case, I like to think of humanity more like a brain, human = neuron. There are huge differences, for example, the human network also extends deep in time , not just in space (we manage to "network" with our ancestors, one-way from them to us, they gave us knowledge as well as all their tools). My point is "humanity" to me is a network effect. Place any modern human, adult or baby, in an p
Cites jonmc12 · 2019-01 · on “Students learn from people they love”
In the book, The Secret of our Success, Joseph Henrich offers a perspective of cultural inheritance from evolutionary biology. How do children determine who to pay attention to? who to learn from? 1. Skill / Competence ("whose arrows hit the target?") 2. Success ("who brings back the big prey?") 3. Prestige (cues of attention, deference) - use what other people are doing - they are worthy of paying attention to 4. Age (ie, scaffold to incrementally experience) 5. Self-similarity - what might be useful to you later? - males copy males, females copy females, etc [this video] (19:22)