The Secret of Our Success

Formal education is, after all, primarily an institution for intensive cultural transmission.

The central finding of this experiment, that people are inclined to copy more successful others, has been repeatedly observed in an immense variety of domains, both in controlled laboratory conditions and in real-world patterns.8 In experiments, undergraduates rely on success-biased learning when real money is on the line—when they are paid for cor

Techniques such as cooking actually increase the energy available from foods and make them easier to digest and detoxify. This effect allowed natural selection to save substantial amounts of energy by reducing our gut tissue, the second most expensive tissue in our bodies (next to brain tissue), and our susceptibility to various diseases associated

While natural selection traded strength for fat, increasingly complex tools and techniques drove another key genetic change: the human neocortex sends corticospinal connections deeper into the motor neurons, spinal cord, and brain stem than in other mammals. It is the depth of these connections—in part—that facilitates our fine dexterity for learne

This imaginary ancestral primate crossed a crucial evolutionary threshold as it entered a regime of cumulative cultural evolution. This threshold is the point at which culturally transmitted information begins to accumulate over generations, such that tools and know-how get increasingly better fit to the local environments—this is the “ratchet effe

Making fire is so “unnatural” and technically difficult that some foraging populations have actually lost the ability to make fire. These include the Andaman Islanders (off the coast of Malaysia), Sirionó (Amazonia), Northern Aché, and perhaps Tasmanians. Now, to be clear, these populations couldn’t have survived without fire; they retained fire bu

For example, suppose long experience fishing will tend to cause anglers to prefer the blood knot to other potential knots (for connecting monofilament line) because the blood knot is objectively the best. However, individual experiences will vary, so suppose that long experience alone leads to only a 50% chance of an angler converging on the blood

most people are still not particularly great teachers, especially of complex tasks, concepts, or skills, so cultural evolution has produced a wide range of strategies and techniques adapted for more effectively transmitting particular types of content, such as judo, algebra, or cooking. This is one way cultural transmission increases its own fideli

One classic set of experiments shows that children acquire the performance standards by which they are willing or unwilling to reward themselves.3 Children saw a demonstrator rewarding himself or herself with M&Ms only after exceeding either a relatively higher score in a bowling game or a relatively lower score. The children copied the rewardi