Joseph Henrich's THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS argues (persuasively to my mind) that one of the evolutionary adaptations that most contributes to human success—a thing we're *much* better at than other species—is that we're *really* good at copying behaviors that work, even when we don't know how

BDbretdevereaux.bsky.socialOct 9, 2024 2:57am

One of the responses this thread (on the Bad Place) got, a few times, ran roughly "if magic is common, magicians become engineers" or variations of that theme - the assumption that magic would be rapidly systematized by fictional pre-modern societies. And I don't think this is right. 1/

In a way it feels like a restatement of 'sufficiently advanced technology' - the difference between 'using technology' and 'doing magic' amounts to whether we (collectively, if not individually) understand the details of how the thing works, or just know how to make it do the thing.

There's a really fun study (idk whether it would survive reproducibility) mentioned in the book: you give human children & chimps a puzzle box with a treat in it. Human kids and chimps take roughly similar amounts of time to solve the box—humans are a *bit* better, but only a bit

Love that book

Like cargo cult science, but when it produces positive results instead of useless mockery?