The evolution of everything
author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch--the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy, Matt Ridley's wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia, or morality. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. Patterns emerge, trends evolve. Just as skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to, and termites build mud cathedrals without architects, so brains take shape without brain-makers, learning can happen without teaching and morality changes without a plan.Although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land can be released for nature--these were largely emergent phenomena, as were the Internet, the mobile phone revolution, and the rise of Asia.
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56% recommend33% neutral11% critical
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What Hacker News says
- Books by Matt Ridley:
- The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge
- How Innovation Works
- Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
- This reminds me a lot of the book The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley (author of the Red Queen). It's effectively an anthropological study that goes over how bottom-up self organizing systems occur even in human sub-cultures
- A good book on this theme is Matt Ridley's "The Evolution of Everything", which argues that social institutions are generally a lot more evolved and a lot less designed than people realise, and that we forget this at our peril.
- For anyone curious the idea that we make slow, discrete progress and that the idea that a few brilliant souls are responsible for most of the advances in human hostory is a bunch of hogwash, Matt Ridley has written an excellent book on the subject, The Evolution Of Everything (amazon.com/Evolution-Everything-How-Ideas-Emerge/dp/0062296000). Coincidentally he's also written a fabulous book on the human genome, either way it's great stuff and absolutely critical to understanding how to we can (as a species) progress most effectively.
- "The innovation process always starts with copying and in Shenzhen they are copying systematically at a scale you can scarcely imagine. A student who copies Van Gogh relentlessly may not initially understand how Van Gogh undertook original works of art. After enough copying, that same student may grasp the underlying theories and extend them into new areas."
- China is often criticized for the copying as violating IP, but one could also argue that copying and adding new changes to the copy is the lifeblood of open-source innovation and the nature of decentralized systems as well as human biological evolution. A great book that explores these ideas is 'The Evolution of Everything' by Matt Ridley. I recommend it.
"much of the “Efficiency” America has traded for lower cost manufacturing has come at the cost of our ability to bring all of the key pieces together at home."
- There is likely much truth in this statement by Andy Grove and perhaps American companies and leaders should take pause. Labor cost arbitrage in foreign countries like China and Mexico might be like a balloon mortgage for America where the costs are low upfront for some years, but then the large bill comes later.
- The significance between top-down vs. bottom-up has been compiled and showcased by Matt Ridley, in his book, "The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge." It says most of human beings are incapable of comprehending evolutionary design like free market. It's true. OP labeled markets as an example of top-down phenomenon.
