:Analogies for Sustainable Development/Social learning as collective brain

“ Innovations don’t require a particular innovator anymore than your thoughts require a particular neuron in your brain. ” — Michael Muthukrishna

Quote Bank

Heylighen (2000):

“the technological revolution has produced a global communication network, which can be seen as a nervous system for this planetary being. As the computer network becomes more intelligent it starts to look more like a global brain or super-brain, with capabilities far surpassing those of individual people”

Muthukrishna & Henrich (2016):

"innovations, large or small, do not require heroic geniuses any more than your thoughts hinge on a particular neuron. Rather, just as thoughts are an emer- gent property of neurons firing in our neural networks, innovations arise as an emergent consequence of our species’ psychology applied within our societies and social networks. Our societies and social networks act as collective brains. Individuals connected in collective brains, selectively trans- mitting and learning information, often well outside their conscious awareness, can produce complex designs without the need for a designer—just as natural selection does in gen- etic evolution. The processes of cumulative cultural evolution result in technologies and techniques that no single individ- ual could recreate in their lifetime, and do not require its beneficiaries to understand how and why they work"

Rosenbaum (2014):

“Just as it is hard to tell where ideas come from in the neural population of a brain, it is hard to tell where an idea comes from in the population of people on the planet.”

“There needn’t be (and probably isn’t) a specific site where new ideas are formed. Rather, the formation of new ideas (and the destruction of old, not-very-useful ideas) is likely to occur everywhere in the neural jungle and, for that matter, all the time.”

Wilson (2007):

“It is difficult to think of ourselves as neurons in a group brain, but that is precisely what we must do to fully understand what it means to be part of a dispersed group organism.”

Further Resources

Muthukrishna, M., Shulman, B. W., Vasilescu, V., & Henrich, J. (2014). Sociality influences cultural complexity. Proceedings. Biological Sciences / The Royal Society, 281(1774), 20132511.

Analogies for Sustainable Development