At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.
What's the process that's having an effect in cultural evolution as sex is having in biological evolution? And I think the answer is exchange, the habit of exchanging one thing for another. It's a unique human feature. No other animal does it....As Adam Smith said: "No man ever saw a dog make a fair exchange of a bone with another dog."In the best TED tradition, this talk is a brainy -and slightly cheeky - romp through human history, anthropology, biology, and economics.
[When Ideas Have Sex, a TED talk by Matt Ridley.]
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