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PostPosted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:21 pm 
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Are inventions inevitable?
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2142320.pdf
Quote:
Are Inventions Inevitable? A Note on Social Evolution
Author(s): William F. Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas
Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Mar., 1922), pp. 83-98
Published by: The Academy of Political Science
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2142320

ARE INVENTIONS INEVITABLE? A NOTE ON
SOCIAL EVOLUTION
IT is an interesting phenomenon that many inventions have
been made two or more times by different inventors,
each working without knowledge of the other's research.
There are a number of cases of such duplicate inventions or
discoveries that are of common knowledge. It is well known,
for instance, that both Newton and Leibnitz invented calculus.
The theory of natural selection was developed practically ident-
ically by Wallace and by Darwin. It is claimed that both
Langley and Wright invented the airplane. And we all know
that the telephone was invented by Gray and by Bell. A good
many such cases of duplication in discovery are part of the
stock of knowledge of the general reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
Quote:
The concept of multiple discovery (also known as simultaneous invention) is the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors. The concept of multiple discovery opposes a traditional view—the "heroic theory" of invention and discovery. Multiple discovery is analogous to convergent evolution in biological evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... iscoveries


https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol110/iss5/1/
Quote:
The Myth of the Sole Inventor
Mark A. Lemley, Stanford Law School

The theory of patent law is based on the idea that a lone genius can solve problems that stump the experts, and that the lone genius will do so only if properly incented. But the canonical story of the lone genius inventor is largely a myth. Surveys of hundreds of significant new technologies show that almost all of them are invented simultaneously or nearly simultaneously by two or more teams working independently of each other.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:23 am 
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Fascinating topic

How Culture Makes Us Smarter
Quote:
So, where did these things come from? To answer that question, we need to look to something bigger than our brains — and bigger, in fact, than any of us. A growing contingent of scholars argue that our “superpower” as a species is not so much our intelligence as our collective intelligence and our capacity for what’s called cumulative culture: that is, our ability to stockpile knowledge and pass it down from generation to generation, tinkering with it and improving it over time.

Cumulative culture doesn’t just gift our species technology that none of us could have invented; it literally makes us smarter. The products of cumulative culture include not only our physical tools but also a well-stocked library of what we might call mind tools: ideas and habits and rules of thumb, which we stamp into the gooey grey matter of our brains and which radically enhance our powers. Our mind tools include, first and foremost, the words and phrases of the languages we speak. Each word and each phrase is a handy little tool for thinking — a prosthetic aid to cognition, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett put it. Other important mind tools include probability theory, cost-benefit analysis, time management, financial planning, and counting to 10 when you’re angry. These tools are a lot like smart-phone apps. The more apps you download onto your phone, the more your phone can do. Likewise, the more mind tools you download into your brain, the more that you can do.

Cumulative culture makes us smarter in another way as well: It allows us to transcend the limitations imposed on us by the anatomy of our brains, furnishing us with knowledge far beyond the reach of any isolated individual. If you were to make a list of every person who’s ever contributed in any way to the vast storehouse of our knowledge, and if you were then to add up every hour they devoted to making their contribution, you’d have a rough-and-ready estimate of the number of hours it would take for one individual to single-handedly assemble all the knowledge we now possess. What kind of time period are we looking at? Probably hundreds of thousands of years, and maybe even millions. This means that, by learning about science and getting a good education, we become as knowledgeable as a person who spent thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years thinking and exploring the world.

On our own, we’re not particularly smart — certainly not smart enough to unravel the mysteries of the universe or put footprints on the moon. We’re smarter than chimps, certainly, but, as I mentioned earlier, the gap between us and them isn’t as large as we usually think. It’s a river rather than a valley. However, as a result of our ability to acquire knowledge distilled from thousands of years’ worth of thinking, each of us can understand the universe to a degree completely unmatched by even our closest animal kin. As a result of cumulative culture, we have ideas in our heads that are orders of magnitude smarter than we are. As a result of cumulative culture, we have knowledge and technology it would take a single individual millions of years to create, if a single individual could create it at all. And as a result of cumulative culture, we’re surrounded by machines and technology whose inner workings we don’t understand and could never hope to understand. Humans are chimpanzees reciting Shakespeare — dunces with the technology of geniuses.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 1:37 pm 
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Cumulative culture and explicit metacognition: a review of theories, evidence and key predictions
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0200-y
Quote:
In the current article, we examine the view, recently proposed by Heyes (2016) and Shea et al. (2014), that distinctively human cultural evolution is attributable to capacities for explicit (or Type/System 2) metacognition. Essentially, these accounts argue that an ability to explicitly reflect upon states of knowledge, ignorance, and uncertainty, can fundamentally change the ways we use and share social information, and that these particular processes account for the characteristic forward progress of human culture. In the current review, we aim to evaluate these accounts, considering the evidence for their underlying assumptions, as well as the plausibility of mechanistic routes which could potentially link individual-level cognitive processes of explicit metacognition, with population-level outcomes resembling cumulative culture.

Human cumulative culture: a comparative perspective
https://lalandlab.st-andrews.ac.uk/file ... ion200.pdf
Quote:
any animals exhibit social learning and behavioural traditions, but human culture exhibits unparalleled complexity
and diversity, and is unambiguously cumulative in character. These similarities and differences have spawned a debate
over whether animal traditions and human culture are reliant on homologous or analogous psychological processes.
Human cumulative culture combines high-fidelity transmission of cultural knowledge with beneficial modifications to
generate a ‘ratcheting’ in technological complexity, leading to the development of traits far more complex than one
individual could invent alone. Claims have been made for cumulative culture in several species of animals, including
chimpanzees, orangutans and New Caledonian crows, but these remain contentious.

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In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:19 pm 
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How have humans become such an ecologically dominant species? Humans and their livestock now comprise about 96% of all mammal biomass on Earth. So how have we managed to survive and enter this immense diversity of habitats, despite few environment-specific genetic adaptations?

Imho in his book "The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter", Joseph Henrich makes a compelling case that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains―on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. In other words it's the software, not the hardware. We culturally inherit cognitive solutions to many problems. Children and chimpanzees have very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world, but children have more sophisticated cognitive skills than apes for dealing with the social world.

Muthukrishna M, Henrich J. (2016). Innovation in the collective brain. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0192
Quote:
Innovation is often assumed to be the work of a talented few, whose products are passed on to the masses. Here, we argue that innovations are instead an emergent property of our species' cultural learning abilities, applied within our societies and social networks. Our societies and social networks act as collective brains. We outline how many human brains, which evolved primarily for the acquisition of culture, together beget a collective brain. Within these collective brains, the three main sources of innovation are serendipity, recombination and incremental improvement. We argue that rates of innovation are heavily influenced by (i) sociality, (ii) transmission fidelity, and (iii) cultural variance. We discuss some of the forces that affect these factors. These factors can also shape each other. For example, we provide preliminary evidence that transmission efficiency is affected by sociality—languages with more speakers are more efficient. We argue that collective brains can make each of their constituent cultural brains more innovative. This perspective sheds light on traits, such as IQ, that have been implicated in innovation. A collective brain perspective can help us understand otherwise puzzling findings in the IQ literature, including group differences, heritability differences and the dramatic increase in IQ test scores over time.
Muthukrishna M, Shulman BW, Vasilescu V, Henrich J. (2014). Sociality influences cultural complexity. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2511
Quote:
Our more detailed analyses of Experiment 1 indicate that learners in the five model condition learned, to at least some detectable degree, from the top four performers, though they did rely most heavily on the top performer among their cultural parents. This is important because, by drawing ideas, techniques and insights from different models, learners can end up with novel recombinations that none of their cultural parents possesses. This, in a sense, creates innovations without ‘invention’, ‘creativity’ or trial and error learning.
Culture is much more widespread than previously suspected; it's found not only in primates, whales, and birds, but even in fish, fruit flies, and bees. Amazing recent review paper by Andrew Whiten.

Whiten, A. (2021). The burgeoning reach of animal culture. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe6514
Quote:
Culture can be defined as all that is learned from others and is repeatedly transmitted in this way, forming traditions that may be inherited by successive generations. This cultural form of inheritance was once thought specific to humans, but research over the past 70 years has instead revealed it to be widespread in nature, permeating the lives of a diversity of animals, including all major classes of vertebrates. Recent studies suggest that culture’s reach may extend also to invertebrates—notably, insects. In the present century, the reach of animal culture has been found to extend across many different behavioral domains and to rest on a suite of social learning processes facilitated by a variety of selective biases that enhance the efficiency and adaptiveness of learning. Far-reaching implications, for disciplines from evolutionary biology to anthropology and conservation policies, are increasingly being explored.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 17, 2022 2:06 pm 
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Fascinating indeed
Quote:
Our more detailed analyses of Experiment 1 indicate that learners in the five model condition learned, to at least some detectable degree, from the top four performers, though they did rely most heavily on the top performer among their cultural parents. This is important because, by drawing ideas, techniques and insights from different models, learners can end up with novel recombinations that none of their cultural parents possesses. This, in a sense, creates innovations without ‘invention’, ‘creativity’ or trial and error learning.
This brought to mind this post - http://www.naturalfreedom.info/viewtopic.php?p=949#p949
(I would quote all of that post)
Quote:
Culture can be defined as all that is learned from others and is repeatedly transmitted in this way, forming traditions that may be inherited by successive generations. This cultural form of inheritance was once thought specific to humans, but research over the past 70 years has instead revealed it to be widespread in nature, permeating the lives of a diversity of animals, including all major classes of vertebrates. Recent studies suggest that culture’s reach may extend also to invertebrates—notably, insects. In the present century, the reach of animal culture has been found to extend across many different behavioral domains and to rest on a suite of social learning processes facilitated by a variety of selective biases that enhance the efficiency and adaptiveness of learning. Far-reaching implications, for disciplines from evolutionary biology to anthropology and conservation policies, are increasingly being explored.
This quote reminds me of a documentary from last year that I saw. what was it... hmmm
http://www.naturalfreedom.info/viewtopi ... 885#p48885

For some reason here I want to say this is also inter species., not just within each species, imho. I am thinking back to documentaries and papers seen in the past that document species co-operating and sharing goals/processes, with and without humans

originally stumbled into this thread of reading through artificial intelligence, machine learning and how patterns emerged within the groups. This does seem to have a wide reach.

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In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:41 pm 
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peregrinus wrote: *
This brought to mind this post - http://www.naturalfreedom.info/viewtopic.php?p=949#p949
(I would quote all of that post)
Quoting from that beautiful post
peregrinus wrote: *
This is where I disagree with Shay's comment about 2-3 teachers, I tend to feel that it is far too few, if you consider them as 'influences' and not teachers.
At this stage lots of different influences may 'open things up' by challenging some of the limiting beliefs we hold, sometimes this is necessary before being open to new ideas or concepts to remove the 'clutter' left by old beliefs and thoughts.

The problem of 'too many' only really becomes an issue if you start to 'own' their methods, take them as yours and as your beliefs, this is the core of the conflict mentioned. If you do not take ownership of their methods they are merely something floating around to be considered and incorporated into the solidifying thoughts and beliefs within you, changeable and flexible as they get molded by your other discoveries. At this time being solid and rigid will do you a disservice if you are seeking to learn and expand your thoughts and beliefs, being flexible is the key.

Then you can hone in on those which fit with your style and personality (as it develops and solidifies), knowing that you have looked at a cross section of the available influences and not ignored a lot of them along the way. You may be short changing yourself in the long run otherwise.

If you found an ego less teacher, true and pure, I am sure they would hope that their students would surpass them and go onto far greater things than they have. Is that not the real aim of teaching, to see how much further other people can go given the shortcut of your knowledge and experience, surely the aim is not to hold them back to your level forever?
peregrinus wrote: *
This quote reminds me of a documentary from last year that I saw. what was it... hmmm
http://www.naturalfreedom.info/viewtopi ... 885#p48885

For some reason here I want to say this is also inter species., not just within each species, imho. I am thinking back to documentaries and papers seen in the past that document species co-operating and sharing goals/processes, with and without humans
A must-watch documentary from the looks of it. Thanks for sharing.
Keystone species, such an interesting concept.

One thing we could do with learning from other species is controlling our weight, since humans, cats and dogs are the only species that have trouble doing so. :)

As an aside, the following tidbit helped me understand recently why rational people are so rare.

Your Brain Didn’t Evolve to Think. Here’s What It Does Best
Quote:
So your brain's most important job is not thinking. Its most important job is to run a budget for your body efficiently, so you can spend when you need to and save when you don't. Which helps you survive and thrive, and ultimately to perform nature's most important task, which is passing your genes on to the next generation.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:14 am 
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Fascinating discussions and articles, both of you.
Thanks.
I concur Serengeti rules was a great watch.
There's the book too if I recall.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:56 am 
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Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W. W. Norton & Company.
Quote:
In reality, even for the most famous and apparently decisive modern inventions, neglected precursors lurked behind the bald claim “X invented Y.” For instance, we are regularly told, “James Watt invented the steam engine in 1769,” supposedly inspired by watching steam rise from a teakettle’s spout. Unfortunately for this splendid fiction, Watt actually got the idea for his particular steam engine while repairing a model of Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine, which Newcomen had invented 57 years earlier and of which over a hundred had been manufactured in England by the time of Watt’s repair work. Newcomen’s engine, in turn, followed the steam engine that the Englishman Thomas Savery patented in 1698, which followed the steam engine that the Frenchman Denis Papin designed (but did not build) around 1680, which in turn had precursors in the ideas of the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens and others. All this is not to deny that Watt greatly improved Newcomen’s engine (by incorporating a separate steam condenser and a double-acting cylinder), just as Newcomen had greatly improved Savery’s.

Similar histories can be related for all modern inventions that are adequately documented. The hero customarily credited with the invention followed previous inventors who had had similar aims and had already produced designs, working models, or (as in the case of the Newcomen steam engine) commercially successful models. Edison’s famous “invention” of the incandescent light bulb on the night of October 21, 1879, improved on many other incandescent light bulbs patented by other inventors between 1841 and 1878. Similarly, the Wright brothers’ manned powered airplane was preceded by the manned unpowered gliders of Otto Lilienthal and the unmanned powered airplane of Samuel Langley; Samuel Morse’s telegraph was preceded by those of Joseph Henry, William Cooke, and Charles Wheatstone; and Eli Whitney’s gin for cleaning short-staple (inland) cotton extended gins that had been cleaning long-staple (Sea Island) cotton for thousands of years.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:14 pm 
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Found myself watching this, a history of the Yamaha DX7

Illustrates a lot of points from above imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXt_NXjc7oY

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In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 10:43 pm 
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peregrinus wrote: *
Found myself watching this, a history of the Yamaha DX7

Illustrates a lot of points from above imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXt_NXjc7oY
That video is really good!
I searched for the history of this synth, thanks to this man: Minoru Mukaiya (Casiopea ,Keyboardist)

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 11:49 pm 
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Oh the dx7, I've been meaning to get it.

I go with roland rs-9 and fantom g6,
dx7 would be cool extension for my side project
w/ video game music remixes 8-)

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