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Jan 4, 2022Liked by Rohit Krishnan

First suggestion: Make a discord server.

Second: I know I might have kicked this off around here, but I think more collaborative, or at least mutually responsive efforts would be productive.

Third: Meetups? Maybe?

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Don't you think you over-value the economic benefit that innovation and bright individuals bring? Ideas, ideas, ideas... they seem necessary for prosperity in academia and intellectual social networks. I don't want to be a new year's party pooper, but you might be very biased because of worship of the intellect.

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Possible. Though most of it doesn't talk about intellect but the problems of building an org around ideas. And I'd rather err on its side than its counterpoint, no?

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Hard for me to believe we over-value innovation but I wonder if you have ever read Heinrich's The Weirdest People in the World. I might give you some additional insight. Here is a paragraph you might like:

"But, research in cultural evolution suggests that there are two much more important factors. First, the larger the population of engaged minds, the faster the rate of cumulative cultural evolution. That is, the larger the network of people learning or doing something, the more opportunities there will be for individuals to produce improvements, whether through fortuitous inspirations, lucky mistakes, careful experiments, or some combination. Second, the greater the interconnectedness among individuals—among learners and their teachers over generations—the faster the rate of cumulative cultural evolution. Put differently, the greater the diversity of teachers, experts, and others that learners have access to, the more selective they can be in whom they learn from and what they learn. A well-connected learner can “invent” new things simply by copying skills, practices, or ideas from different experts and then recombining these, intentionally or accidentally. Innovation can emerge even in the absence of conscious invention—a process that was probably the primary driver of cumulative cultural evolution over much of our species’ evolutionary history."

Henrich, Joseph. The WEIRDest People in the World (pp. 436-437). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

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