Matt Ridley
When ideas have sex - Cultural Trade
Through history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, the mating of ideas. In this video, Ridley swims through the political and geographical factors which has developed and improved over a life span and asks how this was possible, how ideas have interchanged and interweaved, and how ideas have sex. He discusses through the combination and acculmination of human reproduction and how it parallels with the development of technology and therefore ideas.
He believes that sex, specifically sexual reproduction which contrasts with asexual reproduction -it eliminates the weaker gene allowing the other to triumph over and pass most of its genes to its offspring- "enables the individual to draw upon the genetic innovations of the whole species". This, he states, has a strong relationship with the cultural evolution and the exchange in it. It is our habit of trade, sharing ideas and exchange which improves living standards on a rise. The sophistication of the modern world, says Ridley, lies not in individual intelligence or imagination. He sweeps the entire arc of human history to powerfully argue that "prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else". This, he says, "holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead -- because ideas are having sex with each other as never before."
He believes that sex, specifically sexual reproduction which contrasts with asexual reproduction -it eliminates the weaker gene allowing the other to triumph over and pass most of its genes to its offspring- "enables the individual to draw upon the genetic innovations of the whole species". This, he states, has a strong relationship with the cultural evolution and the exchange in it. It is our habit of trade, sharing ideas and exchange which improves living standards on a rise. The sophistication of the modern world, says Ridley, lies not in individual intelligence or imagination. He sweeps the entire arc of human history to powerfully argue that "prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else". This, he says, "holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead -- because ideas are having sex with each other as never before."
“You need to understand how human beings bring together their brains and enable their ideas to combine and recombine, to meet and, indeed, to mate. In other words, you need to understand how ideas have sex.”
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