Utsav

“[That] the driving force of the evolution of human intelligence was the coordination of multiple cognitive systems to pursue complex, shared goals [is called] the social brain hypothesis. It attributes the increase in intelligence to the increasing size and complexity of hominid social groups. Living in a group confers advantages, as we have seen with hunting, but it also demands certain cognitive abilities. It requires the ability to communicate in sophisticated ways, to understand and incorporate the perspectives of others, and to share common goals. The social brain hypothesis posits that the cognitive demands and adaptive advantages associated with living in a group created a snowball effect: As groups got larger and developed more complex joint behaviors, individuals developed new capabilities to support those behaviors. These new capabilities in turn allowed groups to get even larger and allowed group behavior to become even more complex.”
― Steven Sloman, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

“The human mind is both genius and pathetic, brilliant and idiotic.”
― Steven Sloman, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

“We will see that humans specialize in reasoning about how the world works, about causality.”
― Steven Sloman, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

“No one individual had one one-thousandth of the knowledge necessary to fully understand it all.”
― Steven Sloman, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone