A Theory of Everyone Quotes

“Cooperation requires finding ways to suppress that selfish urge. If your policy is to rely on goodwill alone then it's a bad policy, because between selfishness and altruism, all else being equal, selfishness wins in the end. Taking advantage of others is an easier and more efficient way to gain more resources.”
― Michael Muthukrishna, A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going

“The most innovative teams are more diverse, but so too are the least innovative teams... Rather than resolve the paradox, many companies opt for monoculture, 'good fit', and diversity that really means "people who look different but still think like me'.”
― Michael Muthukrishna, A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going

“Plagiarism is bad, but not when it comes to policy, where there should be a lot more plagiarism of what works elsewhere.”
― Michael Muthukrishna, A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going

“Each of us possesses a diversity of skills, cognitive and otherwise. But the cluster of skills we consider to be constituent of intelligence or genius differ in different societies and at different times. Among the Inuit and many mobile small-scale societies, the most intelligent have great spatial ability for remembering how to get to different geographic locations. In early Christendom and the Islamic empires, the most intelligent were those who could memorize holy books. In the Renaissance it was scholars and artists. In the twentieth century it was the single-skilled artisans and mathematical geniuses. Even in our lifeime, the instant accessibility of knowledge through the Internet has reduced the value of simply memorizing large quantities of information and increased the value of sorting the signal from the noise, finding the right information, interpreting large quantities of data, and being able to focus in a highly distracting world. Many lament the loss of skills in mental math and memory, but each generation's focus has led to deficits in other areas.”
― Michael Muthukrishna, A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going

“science works because we commit to a method of discovery, there is agreement on what counts as evidence, and, most importantly, we are incentivized to show others that they're wrong. It's a collective act that slowly converges on the truth.”
― Michael Muthukrishna, A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going