imitation......................

 

We learn best through other people.  Our ability to learn from each other greatly exceeds our ability to solve problems on our own. . . . "The secret to our species' success lies not in our raw, innate intelligence or in any specialized mental abilities," writes Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich.  Instead, he argues it's the ability to learn easily from the innovations of others that makes us uniquely capable as a species. . . . Imitation is the foundation for human ingenuity.

-Scott H. Young, Get Better at Anything

Beware the echo chamber..................

Taken together, these studies suggest an unnervingly plausible two-part engine of polarisation: first, given the choice, we seek out other people like us. Then, being surrounded by people like us makes us more extreme in our views and more confident that those views are correct.
Our current information ecosystem offers us more choice than ever. Alongside social media we can pick and choose from websites, podcasts and YouTube channels to reflect any interest, geography and ideology. And how do we use that choice? Generally, by seeking out people who share our views, broadcasters who seem to “get” us and, often, by avoiding news altogether.
I am wary of blaming social media for all our ills. It can be a great source of support and information, particularly for people in an unusual situation: anything from having a disability to a minority sexual orientation to a niche hobby. There is a real benefit to being able to reach out and find like-minded people.
Yet we must acknowledge the risk that we are self-selecting into echo chambers. Social media algorithms may be giving us a push, recommending content to us that drives “engagement”, the most surprising, outrageous and often toxic material. But we shouldn’t blame algorithms steering us away from serious and thoughtful exposure to different points of view. We are quite capable of choosing that for ourselves.

-Tim Harford, from here

From a defense of incidental plagiarism....

     We, as human beings, are landed with memories which have fallibilities, frailties, and imperfections—but also great flexibility and creativity.  Confusion over sources or indifference to them can be a paradoxical strength:  if we could tag the sources of all our knowledge, we would be overwhelmed with often irrelevant information.  Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and thing and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences.  It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind.  Memory arises not only from experience but from the intercourse of many minds.

-Oliver Sacks,  The River Of Consciousness, from the chapter The Fallibility of Memory

Building blocks..........................

     It's a thrilling story of invention:  the young wizard of Menlo Park has a flash of inspiration, and within a few years his idea is lighting up the world.  The problem with this story is that people had been inventing incandescent light for eighty years before Edison turned his mind to it.  The lightbulb involves three fundamental elements:  some kind of filament hat glows when an electrical current runs through it, some mechanism to keep the filament from burning out to quickly, and a means of supplying electric power to start the reaction in the first place.  In 1802, the British chemist Humphry Davy had attached a platinum filament to an early electric battery, causing it to burn brightly for a few minutes.  By the 1840's dozens of separate inventors were working on variations of the lightbulb.  The first patent was issued in 1841 to an Englishman named Frederick de Moleyns.  The historian Arthur A. Bright compiled a list of lightbulb's partial inventors, leading up to Edison's ultimate triumph in the late 1870s. [one version of that list may be found on page 38 of this pdf.]

-Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now:  Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

image via

Copycat.............................

Humans are herd animals.  We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers.  Such inclinations are essential to our survival.  For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes.  Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.  "The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives." . . .

     We don't choose our earliest habits, we imitate them.  We follow the scripts handed down by our friends and family, our church or school, our local community and society at large. . . . Often, you follow the habits of your culture without thinking, without questioning, and sometimes without remembering.

-James Clear,  Atomic Habits