The Secret of Our Success Quotes

“For many Westerners, “it’s natural” seems to mean “it’s good.” This view is wrong and comes from shopping in supermarkets and living in landscaped environments. Plants evolved toxins to deter animals, fungi, and bacteria from eating them. The list of “natural” foods that need processing to detoxify them goes on and on. Early potatoes were toxic, and the Andean peoples ate clay to neutralize the toxin. Even beans can be toxic without processing. In California, many hunter-gatherer populations relied on acorns, which, similar to manioc, require a labor intensive, multiday leaching process. Many small-scale societies have similarly exploited hardy, tropical plants called cycads for food. But cycads contain a nerve toxin. If not properly processed, they can cause neurological symptoms, paralysis, and death. Numerous societies, including hunter-gatherers, have culturally evolved an immense range of detoxification techniques for cycads. By contrast with our species, other animals have far superior abilities to detoxify plants. Humans, however, lost these genetic adaptations and evolved a dependence on cultural know-how, just to eat.”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“The case I’ve presented in this book suggests that humans are undergoing what biologists call a major transition. Such transitions occur when less complex forms of life combine in some way to give rise to more complex forms. Examples include the transition from independently replicating molecules to replicating packages called chromosomes or, the transition from different kinds of simple cells to more complex cells in which these once-distinct simple cell types came to perform critical functions and become entirely mutually interdependent, such as the nucleus and mitochondria in our own cells. Our species’ dependence on cumulative culture for survival, on living in cooperative groups, on alloparenting and a division of labor and information, and on our communicative repertoires mean that humans have begun to satisfy all the requirements for a major biological transition. Thus, we are literally the beginnings of a new kind of animal.1 By contrast, the wrong way to understand humans is to think that we are just a really smart, though somewhat less hairy, chimpanzee. This view is surprisingly common. Understanding how this major transition is occurring alters how we think about the origins of our species, about the reasons for our immense ecological success, and about the uniqueness of our place in nature. The insights generated alter our understandings of intelligence, faith, innovation, intergroup competition, cooperation, institutions, rituals, and the psychological differences between populations. Recognizing that we are a cultural species means that, even in the short run (when genes don’t have enough time to change), institutions, technologies, and languages are coevolving with psychological biases, cognitive abilities, emotional responses, and preferences. In the longer run, genes are evolving to adapt to these culturally constructed worlds, and this has been, and is now, the primary driver of human genetic evolution. Figure 17.1.”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“The results reveal the power of prestige: when the gold-starred player had the opportunity to contribute money first, he or she tended to contribute to, and thus cooperate in, the joint effort, and then the following player—the low-prestige person—usually did as well. So, everyone won. However, when the low-prestige player got to contribute money first (or not), he or she tended not to contribute to the joint project (not cooperate), and then, neither did the high-prestige player. Even”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“[Evolutionary selection pressures for general communication] explain why humans are peculiar in having our rather small irises set against a white background—the sclera—in our eyes. Anyone watching us can infer where we are looking or whom we are looking at. Experiments with apes and infants show that apes watch the orientation of the heads of others while human infants watch the eyes.”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“Skilled readers are probably worse at identifying faces, since jury-rigging the relevant brain areas impinges on the fusiform gyrus, an area that specializes in face recognition. In fact, the well-established neurological asymmetry in face processing, favoring the right side of the brain, may be due to the effects of learning to read, which drives face processing out of the left side and shifts what it can to the right side.5 I was personally glad to hear this, as I now have an excuse for why I forget faces so often—I’ve recycled some of my facial recognition neuronal firmware to support my reading addiction.”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“Paternity certainty captures the notion that, in some species, males have to worry about whether they are the genetic father. All other things being equal, the more paternity certainty a male has, the more willing he will be to invest in his mate’s offspring. In many primates, including chimpanzees, females mate promiscuously, so males usually have little or no idea who their offspring are, and they don’t care much.10 Even in pair-bonding primates, male investment is pretty minimal, such as in gorillas, where males act only to protect their mates and their offspring from other males. By reinforcing pair-bonds, marriage norms can make better fathers, and failing that, they can make more fathers,”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“The innate psychological foundation of marriage is a long-term pair-bonding instinct, which humans appear to share with some other apes, including gorillas and gibbons, as well as with some monkeys. This instinct can be thought of as a potential strategy, which may be deployed depending on the context. We don’t have to pair bond (it’s not like peeing), but it’s one of the things we’ll be inclined to do under some circumstances. The term “pair-bonding” is often confused with notions of monogamy. It’s important to realize that pair-bonding does not imply monogamous mating. Pair-bonds form between dyads, but a single individual can have multiple pair-bonds. Gorillas, for example, often form long-term pair-bonds with multiple females at the same time. In humans, both historically and cross-culturally, individuals often pair-bonded and married more than one other person at a time—85% of human societies permitted polygamous marriage in some form. Here, pair-bonding refers to enduring, or at least not ephemeral, relationships between mates.”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter