My review of The Evolution of Everything is here. I end my review with a series of questions.
If ideas emerge from the “adjacent possible,” how is it that some rare individuals thousands of years ago were able to anticipate ideas that only began to penetrate our culture in the late 18th century, when Adam Smith published his most important works? And why does the idea of evolution continue to face so much resistance today? As Ridley points out, on the one hand there are many religious conservatives and others who insist that biology comes from design, not from evolution. And there are many on the left who insist that economic well-being comes from government planning, not from markets. Are those of us who see decentralized evolution as superior to central planning forever doomed to be in the minority? Or is it possible to envision evolutionary progress on that front as well?
Yes its a great book, and I liked your review.
I hadn’t considered your point about State evolution potentially leading to greater authoritarianism – on which point I do think that in fact we would have “more state” if it wasn’t for things like the Laffer curve, the way that firms game regulations, the fact that increasing taxes sometimes don’t increase revenues, the general inability for the economy to grow as planned in some cases, and the failure for fiscal stimulus to, well.. to stimulate. If these examples didn’t hold then there’s no question in my mind that we would have a great deal more State than we currently …enjoy.
Certainly here in the UK it doesn’t really seem to me that the state has somehow shrunk since the war say. The Left would have me believe that we live in some sort of neoliberal, laissez-faire, capitalist wild-west.
Anyway, enough uncharitable thoughts. It’s a good book, worth a read.
Nice review. I agree that Ridley seems a little incoherent on innovators. It is not that geniuses don’t do what we think they do or that we don’t need them — rather it’s that among billions there are necessarily many geniuses, so the contributions of a single one are unlikely to be irreplaceable. And perhaps the ‘adjacent possible’ shouldn’t be taken to mean that ideas are unthinkable before their time so much as being unimplementable (like Da Vinci’s helicopter) or likely to vanish without notice (like Patrick Matthew’s description of the mechanism of natural selection published decades before ‘The Origin of Species’).
“Are those of us who see decentralized evolution as superior to central planning forever doomed to be in the minority? Or is it possible to envision evolutionary progress on that front as well?”
But haven’t we seen evolutionary progress in our lifetimes? Isn’t ‘unaffiliated’ the fastest growing religious group in the U.S.? And as statist as modern American progressives can be, doesn’t it still seem hard to imagine them imposing anything like Nixon’s wage and price controls? Or, say, bringing back the ‘Civil Aeronautics Board’ to dictate airline routes and fares?
” Isn’t ‘unaffiliated’ the fastest growing…”
Man, I was hoping you were going to say “political groups.”
Well I didn’t say it, but it also happens to be true:
http://ivn.us/2015/07/06/poll-independents-will-soon-outnumber-republicans-democrats-combined/
“[T]here are many religious conservatives and others who insist that biology comes from design, not from evolution. And there are many on the left who insist that economic well-being comes from government planning, not from markets.”
Ridley “points out” quite badly here.
This is a false analogy. In the first case, they are attributing the design of all things to an omniscient being, a God who really does know everything, and so could create a design that satisfied His plans perfectly (not that we would necessarily know what those plans were from the inside of that design). There is no Hayekian “knowledge problem” even possible here within the meaning of the terms. Chance and evolution could not conceivably design things “better” and the Creator would have a true and complete authority to design and direct His own creation.
In the government/market case though, criticisms based on the knowledge problem are there precisely because no person or group of persons could know what they needed to know to accomplish what they are attempting to design–they are “playing God.” Criticisms on liberty question their authority as men to preference their designs before the designs of the men they are attempting to direct, again, “playing God.”
From either direction, the analogy is a horrible fit, since God cannot “play God.” In fact, so bad a fit I would say it utterly collapses as an analogy and is basically nonsensical.
Umm, you don’t think they both stem from a psychological need to feel that “someone” is in control of complex systems? Actually, whether you think so or not is immaterial. It’s a reasonable point of congruence, so hardly nonsensical. In both cases, spontaneous order is uncomfortable to some people so they try to ascribe specific agency to outcomes.
“why does the idea of evolution continue to face so much resistance today”
It confronts the transient nature of our current existence.
The main difference is that evolution of life forms is supposed to arise from unintelligent forces while the evolution of economic well-being arises from the interaction of intelligent agents.
Darwin uses the results of breeding by intelligent, purposeful humans to analogize to the unintelligent forces driving evolution of species.
I have had discussions with folks who don’t trust the evolution of markets because they incorrectly interpret ‘survival of the fittest’ to mean only the strongest (rather than most suited for the environment) which then makes the strongest the oppressor on the oppressor/oppressed axis. And they expect government to ‘level the playing field’ for the ‘weak.’
I’ve found that a start with them is to discuss what they think ‘survival of the fittest’ means and then what it actually means.
The real question is why evolution is so rarely used. I think the answer is it is very costly and if it can be sidestepped as it generally is within firms, it is, but at too large scales of complexity, evolution becomes cheaper.
Let’s say I created stochastic computer simulation. I set up two bacteria and the rules to breed and die. Now at epoch 10^6 I observe some colony. The question is was my colony a result of evolution or intelligent design? And a more interesting one: “Has one/some/many of my creatures scientific way to know this?”