The computational society

What Makes Us Smart?

“…The resulting increase of 56 billion neurons over about 2 million years were “for”—from natural selection's perspective—learning from and transmitting to others, not for individually solving problems. These neural and life history changes were alone insufficient to store the ever‐expanding body of knowledge, leading eventually to a division of information and labor (Migliano & Vinicius, 2022) and collective computation (Chater, 2022; Hollan et al., 2000; Hutchins, 1995). Crucially, our collective brains involve not just what we might normally think of as the elements of culture—tools, techniques, approaches, recipes, beliefs, and values—but also how we think and what we think about.…”