The Evolution of Everything

The Evolution of Everything is the second book of his that I’ve read (after The Rational Optimist) from Matt Ridley. It takes on many large topics and argues that everything is bottom-up evolution, and not top-down planning (sky-hooks). He makes a convincing argument. Sometimes the topics are a bit too wide/shallow for my taste. Yet I am convinced by his main thesis, that everything organises bottom-up and that top-down planning breaks more things than it helps.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimistand Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.

The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy, Matt Ridley’s wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia, or morality. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. Patterns emerge, trends evolve. Just as skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to, and termites build mud cathedrals without architects, so brains take shape without brain-makers, learning can happen without teaching and morality changes without a plan.

Although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land can be released for nature—these were largely emergent phenomena, as were the Internet, the mobile phone revolution, and the rise of Asia. Ridley demolishes the arguments for design and effectively makes the case for evolution in the universe, morality, genes, the economy, culture, technology, the mind, personality, population, education, history, government, God, money, and the future.

As compelling as it is controversial, authoritative as it is ambitious, Ridley’s stunning perspective will revolutionize the way we think about our world and how it works.

I do also get some of the critique (that he is going way too wide with his theory). ” One major issue is the too broad definition he gives to evolution. It starts off fine, as he discusses actual evolution in the early chapters – Darwin’s theory, and DNA, and the like. He then starts to make a series of analogies later on when discussing modern issues, like economics. There is some similarity there (but I’ll get to my problems with that in a second). But later he keeps going on to anything that’s change. For example, a chapter on education contains a detailed critique of current education systems. OK, fair enough. But how is that evolution? He wants several changes made, and concludes the chapter by stating, “Let education evolve.” OK, so he’s calling for specific, deliberate changes to be made with a clear end result in mind…… And that’s evolution? As this book notes, evolution isn’t steps made toward a clear, deliberate goal. They are just gradual changes over time acting spontaneously. But he’s pushing an agenda here, and hiding behind the theory of evolution to push for specific steps to make. “

Seeing Like A State

Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott explores the mishaps of statebuilding, and more precise ‘high modernism’. It takes multiple deep dives into examples with a focus on forestry, agriculture, city building, and social organisation. These include Tanzanian villages, Russia under Lenin, and Revolutionary France.

My main takeaway from the book is that overconfidence and bad incentives, lead to bad outcomes for the population. Most (if not all) of the high modernist ideas were done with the best intentions. Yet overconfidence in ‘science’, simplification, and the knowledge of experts led to disastrous results.

What is almost always overlooked is the knowledge of the population. Where an economic planner sees chaos (e.g. curvy streets, multiple crops growing in one plot), the locals see an optimal solution to a local problem.

In the end, Scott concludes that the ideas of high modernism are a mixed bag. They have often replaced other systems that were at least as bad as theirs (e.g. hierarchy in the family, child labour, no formal education). Yet they also led to huge famines (China, central Africa), displacement and separation of families, and lost knowledge for generations.

What he also highlights is the ingenuity of the local population. This is the only thing that got many through the bad schemes that were invented from top-down.

The book is long, but the later chapters really do bring together the ideas from earlier. For anyone interested in sociology, antropology, or just how states/governments think, go have a read.

Some more notes (see other reviews here):

• States simplify, abstract away things (like a map does), but sometimes/always you miss and forget things that should be on the map/seen in the landscape itself
• The maps themselves also form the environment. This example/mental model was given at the forestry chapter, but also applies to villages in Tanzania where sometimes even a house would be moved 10 metres to be in line with the map
• One thing high modernism misses is that there isn’t one(!) goal that people want to achieve. They are complex, many goals are implicit, and interpersonal relationship make things infinitely more complex
• Jacobs is mentioned as a thinker who did see (better) how people worked together and that social trust and networks (which you can’t really see on a map) are very important
• This is contrasted against La Bourzier who did top-down planning and was one of the thinkers behind Brazilia (capital of Brazil, and you have to read the chapter to really get a feel for how weird it all went down)
• One thing that the state wants is to have legibility, to be able to ‘read’ what is happening in the country. The French wanted this 200 years ago, and still today we want this (e.g. with last names, with cadastral maps)
• So some things that might be valuable, but not legible, can get lost. One thing that might be interesting is how new technology will let us better read the ‘in-legible’ things and get value from them. One area I think people are working on is to get the implicit knowledge (networks) within organisations working better
• Another concept mentioned is ‘metis’ (taken from Aristotle). Here Scott mentions (and dedicates a chapter to it) how implicit knowledge is very valuable in many situations. This goes from the people who ride boats into a harbour to the locals who know how to save a tree from an ant attack
• Capitalism (and high modernism) wants efficiency and control. If you have efficiency without control, you still can’t get taxes and the like. This works/worked very well in a factory (Ford), or with weaving wool. But in many other cases, you still need much local knowledge
• Another interesting example is the right to work ‘strikes’. In the example used, Parisian taxi drivers followed the rules to the letter, thus grinding all traffic to a halt in Paris (ala, they were breaking many rules to do things more efficiently and arguably better)

• “Forming policy and reducing it to a statistic which does not accurately represent the whole. States have had an interest in making society ‘legible’ – that is, making complex patterns easily understood. The results of these plans are chaotic, even with the best of intentions.”
• “Now all of these schemes have a broad philosophical outlook in common, which Scott calls ‘High modernism’ – the belief that technology and bureaucratic planning could solve problems, and that desk planners know how to best organize human society. A design which looks simple and pleasing on paper leads to unforeseen side effects.”
• “Scott emphasizes the fact that some form of genuine representation must take place in the ordering of society, so that those with practical experience will have a say in how the way society is ordered. A theory can be very pretty, but it must be challenged by questions, facts, and practice.”

Also see this review of Against The Grain (a prequel of sorts)