Human intelligence largely derives from culturally inherited tools rather than individual brainpower.

Evidence

Many of both our mental skills and deficiencies can be predicted by recognizing that our brains evolved and expanded in a world in which the crucial selection pressure was our ability to acquire, store, organize, and retransmit an ever-growing body of cultural information. Like natural selection, our cultural learning abilities give rise to “dumb” processes that can, operating over generations, produce practices that are smarter than any individual or even group. Much of our seeming intelligence actually comes not from raw brainpower or a plethora of instincts, but rather from the accumulated repertoire of mental tools (e.g., integers), skills (differentiating right from left), concepts (fly wheels), and categories (basic color terms) that we inherit culturally from earlier generations. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 75

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the central thesis that cultural accumulation, not raw cognition, explains human ecological success.
• XREF: connects to: Human childhood and adolescence are specialized periods for cultural learning that other primates lack. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 216; Human success stems from culture, not individual intelligence. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 42; Individual intelligence results from culturally accumulated tools rather than raw brainpower — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 53 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• A culturally evolved tool can restructure an individual’s mental capacities #expands (0.95) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 747
• Individual intelligence alone cannot sustain human survival without cumulative cultural knowledge #corroborates (0.90) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 135
• Once cultural knowledge accumulates, individuals cannot invent better traits than they can copy #corroborates (0.88) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 205
• Individual mental distinctiveness emerges only from contact with objective culture. #corroborates (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 654
• Cultural upbringing shapes human nature far more than biology does. #corroborates (0.82) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 173
• Culture is a genetically evolved consequence of social learning adaptations. #complicates (0.80) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 139
• Intelligence is malleable and shaped by environment, not fixed by heredity #corroborates (0.75) — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 54
• Intelligence develops from environment and experience rather than genetic inheritance #corroborates (0.74)
• Social and cultural structures overdetermine our natural human constitution. #corroborates (0.72)