The leading explanation for human adaptability is individual improvisational intelligence
Evidence
The most common answer is that we are simply more intelligent. We have big brains with ample cognitive processing power and other souped-up mental abilities (e.g., greater working memory) that allow us to figure out how to solve problems creatively. The world’s leading evolutionary psychologists, for example, have argued that humans evolved “improvisational intelligence,” which allows us to formulate causal models of how the world works. These models then permit us to devise useful tools, tactics, and stratagems “on the fly.” In this view, an individual faced with an environmental challenge, say hunting birds, throws his big primate brain into overdrive, figures out that wood can store elastic energy (a causal model), and then goes on to craft bows, arrows, and spring traps to get those birds. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 71
Categorization
- XREF: Henrich is staging the individual-intelligence view he will rebut via social learning; relevant background for the conformist-bias developmental claim. — connects to: Individual intelligence results from culturally accumulated tools rather than raw brainpower — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 53; Human improvisation is regulated by historically situated conditions — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 2147; Human evolution selected for learnability and behavioral malleability, not fixedness (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Human evolution selected for learnability and behavioral malleability, not fixedness
#corroborates(0.85) - Humans were evolutionarily selected for learnability, not behavioral fixedness
#corroborates(0.85) - Cultural learning skills drove rapid human adaptation across all habitats
#contradicts(0.82) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 125 - Human cumulative culture emerges from evolved domain-specific cognitive adaptations for social learning
#contradicts(0.80) — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 16 - Human improvisation is regulated by historically situated conditions
#qualifies(0.78) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2147 - Individual learning from environmental cues does not always yield the adaptive behavior.
#complicates(0.75) — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 35 - Collective intelligence exceeds any individual’s without erasing individual expertise
#complicates(0.74) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 552 - Humans adapt to a room’s spatial cues through learning over hundreds of trials
#complicates(0.72) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1508