Nehaveigur

The Evolution of Everything isn’t Matt Ridley’s best book, but it has sections that are among the most thought-provoking writing I’ve come across. The theme is the insight that a lot of good things aren’t created but evolve.

For example, is education important for economic growth? According to Ridley, not as much as you may think:

Alison Wolf examined the data in exhaustive detail in her book Does Education Matter?, and concluded that the answer is a surprising ‘no’ […] For decades America has consistently performed poorly in international league tables of educational achievement in school, yet performed well in economic terms.

To me, these are not arguments against education, but against making economic growth the purpose of education.

Related to the observation that greatness can’t be planned:

Economist Dani Rodrik and his colleagues tried to shed light on the impact of policy decisions on economic growth, but found that ‘most instances of economic reform do not produce growth accelerations.

Some more good quotes:

A baby cuckoo pushes the eggs of its host from the nest in order that it can monopolise its foster patents’ efforts to feed it, but nowhere has that rationale ever existed as a thought either in the mind of the cuckoo or in the mind of a cuckoo’s designer. It exists now in your mind and mine, but only after the fact.

It is the selfishness of the genes that enables individuals to be selfless

And finally this:

On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Adam and God touch fingers. To the uneducated eye it is not clear who is creating whom

Other posts on Ridley’s books: Birds, Sex & Beauty | The Rational Optimist