Grow Your Intelligence

Ugh. Wired Magazine is hit-or-miss for me, but this "review" of a new book applying evolutionary theory to economic history is all miss. According to the reviewer, Eric D. Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth "jettisons the math-based canon of economic history and recasts it as a teeming evolutionary stew." Writing something like this bespeaks a decided unfamiliar with actual writing in economic history, which is pretty light on the econometrics and, actually, pretty heavy on the evolution. See Joel Mokyr's two big books, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress and The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, for some subtle economic history that's thoroughly informed by evolution - though not of the reductionist "survival of the fittest" school.

And for god's sakes, avoid saying silly things like, "Don’t grow your organization, evolve it." Don't ignore intransitivity, respect it.