I published my fourth article on medium, inspired by a presentation by Terence Taylor in a Club EvMed session. In the session I had made a comment and posed a question to Terry which I thought was worth fuller exposition.
The basic premise is closely related to the idea of cultural evolution, but was framed in a way which I believe is new: thinking about the evolution and progress of society in terms of the three criteria required for evolution by natural selection to take place (variation, heritability, and differential success).
Thinking through this lens lends some fairly novel insights into how we could optimise progress. I use the example of responses to COVID-19 in the article, but this principle extends far beyond that. It’s perhaps a little more technical than my previous articles, but I think it could be a valuable perspective for any human individual or collective, from the lone person who wants to improve their life to the business or country who wants to be competitive and quick to adapt to the challenges of the world.