We know more than we can tell,’ said the polymath Michael Polanyi— certainly more than Beckham can tell, and even more than the highly intelligent Kasparov can tell. We drive successfully even if, like Beckham, we struggle with differential equations of motion.
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His instincts told him that each person would learn best how to improve his performance if he could see, in slow motion, what his own personal versions of excellence looked like. Really great performance often happens in a state of flow, such that we’re barely conscious of what we’re doing—Michael Jordan used to watch himself in post-game highlights and shake his head, saying, “Wow, I did that?
Therefore we know a) that the ability to learn exists in us all, b) that it shows up differently in each of us, and c) that while we can all get better at anything, none of us will ever be able to rewire our brains to excel at everything. More simply, we can all get better, and we will all get better at different things, in different ways, and at different speeds.
16. The blind watchmaker
If there is a one-line explanation of the power of obliquity, it would be: ‘Evolution is smarter than you are.’
Evolutionary models show that complex organisms— well-ordered corporations, well-functioning societies, prosperous economies— could be produced without omniscience, not that, they were produced without omniscience. So planners, business executives and political leaders who have such omniscient knowledge, or believe they do, have no need of obliquity. The rest of us, however, do.
Still, if Bengio, Hinton, and Sutskever had been sidelined by capital, the points they made remained valid. They had seen better than anyone the potential of what AI technology could be, and they had the academic credentials to prove it. If they were worried now, I felt it was worth listening to. “Right now there are ninety-nine very smart people trying to make AI better and one very smart person trying to figure out how to stop it taking over,” Hinton said.
We run faster because of the accumulation of collective knowledge about sports engineering and nutrition. With the aid of coaches this knowledge becomes collective intelligence – know that becomes know how. We eat better apples because plant species were carried across the world and because of the accumulation of collective knowledge of techniques of cross-breeding. The collaboration of Sam Mussabini and Harold Abrahams won an Olympic gold medal, and the collaboration of botanists at Washington State University, local growers and breeders and marketing and branding agencies produced the Cosmic Crisp. By accumulating collective knowledge, applying collective intelligence and practising the division of labour on a global and inclusive basis, humans have become better at ... almost everything.