The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

But big brains and imitation and language are not themselves the explanation of prosperity and progress and poverty.

humans are almost obsessively interested in faithful imitation.

is nice, but it does not lead to ecological world conquest.

ape-man to an ever-expanding progressive moderniser

But then the list of features unique to aardvarks or bare-faced go-away birds is also fairly long.

the list of features suggested as unique to human beings is long indeed.

psychologist Daniel Gilbert

It cannot just be that I have a bigger brain than other animals. After all, late Neanderthals had on average bigger brains than I do, yet did not experience this headlong cultural change

no parrot could begin to grasp. I am definitely different. What is it that makes me so different?

peculiar, non-random arrangements of atoms called technologies, which it invents, reinvents and discards almost continuously.