Book Review: Hive Mind
Read the original on Slate Star Codex →
Follow-up reading
↳ List Of Passages I Highlighted In My Copy Of “Hive Mind” — passages Scott highlighted · Dec 2015
Summary
A strong SSC book review of Garett Jones's Hive Mind ('why your nation's IQ matters more than your own'). Vivid exposition of Jones's thesis (national IQ predicts development via time-preference, the Window/Public-Goods cooperation games, the O-ring theory, and pro-market voting → a stationary-bandit institutions story), then three incisive Part-II critiques: (1) the 'paradox' may just be signal-to-noise/aggregation (Beware Summary Statistics); (2) THE big one — no defense against reverse causation (development→IQ); (3) how do few-player games scale to million-player countries where a shrewd-not-nice cooperator defects (presidential pillaging). Even-handed on a charged topic.
Why this score
Quality 76 · Excellent. Excellent: a lucid distillation of a hard, controversial pop-science book plus genuinely sharp, original critiques (the reverse-causation gap 'big enough to sail an oil tanker through'); comparable to the Piketty-review tier, handled even-handedly. 76.
Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Original, incisive critiques but a review of others' work, not a new frame. B52.
Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A well-cited review within the IQ/development discourse; no material reach. RWI2.