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Re:Understanding Growth, Part 1 by bjshepard on Saturday March 26, 2016 @07:24AM (#11365266)
Why do you assume that individual intelligence's are necessarily short-sighted in that sense? The existence of cultures as ongoing traditions of making indicates that individual intelligences are capable of participating in long-term, multigenerational endeavors....
Re:Understanding Growth, Part 1 by zdkl on Saturday March 26, 2016 @07:52AM (#11365320)
Cultures, ongoing traditions, religion etc... can be seen as a way to pass on wisdom/intelligence via affirmation to the next generations. Empirically, you could say our ancestors have internalised the notion that individual intelligence isn't enough to persist knowledge at civilisation timescales and implemented mechanisms that would overwise be superfluous (eg, recounting of legends that tell of danger, flood myths, some religious codes).

This is pushing the argument a bit, but it stands to reason that this pattern of information preserval could indicate the necessity even for an 'advanced' civilisation with forward thinking individuals to reinforce diffusion/acquisition of knowledge of little short term value but high absolute value to survival/evolution