I think the word you are searching for is “Culture”.
The compound interest of successful decisions applied over a wide area.
Now that's a really interesting way to look at culture. You just made me a bit smarter. Thanks.
Don't overlook that this mechanism of intergenerational knowledge transfer (culture) exists in many species, not just humans
This is the best definition I’ve ever come across for culture. Going to be stealing this.
Of course, wasps with their short reproductive cycle have already produced genius nests, via Darwinian evolution. I think what you may be talking about is Lamarkism.
One thing that stood out was: is there any difference between natural wasp nest and a human house.
For me, the answer is yes. Humans learn from previous humans. There must exist something like a genius wasp, building better nests than any wasp before it. When it dies, wasp nest quality will revert to what it was before. Not with humans, where other humans learn from the genius. You get a kind of compound interest effect, providing humans with a shortcut to evolution for learning, based on our ability to communicate.
This means the defining characteristic of humans, the part that moves us away from our natural state, is not our intelligence but our ability to communicate and store knowledge. Intelligence is a means for this, not an end.
As a corolary, the genius hiding in a back room designing genius contraptions is worth less for humanity than the less smart person sitting in the center of our relationship graph, sharing knowledge.