List Of Passages I Highlighted In My Copy Of “The Secret Of Our Success”

A long, richly-annotated Highlights-from-a-book companion to his 'The Secret of Our Success' (Henrich) review, on cultural evolution. Passages with Scott's commentary: New Guinea pig-husbandry cultural transmission (Irakia copying the Fore'); WHY SPICES (antimicrobial cultural adaptation; chili/capsaicin/Rozin pain-reinterpretation); skin-color gene-culture coevolution (folate vs vitamin D; why the fish-eating Inuit stayed dark); status->fitness (Tsimane); the Sanhedrin youngest-judge-first norm; partible paternity & 85%-of-societies-non-monogamous (which Scott turns into a Chesterton's-Fence-at-different-scales analysis of polyamory); the Yasawa reputational-shield norm-enforcement; race-as-not-a-natural-category (ethnicity-via-accent trumps race in the Max-puppet experiment -> his 'fight racism via shared accent' crackpot); the collective-brain / population-size->technology result (Polynesian islands); culturally-invented cognitive tools (zero, the alphabet, subordinating conjunctions); language sonority tracking climate; and the cultural learning of pain (Craig's tough-model shock study). [One quoted passage leans on the now-shaky name-letter effect — Henrich's inclusion, not Scott's argument.]

Quality 70 · Strong. 70 — top of the Highlights-companion band (with ACX-659 Prison-Highlights). Unusually fascinating source material plus frequent, genuinely generative Scott commentary (the polyamory-scale Chesterton's-Fence analysis, the collective-brain link to his singularity post, the pain-learning->triggers connection). The derivative annotated-excerpt format caps it at the band top.

Claude’s paradigm shift 44 · Moderate. 44 — Moderate. The substance is Henrich's; Scott's connective insights add value but it's a reaction post.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. 2 — a companion to the review; within-discourse reach.