Brains use up a lot of energy. And big brains, like the ones you and I are supposed to have, use up an awful lot of energy. So for us humans, when we were evolving, a big breakthrough to facilitate the evolution of big brains must have been the means by which we took on new energy efficiently.

Cows are bad at it. They graze in the field, eating grass all day long. They have to because they need to eat a lot of grass, which in turn is processed very slowly to get the energy they need. Presumably they get only just more energy from the grass they eat than the energy they burn up eating it.

Predators, on the other hand, get their energy more quickly via protein. Even so, it takes them a long time to digest their food.

We, on the other hand, cook our meat, and as a result digest it faster, giving us more spare time to make things or to socialise. That is why some scientists believe the innovation of creating fire was the vital step for humans, as from that moment on we could cook our food. This enabled us to have bigger brains, which in turn meant we became even better at getting, and then cooking, our food, so there was a positive feedback loop.

But in his book, The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley says that as we began to cook our food, cooperation and specialisation became more important. It is far more efficient if we cook our food in groups rather than individually. Remember, in the days when we were living on the Serengeti, and spoke in grunts and referred to ourselves as Homo erectus or Homo habilis, (it’s always a puzzle, that one; how do we know our primitive ancestors were called Homo Habilis), we didn’t have readymade meals for one from the local Tesco, and a microwave to cook them in. So one can imagine one person may have specialised in fire, others in hunting, others in gathering.

Incidentally, there is some evidence to say it was trade and specialisation that gave Homo sapiens victory over Neanderthals. And if you are interested, the author of this article referred to this theory in his own book, Bubbles and Wisdom. See:

It all boils down to what economists call the Law of Comparative Advantage. This is the law that shows it pays to trade. Even if an individual or country is not especially good at anything, they are just not quite so bad at some things as others. In short, they have a relative or comparative advantage.

It is possible we underestimate the importance of specialisation. Not only does it mean we can all concentrate on what we are best at, meaning more output, but it also leads to innovation. The Industrial Revolution saw a virtual wild frenzy of innovation as one idea sparked off another. And by the way, don’t fall into the trap of seeing the Industrial Revolution as made of a few men who came up with good ideas. Many of the great innovations of the textile industry were down to the workers. They specialised in their particular craft and made modifications, and a few men, the likes of William Hargreaves, put these ideas together and patented them.

Ridley has little time for the current self-sufficiency craze, and provides some pretty compelling evidence to suggest that self-sufficiency is so inefficient that the carbon fuels that are burnt up as a result are comparable to the carbon fuels burnt in transporting food from one quarter of the globe to another.

Return to Why Black Swan may explain a lot, but not all