IN EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT, BEING FIRST DOESN’T MATTER – ONLY BEING FASTEST. (W

IN EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT, BEING FIRST DOESN’T MATTER – ONLY BEING FASTEST.

(Why is MENA so far behind since 1000ad?)
RE: Egypt.
But they stagnated for thousands of years, and once they encountered the sea people (Europeans), they never recovered.

It doesn’t matter who is first. It matters only who is the fastest. Anyone can stumble on a technology, but the measure of a society, polity, or civilization is its application to evolutionary velocity – not its discovery.

This is the least intuitive and most important evolutionary law that is most difficult to teach people today, precisely because of the many traditions we have of ‘being first’ because ‘being first’ is a contribution of innovation to the commons.

However, the rate at which one can recursively innovate, adapt and evolve the commons determines the impact of the discovery or innovation, and who was first is largely irrelevant.