Introducing Ideas Was a New Form of Evolution

The ability to choose among ideas, retaining the good ones and discarding bad ones is sometimes called our capacity for culture. If i can observe other people's innovations, i don't need to be innovative myself. I can simply take my pick of their best ideas, rather than attempting to create something on my own. Our capability to recognize a good outcome when they see it and to copy how that outcome was obtained can produce technological progress without our species having any insight at all. And this will be true even if these other attempts are edison like, no better than random. This is a long way from being the wise man.