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0 pointsinglor_cz13d ago0 comments

I am not sure whether we can call Ancient Athens or Early Modern Italy "high trust". Both were pretty warlike, though - another source of innovations.

The fact that wars tend to result in extremely quick innovation cycles (both out of fear of losing and from usual bureaucracy being shoved away) is quite nasty ethically, but cannot be wished away.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia are high-trust societies, but they have done more drone development in four years than the entire world together in forty.

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miroljub13d ago

> I am not sure whether we can call Ancient Athens or Early Modern Italy "high trust". Both were pretty warlike, though - another source of innovations.

The class that brought most of the innovations, citizens of Rome or Athens, a privileged ruling class, had a strong in-group honor system. The rest of the society was not so, but they were so divided that those other parts didn't even count.

inglor_czOP12d ago

Pashtuns in Afghan mountains have a strong in-group honor system and they are one of the least technologically developed societies in the world. So were many Early Medieval societies, where honor was the only valuable quality a noble person could possess.

Meanwhile, Early Modern Italy (Renaissance) was notoriously treacherous and, at the same time, very mentally productive.

When I skim across societies and ages, that correlation does not seem to be there.

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