All living things depend on knowledge. This is especially true of people, since we so obviously rely on science, culture, and technology. But, even plants and animals depend on the knowledge embodied in genes, without which they couldn’t manage the kaleidoscopic chemical complexity of even the simplest cell.

But, there was once a time when no knowledge existed - not in any book, brain, or bacterium. It all had to be created. How? Variation and selection, or conjecture and criticism (in the words of Karl Popper).

Because all knowledge-creation depends on variation and selection, it’s possible to compare knowledge-creating systems. and their differences make such comparisons fruitful. Lessons learned in one domain can be applied to others. Many questions about knowledge apply to every system that depends on or creates it. I often try to apply ideas about Minds to biological evolution, machine learning, and business, and see whether they work. They often don’t, and I learn that they are special cases of more general things which do apply in every case. The same is true of many obstacles to knowledge-creation.