César Hidalgo > César's Quotes

“The allocation of the best jobs, just like that of the best apartments, tends to piggyback social networks.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“Technologies that change society are technologies that change interactions between people”
― César A. Hidalgo

“Schooling is certainly not a great proxy for knowhow and knowledge, since it is by definition a measure of the time spent in an establishment, not of the knowledge embodied in a person’s brain.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“economy is the collective system by which humans make information grow.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“Products augment us, and this is a great reason why we want them.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“This figuring-out step is crucial, since overly optimistic economic models have often assumed that demand and incentives are enough to stimulate the production of any product. Incentives work to motivate intermediaries and traders, but makers, who are the ones that provide the substance of what is traded, need more than an incentive to make something. They need to know how to do it.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“The only connection between Chile and the history of electricity comes from the fact that the Atacama Desert is full of copper atoms, which, just like most Chileans, were utterly unaware of the electric dreams that powered the passion of Faraday and Tesla. As the inventions that made these atoms valuable were created, Chile retained the right to hold many of these atoms hostage. Now Chile can make a living out of them. This brings us back to the narrative of exploitation we described earlier. The idea of crystallized imagination should make it clear that Chile is the one exploiting the imagination of Faraday, Tesla, and others, since it was the inventors’ imagination that endowed copper atoms with economic value. But Chile is not the only country that exploits foreign creativity this way. Oil producers like Venezuela and Russia exploit the imagination of Henry Ford, Rudolf Diesel, Gottlieb Daimler, Nicolas Carnot, James Watt, and James Joule by being involved in the commerce of a dark gelatinous goo that was virtually useless until combustion engines were invented.10”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“As the parts that made the Bugatti were pulled apart and twisted, the information that was embodied in the Bugatti was largely destroyed. This is another way of saying that the $2.5 million worth of value was stored not in the car’s atoms but in the way those atoms were arranged.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“A society built entirely out of rational individuals who come together on the basis of a social contract for the sake of the satisfaction of their wants cannot form a society that would be viable over any length of time. —FRANCIS FUKUYAMA”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“entropy is always lurking on the borders of information-rich anomalies,”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“In his 1995 book Trust, he argues that the ability of a society to form large networks is largely a reflection of that society’s level of trust. Fukuyama makes a strong distinction between what he calls “familial” societies, like those of southern Europe and Latin America, and “high-trust” societies, like those of Germany, the United States, and Japan. Familial societies are societies where people don’t trust strangers but do trust deeply the individuals in their own families (the Italian Mafia being a cartoon example of a familial society). In familial societies family networks are the dominant form of social organization where economic activity is embedded, and are therefore societies where businesses are more likely to be ventures among relatives. By contrast, in high-trust societies people don’t have a strong preference for trusting their kin and are more likely to develop firms that are professionally run.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“The results reveal the power of prestige: when the gold-starred player had the opportunity to contribute money first, he or she tended to contribute to, and thus cooperate in, the joint effort, and then the following player—the low-prestige person—usually did as well. So, everyone won. However, when the low-prestige player got to contribute money first (or not), he or she tended not to contribute to the joint project (not cooperate), and then, neither did the high-prestige player. Even”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald