• for: stone age code, similar to - Ronald Wright - computer metaphor, evolutionary psychology - examples, evolutionary paradox of modernity, evolution - last mile link, major evolutionary transition - full spectrum in modern humans, example - MET - full spectrum embedded in modern humans

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  • evolutionary paradox of modernity
    • modern humans , like all the living species we share the world with, are the last mile link of the evolution of life we've made it to the present, so all species of the present are, in an evolutionary sense, winners of their respective evolutionary game
    • this means that all our present behaviors contain the full spectrum of the evolutionary history of 4 billion years of life
    • the modern human embodies all major evolutionary transitions of the past
    • so our behavior, at all levels of our being is a complex and heterogenous mixture of evolutionary adaptations from different time periods of the 4 billion years that life has taken to evolve.
    • Some behaviors may have originated billions of years ago, and others hundred thousand years ago.

• Examples: humans embody full spectrum of METs in our evolutionary past

  • fight and flight response
    • early hominids on African Savannah hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago when hominids were predated upon by wild predators
  • cancer
    • normative intercell communication breaks down and reverts to individual cell behavior from billions of years ago
      • see Michael Levin's research on how to make metastatic cancer cells return to normative collective, cooperative behavior
  • children afraid to sleep in the dark
    • evolutionary adaptation against dangerous animals that might have hid in the dark - dangerous insiects, snakes, etc, which in the past may have resulted in human fatalities
  • obesity
    • hunter gatherer hominid attraction to rich sources of fruit. Eating as much of it as we can and maybe harvesting as much as we can and carrying that with us.
      • like squirrels storing away for the winter.

The WHY of a credentials ecosystem map

Noteworthy that the recommendations for quality prioritize 1) The granularity of documenting learning outcomes; and 2) that credentials use standards that can be independently verified and validated.

Transparency is an equity issue. Adding common language and richer data on skills and competencies to credentials means: * More data about courses/module * Learning outcomes from those modules * Connect to evidence of achievement * Refer to occupational standards/competency frameworks

Clearly, the LinkedIn recommendations use case is an example of one of these initiatives. It has not succeeded in creating strong social signals anchored in trust models. We are wise to consider what's missing from efforts like this. An even greater concern however, and one that I believe is an essential if we are to realize the transformative potential of digital credentials, is how to design social signals built on trust models that help all people. In a world long-governed by "it's not what you know, it's who you know," the social signals and trust models are overweighted in favor of people with connections to other people, organizations and brands that are all to some degree legacies of exclusionary and inequitable systems. We are likely to build new systems that perpetuate the same problems if we do not intentionally design them to function otherwise. For people (especially those from historically underserved populations) worthy of the recommendations but lacking in social connections, how do they access social recommendations built on trust models?

Transparency about the assessment procedure for determining if an learner has earned a credential adds trust to the credential.

Fascinating: alternative issuers have a built-in advantage yet take the path of emulating traditional issuers' processes. This gifts time to traditional issuers to adapt and erase that advantage by including more granular metadata. Will they?

A big part of the WHY that too many issuers do not address. Authoring metadata with the consumer in mind will give our Earners a competitive advantage.