Posted 10 Nov 2015 / 0
This is a fascinating talk by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist situated within one of the most prestigious business schools in the world whose research focuses on morality and emotion. I can’t help but be impressed when someone addressing business concerns leads with biology, and Haidt does a good job of summarizing the “disruptive cooperation” (read: competitively-superior Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Competition, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Film, Television, & Video, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Multilevel Selection, Parasitism, Religion, Social Norms
Posted 05 Nov 2015 / 0
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The Los Angeles Times “China drops its ‘one-child’ policy, now let’s ban the ‘population bomb’” Great op-ed that makes it really clear that impact is a function of not just the number of people on the earth but also the resources those people consume (affluence) and technologies used to produce Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Belief, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Memetic Fitness, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Prediction, Public Policy, Web
Posted 02 Nov 2015 / 0
There’s a new paper out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by David W. Lawson and colleagues that looks at whether the cultural practice of polygyny is disadvantageous. It’s a question that should be fascinating to anyone who is interested in sexual conflict or cultural evolution. At first glance, polygyny appears to be Read More
A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Mating systems, Memetic Fitness, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction, Sexual Conflict
Posted 29 Oct 2015 / 1
The New York Times “China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children” This was a long time coming (see Mara’s Hvistendahl‘s great 2010 piece in Science Magazine for perspective), but the Chinese Communist Party has finally decided to replace its “one child policy” with a “two child policy”. From an evolutionary perspective, there is Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Law, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Social Norms
Posted 20 Oct 2015 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “Contagious exploitation of marine resources” This seems like a really great case study for cultural evolution: the authors describe the spread of sea cucumber fishing as an “epidemic”, but what they really mean is that the idea of economically exploiting this marine food source spread rapidly and in a Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Cultural Evolution, Resource Consumption
Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 1
Evonomics “Jeff Bezos got Darwinism all Wrong!” This is an interesting analysis of the Bezos way of doing business, which represents an oft-lauded bastardization of Darwinian theory. What I like about Wilson’s brief analysis is that he focuses back on the unit of selection that matters for a business: the corporation. Unless you naively believe Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, Human Nature, Social Diversity, System Stability, Web
Posted 13 Oct 2015 / 0
National Public Radio Morning Edition “How Riots May Help Us Understand School Shooters” This is a great example of how understanding our cultural evolution, and how we have evolved to live culturally, could allow us to solve a social problem. We need to figure out a way to break the cultural continuum from one mass Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Cultural Evolution, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts, Social Networks
Posted 08 Oct 2015 / 0
I am excited to announce that I am scheduled to speak about the tension between biological and cultural evolution at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. The title of my talk is “Highly-creative baby-breeding idea propagators: what human (re)productive choices mean for the future of our species“, and it will provide a partial overview of Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Behavior, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Parenting, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Psychology, Public Outreach, Reproductive Fitness, Resource Consumption, Sex and Reproduction, Sustainability
Posted 07 Oct 2015 / 0
NPR Morning Edition “Are Big Cities Still A Primary Engine For Scientific Innovation?” The geography that is explored in this short piece is interesting to me: proximity used to be a pre-requisite for exchanging ideas, which led to creative centers for particular industries. Now that access to information is largely decoupled from geographical location, the need Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Radio & Podcasts, Sociology
Posted 05 Oct 2015 / 1
I have written a lot of book reviews, but I have never been asked to write a book testimonial before. So I am honored to have been asked to write a testimonial for Gregory F. Tague’s Evolution & Human Culture, forthcoming on Brill. Here’s my finished testimonial for this book: Between the age-old outposts maintained by Read More
A Major Post, Art & Design, Books, Cognitive Ability, Consciousness, Cooperation, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Neuroscience, Primatology, Psychology, Social Norms
