Podcast
The Joe Rogan Experience
This book details how human beings have evolved to have a good society, arguing that natural selection has endowed us with the capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, teaching and other positive traits. It is a counterargument to the common focus in science on the negative aspects of human nature.
I have this book or this book that we're going to talk about that is an important thing in my life and stanchiates my values. It talks about what I think is important about the world.
— Episode: #1274 - Nicholas Christakis
Episode: #1274 - Nicholas Christakis
This book details how human beings have evolved to have a good society, arguing that natural selection has endowed us with the capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, teaching and other positive traits. It is a counterargument to the common focus in science on the negative aspects of human nature.
I have this book or this book that we're going to talk about that is an important thing in my life and stanchiates my values. It talks about what I think is important about the world.
The book is about the evolutionary origins of a good society it's also a kind of response a kind of pushback to a long tradition in the sciences of attention to the bad parts of our nature.
I think the bright side has been denied the attention it deserves because we have also evolved to love and to befriend each other and to be kind to each other and to cooperate and to teach each other all these good things.
It's clear that our genes shape the structure and function of our bodies it is increasingly clear that our genes also straight shape the structure and function of our minds our behaviors whether you're risk averse uh how intelligent you are uh whether you uh have wanderlust uh these properties are properties that depend in part on your genes but it's also clear to me and that's what the book argues is that our genes shape not just the structure and function of our bodies not just the structure and function of our minds but also the structure and function of our societies and to really prove that what we would need is something known as the forbidden experiment and the forbidden experiment is an experiment in which we took a group of babies who had never been taught anything who were a cultural had no culture and stranded them on an island and left them on their own to see what kind of society they would make when they grew up.
The argument in the book is that everywhere in the world people have friendship people love their partners people cooperate people teach each other these are fundamental common principles shared by everyone even though there's also a lot of variation even in a place like North Korea.
