Ranking people by their social status seems to come naturally to us humans. Indeed, social hierarchies are ubiquitous across cultures and throughout human history. Social hierarchies have allowed humans to coordinate effectively, and enabled large groups to make decisions and address collective action problems. Whether small-scale societies or industrialised nations, one can think of various …
A defining aspect of our species' success is our unusually high levels of cooperation. In particular, our ability to cooperate with others who are not related to us.The scale of cooperation among humans is rare in the animal kingdom, and is strongly at odds with our closest primate relatives. Presented with this puzzle, scientists are …
Continue reading Competition can encourage prosocial behaviour to spread
We modern humans live in a world surrounded by ever evolving technology. Whether it's the combustion engine or the modern computer, these technologies are ubiquitous and have radically altered the world we live in. What's no so obvious is how complex the technologies of traditional societies are too. Bow and arrows and clothing are just a …
Continue reading We don’t need to understand how technology works for it to evolve
Most things are complicated, even things that appear rather simple. Take the toilet as an example. As a thought experiment, would you be able to explain to someone else how a toilet works? If you're fumbling for an answer, you're not alone. Most people cannot either. This not just a party trick. Psychologists have used several …
Dean Karnazes started his professional running career relatively late in life. As a teenager, Dean had been a top runner at his school’s cross-country team. However, the joys and demands of modern life later took hold. Karnazes went to university, got married, and pursued a business career—quickly rising ranks in his sales job. But something …
Continue reading A Virtuous Sin: An Overview of ‘Take Pride’ by Jessica Tracy
How did we evolve from small-scale societies of foragers and hunter-gathers into large-scale industrial societies, in an evolutionary blip of 10,000 years? In Ultrasociety, historian Peter Turchin advances a scientific approach to history to identify the causal mechanisms that enabled large-scale society- a strand of research Turchin calls Cliodynamics. Through quantitative analysis and modelling, Turchin …
Continue reading Cooperate To Compete: An Overview of ‘Ultrasociety’, by Peter Turchin
How have we humans become the Earth's dominant species- through our innate intelligence and our superior mental abilities? Not so, says Harvard's Joe Henrich in The Secret of Our Success. Surprisingly, primates such as chimpanzees actually eclipse humans in many forms of fluid intelligence, including working memory and information processing speed. Primates also perform better in various behavioural game theory …
Continue reading Collective Brains: An Overview of Joseph Henrich’s ‘The Secret of Our Success’
Darwinian Business 