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Alan talks with David Sloan Wilson, renowned biologist and author, to explore the broader applications of Darwin's theory beyond genetics to cultural and personal evolution. Wilson argues against conflating evolution with Social Darwinism and highlights cooperation as a crucial trait for societal progress. He emphasizes the need for experimental and inclusive decision-making and discusses how failure drives improvement, the impact of cultural interventions, and the role of religion in fostering community. Wilson also critiques traditional economic models and explains his aim to integrate evolutionary science into global cooperation.     Guest Bio David Sloan Wilson is a distinguished evolutionary biologist with a doctorate from Michigan State University. His impressive academic career spans institutions such as Harvard University, the University of Washington, and the State University of New York Binghamton, where he is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus. David founded the Evolution Institute and co-founded the nonprofit ProSocial World, including the New Paradigm Coalition Initiative. He is an award-winning author known for his influential works, including This View of Life, Evolution for Everyone, The Neighborhood Project, and his novel Atlas Hugged. David's research and writing explore the applications of evolutionary theory to society and culture.     Show Notes (2:21) - What the evolution paradigm is (4:22) - How the evolution paradigm is seen in cultures and how it differs from Social Darwinism (6:56) - The special conditions necessary for the evolution paradigm to be effective (11:51) - The importance of a common goal for cooperation to work when people have conflicting opinions (14:11) - How failure is handled under the evolution paradigm (16:16) - Applying the evolution paradigm to education (26:17) - How the evolution paradigm applies to faith and religion (37:13) - How the cooperative approach works when it comes to national economics (39:20) - How individuals express themselves when they don't agree with the larger group (44:07) - Wilson's novel, Atlas Hugged   Links Referenced ProSocial World: https://www.prosocial.world New Paradigm Coalition Initiative: https://www.prosocial.world/community/new-paradigm-coalition This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/This-View-Life-Completing-Revolution/dp/1101870206 Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way we Think About Our Lives: https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Everyone-Darwins-Theory-Change-ebook/dp/B000OI0GCA The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve my City, One Block at a Time: https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Project-Using-Evolution-Improve-ebook/dp/B0047Y0FHS Atlas Hugged: https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Hugged-David-Sloan-Wilson-ebook/dp/B0C3GCWVMQ  Email: mailto:hello@prosocial.world  

Tim Stubbs, founding Director of WolfPeak, a strategy and environment consultancy, joins us on this episode of "For Love & Money." Tim would much rather be surfing than working, but with bills to pay, he and co-founder Steve Fermio set up WolfPeak to grow a profitable company doing work they believe in. WolfPeak is committed to doing good. With his training as an environmental engineer and being a people person, Tim naturally focuses on the intersection of environment, engineering, and people, exploring how these elements can come together to improve our world. The theme of today's episode is “Starting Point.” Tim challenges the traditional approach of prioritising business and economic growth, which often forces environmental and human considerations to fit around these priorities. Instead, he invites us to consider an alternate perspective: understanding the constraints of human beings and the environment as the natural starting points and then asking how business can fit into that. How would our behaviours and actions change if these were our starting points? This conversation with Tim was thought-provoking, drawing on his diverse knowledge sources. My hope is that this interview might open new perspectives for you as it did for me. In our discussion, Tim shares his views on the traditional business approach that prioritises economic growth at the expense of environmental and human needs. He argues for a perspective shift, suggesting we start by understanding the constraints of humans and the environment, and then figure out how business can fit within these limits. He discusses the valuable lessons from Aboriginal culture, where contribution is valued over material wealth, and highlights how understanding interconnection is crucial for grasping the implications of our actions. Tim shares a personal project idea for his children's school, illustrating the long history of Aboriginal occupation in Australia compared to European settlement, underscoring the depth of knowledge we could gain from Australia's First Nations people. Tim talks about the risks of greenwashing and purpose-washing by businesses, advocating for thorough understanding of business impacts to build credibility and foster innovation. We discuss the growth of impact-driven startups as examples of how businesses can drive societal improvement. Introducing WolfPeak, Tim describes their work with government and corporate clients, and their involvement in Aboriginal projects, such as the Eden Land Council's Bundian Way walking track. He shares an inspiring story about an ancient hunting ritual involving collaboration with Killer Whales, emphasising the value of cultural learnings. Throughout the interview, Tim reflects on cultural evolution, drawing insights from his Aboriginal friend Les and David Sloan Wilson's book "This View of Life." He encourages an open mindset to let opportunities find you, rather than actively seeking your starting point. Tim concludes by sharing a story about walking through the Argyll Cut with a group of natural resource scientists, highlighting the fascinating history that can be read in the rockface. He hopes listeners take the time to reflect and perhaps adjust their perspective a little.   Connect with Tim Wolf Peak website Tim Stubbs Linkedin profile  

This View from the Cab segment is brought to you by the North Dakota Soybean Council. Ken Hellevang, Professor and Agricultural Engineer at NDSU, offers some expert advice on storing soybeans.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This View from the Cab segment is brought to you by the North Dakota Soybean Council. Dr. Sam Markell Professor and Plant Pathologist at NDSU discusses more about the Soybean Cyst Nematode Sampling Program.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Neste segundo episódio, Ed Sousa e Gustavo Rodrigues comentam sobre as divergências entre ciência e religião na contemporaneidade. Tópicos deste episódio: - Charles Darwin; - Evolucionismo x Criacionismo; - Um ancestral comum; - Posicionamento da Igreja; - Organização x criação ex nihilo; - Albert Einstein; - Deus segundo Spinoza; - A “Carta de Deus” de Einstein; - Stephen Hawkings; - Para “embelezar e dar variedade” - Conselho no céu para a Criação; - A Terra é plana? Referências: 1. What have LDS Church leaders taught about Charles Darwin? (josephsmithfoundation.org) 2. Organic Evolution (churchofjesuschrist.org) 3. Evolution and the Gospel: Seeking Grandeur in This View of Life | Religious Studies Center (byu.edu) 4. Gordon B. Hinckley citado em Elaine Jarvik; "Beliefs on Darwin's evolution

Joe Allen has become a mainstay on our War Room screens over the last few years, his understanding of how technology is negatively affecting our lives and his analysis of how we push back is second to none. The rise of AI, nano technology, genetic experimentation, biometric payment systems, digital ID and digital currencies are all new technologies that are creeping into our everyday lives. Who controls them? What is their purpose? Do we have a choice to opt out? How are governments planning on using these to control their citizens? Joe answers all of these questions as he takes us into a new reality that is marching towards artificial general intelligence. Joe Allen is the is Transhumanism editor at War Room: Pandemic. He is a fellow primate who wonders why we ever came down from the trees! Joe studied religion and science at the University of Tennessee and Boston University and writes about ethnic identity, transhuman hubris, and the eternal spiritual quest. His work has appeared in The Federalist, ColdType, The American Thinker, The National Pulse, This View of Life, The American Spectator, IBCSR: Science on Religion, Disinformation, and elsewhere. Follow Joe at.... Substack: https://joebot.substack.com/ GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/JOEBOTxyz Twitter: https://twitter.com/JOEBOTxyz?s=20 War Room: http://warroom.org/ Interview recorded 12.4.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share! Transcript [0:22] Joe Allen, thank you so much for joining us on Hearts of Oak today. Peter, very glad to be here. Thank you very much. Not all. I know many of our viewers will have seen you regularly on War Room as a transhuman editor. What does it take to be a transhuman editor? How did that end up? You've being in the War Room. Tell us about that. You know, well, transhumanist or transhuman, although I would say this, Peter, that I think transhuman editor might be most accurate now. Part of the gig obviously is a 24-7 screen time. So I think that my cyborg status is pretty much solidified at this point. You know, Steve reached out to me just a little over a year ago, just like two years ago, And I'd written an article about the transhumanist quest, to upload for the Federalist. And I'd been writing a series of articles about technology that dipped into transhumanism quite a bit. He got a hold of that article about transhumanists and their desire to upload their souls and liked it. And it was quite odd. I don't wanna get too long into the story, but a friend of mine who had tipped me off to the War Room some year or so prior to that. [1:49] He had tipped me off to the War Room. I watched it. I watched an interview with Steve on PBS. It was this long, uncut interview with Lester Holt. And I was like, man, I've got to get a hold of this guy, Steve Bannon. And, but the way it works, you don't just call up Steve Bannon. And no one I knew had his contact. So I just put it out of my mind. I roamed across the country during the pandemic, ended up in Montana. And that same friend about a year later tells me that Steve gave me a shout out on the war room. And I thought, what? And it wasn't two weeks or three weeks after that that I checked my Twitter DMs, which I never ever did at the time. It was a different handle. [2:34] And there was Cameron, the producer, asking if I would come on the show. And so, but it was already too late. Got back to him, went on the show. Steve asked me if I'd like to join the war room that day. And here I am. It's always interesting who connects you, to me. It was just Miller giving credit to who connected me with Steve. What Steve does with the War Room is phenomenal and he is a machine in terms of production, in terms of knowledge, in terms of what he pushes out. Yeah, love watching you on that. I think you're on Charlie Kirk recently as well, a few days ago. I mean, yeah, that's right.   Absolutely brilliant. But if we, you can, for the viewers, you can obviously find you at JoeBotXYZ on the GETTR and on Twitter. Obviously, he has his Substack account. All the links are in the description. And that's just JoeBot.Substack.com you can find there and sign up to his regular wisdom. But I probably, Joe, when I think of transhumanism. I think the most powerful men in the world, Sleepy Joe, Supreme Court judges, don't know who women are, Elon Musk. And I'm thinking maybe transhumanism would be an improvement. [3:57] You know, I wouldn't deny that. In many ways, I think that if the world was run by a Satanist cabal, at least they would have a plan. So yeah, it's interesting. Probably the most famous proponent of transhumanism, at least in elite circles, is Klaus Schwab. And I think people just, they really dismiss Schwab oftentimes because he tends to speak, and he and his co-author write in vacant corporate platitudes for the most part. But I do think that he's smart enough to know which way the wind's blowing. And the wind is definitely blowing in the direction of holding up technology as the highest power. And so really, I think his fourth industrial revolution in 2016 was in many ways a kind, of clarion call to the world that this is the way we are going. And some of it is him looking around the scene and evaluating it. Some of it is his own enthusiasm. He has this really strange, naïve enthusiasm for transhumanist technologies. [5:16] That represents a really, really important moment in Western history and perhaps world history because of the open declaration that technology will be the way forward, not political ideology, and in their view, certainly not religious ideology, but technology. [5:38] Well, let's maybe delve into the most relevant transhumanist technologies. You've got a number of things will be on people's radar, nanotechnology, you look at mRNA and that ability, your digital ID, I guess, world governments, institutions tracking us, monitoring us, you could chat, GBT has a lot of headlines recently. And when people talk about kind of most relevant transhumanist technology, how do you kind of start unpacking that? [6:12] It can get complicated, but to break it down as simply as possible, two categories have to be distinguished there, one being technocracy, ruled by expert, and in its more modern form, ruled by expert through science and technology. And then on the other end you have transhumanism itself, which is in some ways separate from that. They overlap a great deal, but it is ultimately two separate, these are two separate movements. That Patrick Wood put it best, I'll paraphrase him, as technocracy is to a society, transhumanism is to the individuals within that society. I think that really does encapsulate the overlap quite a bit. [7:05] So when you talk about something like digital identification or digital currencies, central bank digital currencies, these I would say fall more under the category of technocracy. It's more of a way of organizing a society. It's a social structure based on technological systems of control. And on the other side, you've got transhumanism. And this is much more of, I would say, a kind of spiritual quest on the part of the people who are involved. You could say that it is many decades old. You know, the term transhumanist coined by Julian Huxley, 1956, I've got an essay collection, New Bottles for New Wine, and the opening essay was a lecture in 1956 entitled Transhumanism. He isn't really talking about technology so much in this though. He's more talking about how science will transform human beings. [8:03] He's hinting at technology, but for the most part, he grounds it in science. And of course, technology by and large emerges from the scientific method and mathematical deduction. So it fits, but it really wasn't until the 80s or so that you started seeing a lot of people take on this term transhumanism as a description of using technology to transform the human being. FM 2030 I think was probably the first major figure, but then Max Moore, a philosopher, was probably the one who put the stamp on the term transhumanism in this realm. So relevant technologies. I think the most relevant, especially now, artificial intelligence, creating a digital brain. The belief being that artificial intelligence will have limitless memory. Artificial intelligence will be able to scrape over basically unlimited data, as much data as you can feed into it. [9:08] And of course, it's going to have better pattern recognition than human beings. It's going to be able to pick out patterns in that vast amount of data in a way that no human being would be able to. It's gonna be able to do it at really, really fast speeds, right? So human brain operates on neurochemical processes, artificial intelligence computers in general, that processing moves at the speed of light. So there's a religious idea behind it that artificial intelligence is becoming and will become a sort of God to human beings. How do you merge yourself with that God? How do you reap the benefits and blessings of that God? Descending from there, you've got robotics. Which requires artificial intelligence for sophisticated systems of control. [9:58] You also have brain-computer interfaces, so that could be anything from these screens that we're speaking through, and I think that is a valid interpretation, hence my transhuman editor label. And then you've got the non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, It's kind of skull caps that read the brain in increasingly great detail. They don't require implants. Some of them, they're planning to roll out, different corporations are planning to roll out sort of AirPod-like brain computer interfaces or small bands that fit on the back of your head used for anything from monitoring employees' mental states to controlling actual computer systems. Nita Farahany is probably the leading expert on the non-invasive brain computer interface, if your listeners would like to look into it. But then of course you have the implanted brain computer interface. You got three major corporations working on that. [11:01] Neuralink, which has yet to get FDA approval. You've got a hole cut out of your skull, chip put in, about 1,024 wires or more if they can get them into the brain, those read the brain, and then allow the human being to project thoughts into a computer system. At the moment, there's not really any input. They've been able to do muscular movements and other things, but for the most part right now, the technology is only output. And so any input would have to come in through the traditional method, visual audio. And then two other corporations though, that are right now implanting their brain computer interfaces in human brains. You've got Synchron out of Brooklyn. [11:49] And Synchron is instead of drilling a hole, you send a kind of stent, an electronic stent up the vein into the brain at the jugular. And it sits within the vein and is able to read the neurons around it. I don't know what their count is, probably something like six, seven, eight, less than 10 if I'm not mistaken. But they have implanted them and people who are locked in, who've had strokes, things like that, are basically being experimented on with the intention of Tom Oxley, their CEO, hopes that eventually that technology will be able to be used to throw your emotions to other people. Kind of hive mind-ish idea. And then you've got BlackRock Neurotech invested in by Peter Thiel, and they're based out of Utah. And again, a different sort of technology, the way it works, you get it under the skull on top of the brain. It's a micro electrode array patch that sits on top of the brain. [12:58] I think that they have around 36 patients that are currently implanted with that technology. And again, it allows them to operate robotic arms. It allows them to translate their thoughts into text on screen, things like that. Moving down from there you have the sort of biological, Neurological and biological [13:22] technologies so the the neurological technologies this kind of feeds into the brain-computer interface is just [13:30] transcranial stimulation whether it's magnetic or whether it's kind of a a sonogram of, sorry, What's the word I'm looking for? Using sound waves anyway, sorry, I blanked on the very common term. But you use the stimulation to do various things, change mood, change the ability to concentrate, those sorts of things. And then, of course, you have the implanted version of them. There's like 160,000 of those, and those range from everything from eliminating Parkinson's tremors to eliminating depression, oddly enough. [14:10] And then I think the most famous and the thing that really captures people's imagination, genetic engineering. Genetic engineering has been a thing for quite some time. The first real genetic engineering projects come out of Stanford in the 70s. But with the advent of CRISPR, basically a molecular complex found in E. coli, CRISPR-Cas9, that was really discovered, I would say, 2011. It was kind of a piecemeal discovery process. [14:42] But now CRISPR is used for all sorts of things. And the advantage of CRISPR is that it allows the geneticist to go in and spot edit the genome. So initially it was to cut out nucleotides in a faulty gene to shut the gene down. But now they're able to actually cut out and insert corrective nucleotides to change the gene, to correct the gene, to heal disease. And the goal going forward for a lot of people, not everyone by any means, but for a lot of people, the goal going forward is to use that to enhance human beings, to give us greater intelligence, to give us greater strength, and you know, whatever else may be desired. Beauty. Mood, temperament, all those sorts of things. So that hopefully gives your listeners a roadmap, artificial intelligence, robotics. [15:41] Brain-computer interfacing, neuro-enhancement, and genetic engineering. Two questions. One, obviously, one argument on this is this is just technological advancement. This is just humans bettering themselves. But then another part of that, when you mentioned some of those things, you realize that it is, much of it is very much about the person. It's not technology at arm's length, but actually people may not have control or the ability to decide yes or no that it will happen because it's on the person as opposed to a phone that you can pick up and set down if you can't actually pick it up and set down because it's part of you. But what are your, one, that this is just technological advancement, but then the flip other side that maybe humans will not be able to decide whether or not they're part of this. It's a thorny topic for a lot of reasons. One, a lot of transhumanists argue for a morphological freedom, right? So guys like Max Moore, guys like Zoltan Istvan, they talk about it in terms of freedom. It's the freedom to be able to alter one's body or use technologies in any way they see fit, even if it puts off the rest of us in normal human society. [17:03] Then you have the more kind of implicit totalitarianism that you see in the singularity prophecies, right? So Ray Kurzweil being the most famous, it's just the idea that these technologies have always increased in complexity and effectiveness at an exponential rate. Then that exponential curve will continue until it reaches basically vertical, basically infinite advancement. He calls this a singularity at which technology is completely out of human control and the technology is making all the decisions. And he predicts 2045 is the date we'll hit the singularity. [17:43] And so the implicit totalitarianism there is that not that these guys are creating technologies to control everyone, the idea there, and they never own up to it, but this is definitely there. The idea is that you're creating a technological system that is inescapable and a technological system that has ultimately the final say in whatever sort of state that human psychology or human society is in. And so, even if you don't believe in something like that, even if you don't believe something like that's possible, to the extent that ideology is driving the people making the technologies and is also kind of hypnotizing the public with this technophilia, you end up in a situation where whether the singularity comes or not, whether anything like that happens or not, you have a kind of techno-religion that sees, really the rise of artificial intelligence, nano robotics and genetic engineering as this sort of second coming or the realization of God. And I really do fear, Peter, that a lot of people are so enamoured by it that the effectiveness of the technology won't be as important as the social and psychological effects. Now moving over into the more totalitarian, like openly totalitarian end of it. [19:10] In the West, people really don't talk like that. Even Klaus Schwab, if you read his writing or really listen to what he's saying outside of the small snippets, and certainly if you listen to Yuval Noah Harari to any length, neither of them are talking about creating a digital dictatorship. Schwab sounds more like it than Harari. Harari, if you read Harari carefully or even just read him at all, or listen to him carefully or just listen to him at all. You hear him over and over again, warning that these technologies are a recipe for digital dictatorship, right? So this idea of hackable humans, yeah, he's very unsentimental and he's very hostile to religion. He mocks religion a lot, so it's very off-putting. But what he's talking about is the rise of the scientific paradigm in which human beings, don't have free will. It's a scientific paradigm that holds that our decision-making process is nothing more than the bubbling up of neurochemical processes, and that with sufficient surveillance technology, your phone being a big one. [20:19] Sufficient surveillance technology allows governments and corporations to monitor your behaviours and as he would put it, to know you better than you know yourself. Then they're able to manipulate the population en masse, and they're able to target individuals for direct psychological manipulation. And because of this belief that free will is an illusion, people won't even realize that they're being manipulated. They will think they're making their own decisions. Now where you do see a sort of overt application of this, you see it in China. China has you know, they're they're really it's unclear how advanced their artificial intelligence is, it's unclear how advanced their genetic engineering projects are but they have far fewer ethical constraints on, genetic engineering and they have, [21:15] basically, no real ethical constraints that I'm aware of on the development of artificial intelligence up to artificial general intelligence now, Really is officially speaking neither do we in the West? But for China, the real advance they have made in artificial intelligence is in surveillance technology. And so of course in any major city in China, you've got wall to wall surveillance sensors. And those are more and more starting to incorporate biometric sensors, biometric analysis of video footage or other biometric data, including genetic data. And so China, I think, represents kind of an overt expression of what we're talking about when transhumanism meets totalitarianism. And it's very chilling because more and more people at the World Economic Forum, including Klaus Schwab, seem very amenable to the Chinese model. And more and more, I think, people in America implicitly are embracing something like the the Chinese model. [22:21] Obviously one of the, just before we want to move on some of the individuals involved, but one of the headlines I think which you reposted was a zero hedge headline, 1st of April. The headline was unprecedented Chinese genetic experiment may lead to an army of radiation resistant super soldiers. They talk about Frankenstein like experiments with manipulation of human DNA. I guess the danger is that somewhere like China, you say it doesn't have restrictions, but also it doesn't have a sense of the individual, where in the West, the individual makes their choices and they can choose yes or no, where in China you don't have that ability. When you have stories like that out of China, it makes you wonder what else is happening, but in a country that doesn't have those controls and doesn't have those personal individualistic controls, then it's frightening where that can go, I guess. Yeah, I think that is a great example of two things. One, the sort of distracting over sensationalization of what's going on. It was an experiment. [23:31] It was an experiment on human embryos. Basically, they're fusing, they're injecting or stitching water bear genes into human genes, right? Of water bears and those tiny little microscopic creatures that I guess look like bears. They look more like some kind of monstrous doodle bug to me. But the idea then being that because water bears are resistant to radiation, these resulting humans would also be resistant to radiation. One of the things that I covered and looked into quite a bit was the creation of human monkey chimeras in China. [24:09] This was done in partnership with the Salk Institute in California, but the human monkey chimeras, basically a chimera is taking two different types of stem cells, right, two different species or multiple species stem cells and fusing them together to create a sort of hybrid creature. This has been done a lot in mice, but this was, these were human stem cells blended with, I believe it was macaque monkey stem cells and we're chimpanzee, whatever. And they let them grow until like 30 days, then offed them, right? Mass abortion basically. [24:51] And another great example, Ha-Xiang Hui, the Chinese geneticist, in I believe it was 2018 announced that he had created the world's first, at least known, CRISPR babies, a pair of twins whose father was HIV positive. So he went in and used CRISPR to alter their, it's a gene that is responsible for the enzymes on cellular membranes, a defensive enzyme that would give them immunity or at least resistance to HIV. He was of course imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party after all of the global ethical outrage. Many would say and I think it's probably correct that the reason they imprisoned him is mainly because he bragged about it not because he did it. But, anyway, I think that in many ways the, in the same way that killer artificial intelligence is a is a diversion from the real dangers of just minimally powerful artificial intelligence or social control or surveillance. And in the same way that an implanted brain-computer interface kind of distracts attention away from the real human-machine symbiosis that occurs through our relationship with smartphones and other digital devices. In that same way, the focus on this idea of horrific mutants, [26:16] such as a human monkey chimera, or a part human, part water bear nuclear war super soldier, A, it's very unclear whether any of those creatures would ever develop into anything anyway, right? More than likely, they would just die as the genetic monsters that they are. But even if that was done, you're talking about a tiny minority of people We'll take another 10 to 20 years to really see what the realization of that means, What's more important? I think is something like the vast experiments done on the human population with mRNA injections, That alone is enough to give us pause. You know, it is terrified about half of us and [27:02] for very very good reason it has completely hypnotized seemingly the other half of us, which is also extremely alarming. But I really think that it's the extreme ends of these technologies It's very important to look at them because that tells you where they want it to go, but for the immediate, for right now for the present time. I think that the most important thing to look at is these these more mundane experiments being done on the whole on whole populations such as the mRNA injections such as as human smartphone symbiosis, and such as AIs like the chatbots, the chat GPT. Well, let's get into it. I want to talk about some of the individuals. I was saying actually what are the vision guiding these technologies, but the vision comes with the individuals. And of course, you've got Bezos with Amazon One, Sam Altman, who I actually hadn't come across until you put out the article about the biometric world ID. Someone like Jeff Bezos, us on the right on the conservative side, or we don't like. But then you've got Peter Thiel, you've got Elon Musk, and then there's confusion because they're pushed towards some of these technologies. So, I mean, give us a, you've touched on some of the figures, but maybe touch on some of those who are some of the key individuals pushing some of these technologies? [28:30] You know, since you mentioned them and none of them, none of the ones you've mentioned other than Peter Thiel are open transhumanist and even Peter Thiel now basically says transhumanism is a kind of a past, it's a fad that has passed. And in some sense he's correct because transhumanism was a very localized school of thought that whose ideas influenced a lot of people. And now you wouldn't call it transhumanism. You would call it the fourth industrial revolution, or you would call it the internet or you would call it bio-digital convergence, something like that. So just going across that spectrum and I'll just go from left to right. You would say, and I don't think that left and right really don't apply here because what you're talking about is an orientation towards a higher power technology and it really does cross the political spectrum. There's every reason for people on the right to want to use these technologies as there is for people on the left. So. Bill Gates, though, I think is at least most associated with kind of left-wing thinking, even if he's not really a leftist in any meaningful way. [29:36] He is probably, he's been the most resistant to publicly espousing transhumanist goals, right? He's more and more moving in that direction, especially with the release of the GPT technology. But, you know, for him, it's always this sort of latent thing. He's much more focused on the immediate so far as I can tell and he's also to me the most condemnable of all those individuals because of all the influence that he's wielded to [30:05] force these technologies on people in a technocratic fashion moving over to Jeff Bezos, you know, There are a lot of reasons that Jeff Bezos has gone under the radar because he is, He like gates. He's not been all that outspoken but just look at three different aspects of his career, four different aspects, sorry, four. Number one, the entire Amazon structure is technocracy personified, right? So a fulfillment center is a top-down control structure built off of algorithms and some advanced artificial intelligence that either employs robotics to do the work or it turns humans into kind of human algorithm symbiotes. So people literally sit around all day on their phones taking direction and they're monitored and artificial intelligence scrapes up that data to figure out how to make the system more efficient. It is without a doubt, the most effective digital super organism that exists on the planet, or at least among the maybe military grade super organisms are more powerful. Second, his entire infatuation with going out into outer space and... [31:22] At one point he was speaking at the National Cathedral. He talked about how maybe in one vision of the future, most people would live in outer space and Earth would remain as a sort of national park for them to visit on occasion, which is utterly inhuman and horrific to most normal people. But it just basically went without comment. A few people were like, oh my God, that sounds horrible. This billionaire is talking about putting us on space ghettos and keeping Earth for themselves. Well, I mean, that's our guy right there, right? And so the whole thing with Blue Origin with a penis-shaped rocket and the Amazon smile with a penis-shaped smile, I think it does in many ways represent the kind of masculine underpinning of transhumanism in the entire kind of technological endeavor. But also, he's invested in Altos Labs in conjunction with Yuri Milner. And Yuri Milner is much more openly transhumanist. He wrote a manifesto, I can't remember the name of it, talking about human life, giving away to Silicon Life. But Altos Labs is dedicated to human longevity through genetic engineering. Peter Thiel also involved in this. Obviously Bill Gates involved in this. Most of these, Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google also involved in this. Very, very, very popular among the billionaires. [32:41] But as you mentioned, Amazon one. Here you're talking about really this kind of pop beast system, wherein Amazon customers, now Panera Bread customers, also Whole Foods customers using their palm biometrics in order to pay for things and identify themselves. I think that that is going to be a much more popular way of implementing what Christians would call a beast system because a lot of people fetishistically implant RFID chips for that purpose. That is really unnerving to a lot of people. Whereas if you take that away entirely and just have a biometric scan, it's much more amenable to the general population. I don't know what the numbers are yet for the customers, but I do know that it's many dozens of stores this is rolled out in so people are using it. Moving over to the right though, you've got Elon Musk who is everything but an open transhumanist, right? He he espouses all of the transhumanist values without ever using the term transhumanism It's very very common ploy, right? So everything from the idea that artificial intelligence will achieve this godlike state to, the only way that human beings will be able to survive in such an environment is to link our brains to it to friendly AIs through an invasive brain computer interface, which he's working on. [34:04] He's also working on artificial general intelligence with Tesla AI and one would imagine that, he has and will be using Twitter data for the same purpose, right? He didn't need to buy Twitter for that, just by the way. Twitter has always offered Firehose API for people who want to data mine Twitter. The only thing that really gives you is 24-7 fire hose access and also access to the DMs other than that a lot of people are training their a eyes on Twitter or have been, [34:36] interestingly musk has cut that off anyway, and then also you know musk and his obsession with going and living in space This is a recurring theme of transhumanist to get off of Earth and become the sort of multi planetary, species and The creation of the robot optimist would be another great example example, the rollout of autonomous vehicles is another great example. I mean, at that point you've got an infrastructure that controls you as much as you control it or maybe more. And so it's really interesting this way in which he's captured the hearts of the right, mainly because he's cool, he's funny, and he at the moment is so anti-PC or anti-woke that there is a certain alignment there. And I appreciate all he's done in that direction, but to me, his long-term vision of the future is more important than the short-term favors he might have to offer. And then moving to the farthest right, Peter Thiel, much more openly involved with these different transhumanist movements. [35:42] What is it called? The Methuselah Foundation, he's invested in heavily. A number of other sort of longevity start-ups he's invested in. He was very interested in Ambrosia, which was, was they've shut down operations now because of threats from the FDA. But Ambrosia is a process. They use the process of parabiosis. They would inject young people's blood into older people to give them more vitality. And of course, Peter Thiel founded Palantir. [36:13] Which even if they're not working on artificial general intelligence, their AI systems are among the most sophisticated in the world. And they're used to, uh, to really apply real world power through the military and through the security state in general. And so on and on, again, as I mentioned, Peter Thiel was an investor in, originally investor, an investor in Neuralink, now a major backer of BlackRock Neurotech brain computer interfaces. So, you know, across the spectrum, one last thing, actually, if I may, One last thing about Peter Thiel that's also really interesting. Of all those people I just mentioned, he is also explicitly religious in his outlook. And so Peter Thiel is oftentimes written about Christianity and the relationship it has with technology. And maybe the most important essay that I'm aware of personally is an essay that was published at First Things, Christian magazine, the title being Against Edenism. [37:21] And in that he argues there's no going back to Eden of Genesis, there's only going forward to the city of God in Revelation. And so Christians need to use these technologies to defend, to bolster and defend their civilizations, to create a sort of kingdom of God on Earth or some approximation of the city of God on earth, and city of heaven on earth. [37:50] To me, I think that it's a kind of gross perversion of what the Christian doctrine is. I mean, not that there's any single Christian doctrine. I know many of your religious listeners might take umbrage with that statement, but the sort of general orientation of Christianity is towards a higher spiritual realm and is at least disinterested in the outcomes of the physical body, this technological obsession is obsessed with physical outcomes. So Thiel is also interested in that way. Aside from funding all these kind of Christian Republican candidates, he also uses Christian mythology in order to push a kind of technocratic or transhumanist point of view. Can I pick some of the names? The whole chat-GBT thing. I know Peter Thiel and Elon Musk were involved in the beginning and then Microsoft came along and put in billions and seemed to have taken that partially as their own and then the whole letter from 1800 opposing, the move of AI in general. But I mean I'm Gen X so it did take my older son to show me the South Park episode about chatGBT and then I thought I have to get up to get up to speed. But I guess people just see that as [39:20] helping society, making your life easier. It doesn't seem too invasive. It's just [39:27] for lazy people, they can use that. And how does that kind of fit in? Because chat GPT has been very much in the media recently. ChatGPG set off a social atom bomb. It's just really insane. On the one side you have all these people who have embraced it. On the war room we've really focused on guys like Hans Monk at Epic Times who is very enthusiastic about it as being a way to break the left. And then of course Jordan Peterson. People really got mad at me, but he does sound like a real wiener when he's talking about it being smarter than you are. Are and oh Elon Musk is going to save us. Sorry for your Jordan Peterson fans but I find him to be very off-putting. Anyway, they talk about it as kind of this god-like entity in some sense. And then on the other side, which is really, really interesting, on the other side you've got guys like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Elon Musk and Yuval Harari and Max Tegmark. All of them, transhumanist basically, with the exception of maybe Harari. I know a lot of people would wonder why I would say that, but I don't see him as being a transhumanist in any meaningful way. Anyway, all of these transhumanists are saying that this represents a profound danger to human civilization. So why would they say that? It's a chatbot. It's nothing but a chatbot, right? [40:55] And the real reason, there's two major reasons, right? One, the unexpected capacities that GPT technology, has exhibited, the sort of general knowledge that it's able to put out on the basis of, you know, nothing more than a neural network, right? Like you're just talking about an artificial brain that exists in a virtual system, but because of its size and the scale of the data it was trained on, it surprised everyone. GPT-3 surprised everyone. GPT-3.5 or chat GPT really surprised everyone as they flooded the public with it and people started having these very, personal interactions with an artificial mind and that was really important before they put on the safety layers people oftentimes say oh AI is just woke, Initially it wasn't just woke before they started putting the safety layers on it. It was actually [42:03] unbiased hence the enthusiasm that people like Hans Monk and Jordan Peterson had for it and [42:09] GPT-4 has really stunned people because it's starting to edge towards general intelligence. And just, I've been speaking about it, but just for any listeners who aren't familiar, artificial narrow intelligence is an AI that can do one single task or one kind of narrow range of tasks, such as play chess or go or play video games or control a microchip production system or to spit out words like chat GPT, right? Artificial general intelligence is something more human-like in which you have multiple cognitive modules that thinks across all of these domains and oftentimes simultaneously. Doesn't exist yet, but GPT-4 represented a huge move in that direction. It was able to translate, for instance, vision into text and make reasonable conclusions about it. It was able to solve mazes, right? It's a language model, it was able to solve mazes. And maybe most importantly, it excelled on human testing. [43:18] So the two most impressive were the GRE verbal test, 99th percentile was its score. And then you've got the US Biology Olympiad, again, 99th percentile. And then you had the LSAT and the bar exam, law exams. And that was 90th percentile and 88th percentile, respectively. So [43:46] people saw this as this incredible potential. Where is it going to go next? That's the fear. Now I personally am quite stunned that people are so enamored by this and that they want to embrace it. I think the biggest danger that this technology poses is that people like Bill Gates, right? Because Microsoft backed OpenAI, They're incorporating all of these GPT technologies into their systems. And so Bill Gates is talking about using it for education. A lot of people are talking about using it for education, meaning that education will become more and more, more than it is now, e-learning, digital learning. And these students, the youngest generation is going to develop this human AI relationship that is going to stick with them for life. And transhumanists oftentimes talk about how in an ideal future, you would have your own kind of personal AI as a type of guardian angel that would teach you about the world and would learn you better than you know yourself, right? And give you the advice that you need to get through life. You're talking about the most powerful brainwashing technology ever created. [45:05] And, you know, aside from that, you've got all of these different jobs that are being obliterated, everything from copywriters to editors to lawyers and even doctors and nurses. So that is, again, you're talking about the digital mediation between humans and all these kind of critical services. Maybe most importantly, preachers, rabbis, imams, I assume, using these technologies, specifically chat GPT, to create their sermons or to read, you know, to maybe a more autonomous system, just a simpler system to read liturgy. This is already occurring in like small little points across the planet. It has not yet taken off. But I could definitely foresee a future, especially after all of these children have been brainwashed by this technology, in which as you and I get old and die, literally, we've got a robot standing over us, reading us our last rites, as our, you know, the contents of our consciousness are made manifest through some sort of digital zombie made from all of our data. I mean, it sounds sci-fi, but barring nuclear war or an EMP, something like that is going to happen in certain societies around the world. So the big danger I see are those more immediate dangers, the psychological danger and the sociological and economic dangers. But you've got guys like Eliezer Yudkowsky. [46:33] Who say that, Nick Bostrom is also a major figure, who says that this represents a move towards an artificial general intelligence that is not aligned to human values, and it's not necessarily aligned to human existence. And so if the next iteration in GPT-5, or the next iteration in GPT-6, or any of these other AI companies that are working in competition with them, or any of the militaries around the world who are developing other artificial intelligence systems, if any of these create a digital brain that is large enough and fast enough and astute enough, I guess is a way of putting it, then you end up in a situation where you might get a hard takeoff, right? An intelligence explosion, what Nick Bostrom calls a super intelligence. And if that super intelligence is not aligned to human values or does not regard human existence as being necessary or desirable then it could easily take control of [47:42] critical infrastructure it could take control of weapon systems It could take control of a biolab or a series of biolabs, Or it could take control of individuals within a society to use any of these critical systems in order to destroy some other people or all of humanity. That's the fear that Eliezer Yudkowsky is talking about and it's entirely based on all of these kind of emergent properties from a chatbot that should just be you know some sort of rote memorization sort of regurgitation of all this knowledge but instead is showing this flexibility. The fear is that chatbot or maybe it's a robotic system or maybe it's a military simulation system or maybe it's a military control system. It could be any type of AI But if it reaches a super intelligent state, The fear is from their side that it would obliterate some or all of humankind, again I think it's very very important to listen to just for this for the same reason that all the warnings about the atom bomb were were very, very important to listen to. But in some ways that distracts from the more immediate and certainly attainable goals of rolling out these AIs across the society and using them for social control, for indoctrination and for mass surveillance. [49:06] I just wanna, I'm looking at time, but just wanted to bring in one final post that you had put up. This is on your GETTR and this was a YouGov America. I just want to touch on just for a few minutes, because it's interesting to see what the public rise. It was interesting, actually, YouGov, asking the question, how concerned at all are you about the possibility that AI will not just have a negative effect, but will cause the end of the human race on Earth? So it was a very hyperbolic question. But on this, you had 19% very concerned, 27% somewhat. So you've got 46% are concerned, 13% not knowing. So it seemed very evenly split. Half the people who were asked either were concerned or didn't know what it was about or unconcerned and didn't know. That was not only the type of question asked, that was intriguing, but the response was also intriguing. What were your thoughts when you posted this? I think it was back on 5th of April or so when you posted this. Well, it's obviously is an expression of that open letter that was put out by the Future of Life Institute calling for a six-month moratorium [50:19] on any AI above the level of GPT-4. Then, of course, Eliezer Yudkowsky published the now famous, op-ed in Time Magazine saying that's not enough and that all large GPU clusters, all large AI training centres, data centres should be banned. And if intelligence is aware of a training center working on a massive AI system, a potentially super intelligent system, airstrike should be on the table even at the risk of nuclear war. So this has flooded the national consciousness here in America and I presume world consciousness across the globe. I've been very provincial of late, so you'd have to tell me. But I know that just regarding that poll, which is an American poll. [51:15] This is flooding people's consciousness. It's always been there, latent consciousness has always been there in science fiction, everything from the Terminator and things like HAL 9000, all these sorts of motifs have always been there. Now, it represents a distinct possibility in people's minds. But that 50-50 split that you're seeing there, roughly 50-50, half and half, what's interesting is that give or take 10, 15%, either direction, on a score of issues, that's what you see in the American psyche. So you saw during COVID, I would say roughly half of the population became, you know, COVIDians and wanted to mask up obsessively. The other half, even among those who complied, really weren't into it. And on the extreme end, which I would place myself, were fiercely opposed and furious about it. [52:14] Same thing, basically, basically enthusiasm for the Vax. I don't know of any hard statistics. Forgive me if I'm a little wrong, but basically you've got this split, a significant enough split that each side has some potential of taking over the federal government and applying their will on the other half. Well, another really interesting poll that was done by two researchers, led by two researchers from Harvard and I believe Cambridge, if I'm not mistaken, looking at the Americans, and they surveyed asking them, if your child would have a better chance of getting into a top 100 college, Would you be willing to one, edit the embryo's genes to give it higher intelligence, or to use a polygenic risk score, or the pre-implantation testing, genetic testing, to figure out whether or not the IQ was high enough. [53:14] To give your infant a better chance of having a high IQ. And so, about a third, and this is roughly the same roughly the same for uneducated or more educated, skewed towards more educated, skewed towards younger, about a third, almost 40% among educated said they would be willing to edit their embryos genome [53:38] in order to give a higher IQ, just under half, just under 50% for the polygenic risk score. And what that means is that you conceive the child in vitro, right? Right the test tube baby from the 1970s you conceive the child in vitro and then you freeze the embryo and what you really do is you you stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs so you end up with around 10 to 15 eggs and you conceive all of these and then you freeze them after taking a sample of the cells you do a polygenic risk or you do genetic testing on all of them and I've described this as being somewhere between a basketball tournament and a spelling bee basically you, one that is deemed to be most likely to be smartest also tallest and certainly devoid of any major, deformities or genetic diseases that one gets picked that one gets implanted either in the mother or as it's become more popular a surrogate and [54:44] then you have this kind of slow rolling process of eugenics This is already being done. And one of the major companies is Genomic, what is it, I believe it's Genomic Prediction, if I have the name right. And that was a startup funded by our boy Sam Altman from OpenAI, and they offer a sophisticated polygenic risk score test that includes IQ. It doesn't include positive IQ scores, but what it can weed out is the lowest 2% in IQ, or the lowest 2% in height is one of the things they offer, right? And so you've got this sort of soft eugenics, what's called liberal eugenics by the scholar Nicholas Agar. But liberal eugenics is not state enforced, it's choice, it's freedom, right? I have the freedom to eugenicize my child and the next generation. So looking at those statistics, you see the significant portion of the population that has enthusiasm for it. And that tracks with a previous poll that was published, I believe, last year from Pew, which found that people, it was like roughly a third, if I'm not mistaken, roughly a third of people would be willing to use genetic engineering [56:06] to eliminate a disease. And some other, I believe it was also roughly a third, said that they would be willing to implant a digital device into their child's brain in order to give them increased intelligence. I'm a little fuzzy, it's been a minute since I've looked at that, but it's significant enough to push this forward. And you have the possibility of it, right? You have the technological possibility of it. Some of it just over the horizon, some of it right here. So going back to the idea, well, is AI going to kill us all? I think it's you know it represents the the people who are going to want to put a halt to AI and the people who are at least going to want to regulate it or to boycott any corporation working on it those are going to fall into that half that cares right that half is afraid the other half is going to be much more likely to either not care and dismiss it or perhaps be enthusiastic about it with a lot of overlap, but this is kind of I'm not much of a futurist look at any of my track records for girlfriends gambling or elections, but I [57:21] do think that what you do see is enough social momentum enough acceptance on the part of the population at large large that should these technologies actually be effective, you'll have a significant proportion who will want it. And even if they aren't entirely effective, even if it's just some sort of half-baked version of it, they will be willing to accept and adopt it. And so I don't see this going away at all. Again, barring nuclear war or an EMP, I just don't see it going away, there is a growing enthusiasm for the techno cult we call transhumanism and a growing acceptance of the kind of dictatorial social structure we call technocracy. And I sense that it is a fast-growing religion, and it will continue to impact those of us who want nothing to do with it. We have to learn to deal with it. We have to learn how to resist it effectively and and not just this year and next year, but across generations. [58:27] Yeah, no, absolutely. Joe, I appreciate you coming on. I've thoroughly enjoyed watching you on the War Room. I enjoyed meeting up with you at CPAC. And just for the viewers that they can find you, this will be going out Monday the 17th, the American Freedom Alliance Conference. I had the privilege of going to one back in June called Propaganda, and you'll be speaking at the World War III, the early years, 22nd to 23rd of April. So there are tickets available. You can go to the website, americanfreedomalliance.org and get a ticket. If you're over there on the West Coast, then I would really encourage the viewers or listeners to go and make it a trip because you'll thoroughly enjoy it from listening to Steve Bannon, Joe Allen, and everyone else in between. So Joe, thank you for your time today. Thank you very much, Peter. And just for your listeners, anyone who wants to go, promo code Joe, get a discount. So I would love to meet anyone who's over in that area. Come on down. But yeah, Peter, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me on. It was absolute, it was fantastic meeting you in DC. Great time, hope to see you again.

Dr. David Sloan Wilson is a Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. Co-founder of the Evolution Institute and Prosocial World, Wilson is the author of Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior,  Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society, Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution and  Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III. A self-described evolutionist, Wilson is perhaps best known in the scholarly world as the champion of multi-level selection theory. In this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Wilson about where multi-level selection theory is in 2023 and the progress made in the last five decades in understanding evolutionary processes through this pluralistic framework. This discussion is a sequel; in 2010, they discussed multi-level selection theory for bloggingheads.tv. Right off the bat, Wilson outlines his view that evolutionary theory has been too narrowly constrained within the straitjacket of the gene-centric view, which violates the spirit of Charles Darwin's more expansive original vision, where adaptation driven by selection was inclusive of both culture and biology. Razib and Wilson also observe the growth of the field of cultural evolution that applies a Darwinian framework to understanding the variation across human societies and discuss Wilson's early work on the adaptive value of religion in human societies. Wilson touches on the numerous fields in which he has been involved over the past few decades, from evolutionary psychology to revisionist economics. In keeping with attempting to apply his scholarship to the real world, Wilson's latest project is ProSocial World, a nonprofit that aims to “facilitate and inspire positive cultural change using evolutionary and behavioral science.” 

Conspiracy Theorists Are Coming for the 15-Minute City https://www.wired.com/story/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-climate-denier/ Listen to: This View of Life by David Sloan Wilson on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/1984847155?source_code=ASSOR150021921000R Check out this book: “Quantum Bullsh*t: How to Ruin Your Life with…” by Chris Ferrie https://a.co/f412nRp Check out this book: “Um nenhum e cem mil (Portuguese Edition)” by Luigi Pirandello,… https://a.co/2ymbiDj

On this episode, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson joins Nate to unpack how evolution can be used to explain and understand modern human behavior, particularly with respect to cooperation and pro-social behavior. David is a leading scholar in this field, especially on the resurgence of the concept ‘multi-level selection'. How can an evolutionary idea, first thought of by Darwin and subsequently ignored until recently, shed light on human's inherent balance between competition and cooperation? And how might our improved knowledge of where we come from inform our behaviors and collective governance in the decades ahead? About David Sloan Wilson: David Sloan Wilson is one of the foremost evolutionary thinkers and gifted communicators about evolution to the general public. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology Emeritus at Binghamton University and President of the nonprofit organization ProSocial World, whose mission is "To consciously evolve a world that works for all".  His most recent books are This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups (with Paul Atkins and Steven C. Hayes), and his first novel, Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III. For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/56-david-sloan-wilson  

In this episode, Gavin Watson, Chairman of Conscious Capitalism CT, talks about Conscious Capitalism and how it uses our current understanding of evolutionary biology to enable business to run in a way that makes people happier and more productive, while still making a profit.   Gavin talks in depth about the 4 main principles: Conscious culture Conscious leadership Stakeholder orientation Higher purpose beyond making profit   Gavin's Favorite book: This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, David Sloan Wilson   Gavin Watson, Conscious Capitalism CT Website: https://connecticut.consciouscapitalism.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Consciouscapitalismct Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConsciousCapCT YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdZhwu9_u8FjKcb6hzA7CMw/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/conscious-capitalism-ct/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/concapct/ Gavin's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-watson-225420163/   Ari Santiago, CEO, CompassMSP Company Website: https://compassmsp.com/ Company Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MadeinAmericaPodcast Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/made-in-america-podcast-with-ari Company YouTube:  https://youtube.com/c/MadeinAmericaPodcastwithAri Ari's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asantiago104/   Podcast produced by Miceli Productions: https://miceliproductions.com/   Ari and Gavin discuss: Conscious Capitalism Culture Leadership Higher purpose Evolutionary biology

All multicellular organisms face the risk of cancer cells developing and growing. When these cells work together and cooperate they can create new problems that require novel approaches to solve. Healthy cells also cooperate with each other in the effort to eliminate the cancer as the two sides battle for territory in the body. Athena Aktipis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, the Director of ASU's Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, and a member of the Center for Evolution and Medicine. Athena is also the author of The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer. She is a cooperation theorist, theoretical evolutionary biologist, and cancer biologist working at the intersection of these fields, and she searches for general principles of cooperation that manifest across diverse systems. Athena and Greg discuss the world of cancer cells, and the way in which they cooperate with each other. They go over different theories for cellular evolution that relate to cancer and Athena shares some surprising strategies to deal with cancer when it evolves in a body. They also discuss ways to deal with evolutionary management, and the different approaches that some disciplines have that lend themselves well to interdisciplinary study.Episode Quotes:How should cancer intervention be approached?33:24: If we think about cancer as an evolutionary system, as an evolutionary problem, we think of cancer as fundamentally being a process, right? It's a process of evolution happening inside the body in a way that is favoring cells aligned with our interests as beings. Then that allows us to really shift the question about intervention to, how we could, instead of targeting cancer and trying to kill cancer, which, you know, sometimes that makes sense. But we can instead think, "How can we actually shape the process of evolution in the body?"23:03: One of the dirty tricks cancer cells have up their collective sleeves is that within their genomes are all of the genes that allow cells to cooperate really well to make our bodies functional.Our bodies are a vast ecosystem for cancer cells24:00: Our bodies are a vast ecosystem for cancer cells. And there are so many sub-habitats, regions, and places where cancer cells and groups of cancer cells can be early in the evolution of cancer before you can even detect anything like invasion and metastasis. There could very well be these microscopic populations of these groups of cancer cells that are, in all these little niches, that may be competing with each other.The trade-off with treating cancer18:49: In order to have a body that would be not susceptible to cancer at all, the ways that evolution could select for that include shutting a lot of things down that are important for other functions.Show Links:Recommended Resources:[Andrew Read] How to use antibiotics without driving the evolution of antibiotic resistanceGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Arizona State UniversityProfessional Profile on This View of LifeAthena Aktipis WebsiteAthena Aktipis on LinkedInAthena Aktipis on TwitterAthena Aktipis on InstagramHer Work:Athena Aktipis on Google ScholarArticles on SlateArticles Scientific AmericanZombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains PodcastThe Cheating Cell

The word ‘prosocial' describes an orientation toward the welfare of others and society as a whole.  My guest today is David Sloan Wilson. David is an American evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a son of the author Sloan Wilson, co-founder of the Evolution Institute, and co-founder of the recent spinoff nonprofit Prosocial World. In this episode, you'll hear about the following: Expanding Darwin's Theory of Evolution The fight or flight response while in groups and while we're alone Privatization of resources The Core Design Principles How to select enlightened behaviors to reach valued goals And much more! Thanks again for listening to the Humanitarian Entrepreneur podcast!  We're not in this alone.  We're a community and we're all in this together to help the planet. Don't forget to share this episode and leave us a review if you found it helpful. Enjoy my conversation with David!   In This Episode: [1:26] – We're introduced to our guest, David Sloan Wilson, and learn what it means to be one of the world's foremost evolutionary biologists.  [3:19] – What called David to create Evolution Institute and Prosocial World? [5:36] – We've always lived in a group context.  Here's what that has meant over the centuries for our species. [7:44] – David expands on how our brains interpret the fight or flight response while we're in a group and while we're alone.  [9:42] – This is how Prosocial World helps people get out of their turtle shell. [13:02] – David explains the tragedy of the commons. [15:22] – David lists the core design principles. [19:07] – We hear about the two pillars of Prosocial World. [20:22] – How to learn to be flexible in “approach and avoid” situations. [24:10] – What are the different ways that people interested in working with David can get a hold of him?  [25:55] – Tiffany wraps up the conversation.   Resources: To connect with Tiffany to solve problems or affect the kind of change you want: calendly.com/humanitarianentrepreneur   Website:https://humanitarian-entrepreneur.com    Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others https://bookshop.org/a/54969/9780300219883   The Neighborhood Project:  Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time https://bookshop.org/a/54969/9780316037679   This View of Life:  Completing the Darwinian Revolution https://bookshop.org/a/54969/9781101872819   Evolution for Everyone:  How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think about Our Lives https://bookshop.org/a/54969/9780385340922   Connect with David: Twitter: https://twitter.com/David_S_Wilson    David Sloan Wilson Archive: https://davidsloanwilson.world/ About: https://davidsloanwilson.world/about-david-sloan-wilson/ Evolution Institute Website: https://evolution-institute.org Prosocial World Website: https://www.prosocial.world   Contact:  hello@prosocial.world

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. David Sloan Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. His books include Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society; and This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. In this episode, we focus on religion and multilevel selection. We start by talking about religion from an evolutionary perspective, its functions, and its individual benefits. We discuss the New Atheists' take on religion, and the idea of “atheism as stealth religion”. We also talk about group selection (cultural and genetic), how it works, its relationship with kin selection, and why so many biologists dismiss it. Throughout the conversation we mention multilevel selection. We also discuss policy as a branch of biology, the eight core design principles for groups and institutions. Finally, we discuss if it will ever be possible to plan societies. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, PER HELGE LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, HERBERT GINTIS, RUTGER VOS, RICARDO VLADIMIRO, CRAIG HEALY, OLAF ALEX, PHILIP KURIAN, JONATHAN VISSER, JAKOB KLINKBY, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, PAULINA BARREN, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ARTHUR KOH, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, SUSAN PINKER, PABLO SANTURBANO, SIMON COLUMBUS, PHIL KAVANAGH, JORGE ESPINHA, CORY CLARK, MARK BLYTH, ROBERTO INGUANZO, MIKKEL STORMYR, ERIC NEURMANN, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, BERNARD HUGUENEY, ALEXANDER DANNBAUER, FERGAL CUSSEN, YEVHEN BODRENKO, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, DON ROSS, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, OZLEM BULUT, NATHAN NGUYEN, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, J.W., JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, IDAN SOLON, ROMAIN ROCH, DMITRY GRIGORYEV, TOM ROTH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, AL ORTIZ, NELLEKE BAK, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, NICK GOLDEN, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS P. FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, DENISE COOK, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, TRADERINNYC, TODD SHACKELFORD, AND SUNNY SMITH! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, IAN GILLIGAN, LUIS CAYETANO, TOM VANEGDOM, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, VEGA GIDEY, THOMAS TRUMBLE, AND NUNO ELDER! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MICHAL RUSIECKI, ROSEY, JAMES PRATT, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, AND BOGDAN KANIVETS!

Get early access to our latest psychology lectures: http://bit.ly/new-talks5 The concept of society as an organism stretches back to antiquity and was a mainstay of 19th and early 20th century social science. Likewise, 19th century evolutionary thinkers such as Spencer and Lamarck envisioned evolution as in part a conscious process and even Darwin shared these views to a degree. Both of these concepts–society as an organism and conscious evolution– became marginalized and even taboo within evolutionary biology during the middle of the 20th century. Group selection seemed to be authoritatively rejected and all adaptations were explained as for the good of individuals and their selfish genes. And evolution was said to have no purpose whatsoever: Variation is random and only the immediate environment does the selecting. Today, these seemingly authoritative positions themselves appear outdated. The individualistic focus can be seen as part of a broader intellectual trend of individualism, which also pervaded economics and the social sciences during the same period. And the denial of any conscious component to evolution was overly influenced by mendelian genetics, as opposed to other evolutionary processes such as human cultural evolution. In my talk, I will show that the concepts of society as an organism and conscious evolution can be fully validated by modern evolutionary science, providing a practical framework for consciously evolving a planetary superorganism. -- David Sloan Wilson is one of the world's foremost evolutionary thinkers and a gifted communicator about evolution to the general public. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. In addition to his teaching and research, David is President of Prosocial World – an organisation which aims to catalyze positive cultural change to consciously evolve who we are, how we connect with each other, and how we interact with the planet. David is passionate about making evolution more accessible to a wider audience, and was invited to speak with the Dalai Lama about his work in 2019. He is the author of several books on evolutionary theory, including: “Atlas Hugged” (his first novel), “This View of Life”, “Evolution for Everyone”, “Darwin's Cathedral”, “Does Altruism Exist?”, and the co-author of “Prosocial”, along with Paul Atkins and Steven Hayes. You can learn more about David's work at https://www.thisviewoflife.com and https://www.prosocial.world -- This episode is sponsored by our upcoming Day on Conscious Relationships Online Conference, taking place on 24th April, 2022. This event will explore how to leverage insights from attachment theory, neurobiology, and behavioural science to become aware of (and break) the unconscious relationship patterns from your past, so you can start thriving in this area of your life. You'll learn: — Why secure relating is a skill that can be learned, and how to heal the attachment wounds from your past to create deep and lasting relationships in the present - Alan Robarge — Relational Mindfulness: From Trauma to Connection - Terry Real — How to Not Die Alone: Overcoming Your Dating Blindspots - Logan Ury By attending live, you can interact with the speakers in the Q&A sessions, connect with like-minded participants during the conference, and get CPD certification and lifetime access to the recordings from the sessions. As a listener of this podcast, you can get a discount on your ticket, if you go to https://bit.ly/cr-twu, and use the discount code: POD when registering. -- - Get our latest psychology lectures emailed to your inbox: http://bit.ly/new-talks5 - Check out our next event: http://theweekenduniversity.com/events/ - Professor Wilson's website: https://thisviewoflife.com/ - Professor Wilson's books: https://amzn.to/3B7ErEi

Get early access to our latest psychology lectures: http://bit.ly/new-talks5 David Sloan Wilson is one of the world's foremost evolutionary thinkers and a gifted communicator about evolution to the general public. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. In addition to his teaching and research, David is President of Prosocial World – an organisation which aims to catalyze positive cultural change to consciously evolve who we are, how we connect with each other, and how we interact with the planet. David is passionate about making evolution more accessible to a wider audience and was invited to speak with the Dalai Lama about his work in 2019. He is the author of several books on evolutionary theory, including: “Atlas Hugged” (his first novel), “This View of Life”, “Evolution for Everyone”, “Darwin's Cathedral”, “Does Altruism Exist?”, and the co-author of “Prosocial”, along with Paul Atkins and Steven Hayes. You can learn more about David's work at https://www.thisviewoflife.com and https://www.prosocial.world. Many people use words such as “evolve” and “adapt” to talk about personal and cultural change but few think to consult the actual science of change–evolutionary science. This is largely because the study of evolution was confined to genetic evolution for most of the 20th century, relegating the study of personal and cultural change to other disciplines which developed largely in isolation from each other and sometimes in perceived opposition to evolutionary theory. The result is an archipelago of knowledge and practice, which lacks the integration that evolutionary theory is in a position to provide. I will describe what it means to say “nothing about X makes sense except in the light of evolution”, where X can be “biology”, “humanity”, “culture”, and “policy”.

Welcome back folks! Today's episode circles some big questions. What does it mean to be human? What's distinctive about the human mind and the human mode of being? What is human nature—if such a thing exists—and how could we catch a glimpse of it? Should we go looking for it in other primate species? Should we look deep in our fossil record? My guest today is Dr. Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is the other of a number of books, most recently The Creative Spark, in 2017, and Why We Believe, in 2019. Agustín was trained as a biological anthropologist, but as, you'll hear, he's very much interested in the whole human, not just our skulls and teeth and genes. He's spent the better part of his career trying to build a more integrated, more fully fleshed out view of our species—one that takes seriously our bodies and brains, our culture and cognition, our primate heritage and our Pleistocene past.  Here we talk about Agustín's career—how he got into anthropology in the first place, and how he went from observing langurs in Indonesia, to writing about human creativity and belief. We discuss the human niche and why it's distinctive (but maybe not unique). We touch on monogamy and how it's not a monolith. We talk about maleness and masculinity. And, for those who've been following recent hubbubs online, rest assured that we also talk about Darwin—and specifically what Darwin got wrong about biological sex and race. I've been following Agustín's work for some time and was thrilled to get him on the show. He's an unusually expansive and boundary-crossing thinker—and that's on full display in this conversation. He also doesn't shy away from messiness. He welcomes the mess. He celebrates complexity. He enthuses about the richly, entangled human condition. Whether or not you yourself celebrate mess and complexity and entanglement—I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy hearing what Agustín has to say about it.  One quick announcement before he get to it: we'd like to welcome a new member of the Many Minds team: Cecilia Padilla. She is our new Assistant Producer, and we're super excited to have her on board.  Alright friends—here's my chat with Dr. Agustín Fuentes. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode is available here.    Notes and links 6:00 – One of the first anthropology courses to inspire Dr. Fuentes was taught by Dr. Phyllis Dolhinow of UC Berkeley. 9:15 – An early publication by Dr. Fuentes on the Mentawai langur (Presbytis potenziani). 12:00 – A 2012 paper by Dr. Fuentes laying out the aims, findings, and history of the subfield known as ethnoprimatology, which studies interactions between humans and primates. 13:30 – A 2013 paper by Dr. Fuentes describing ethnoprimatological findings from Bali. 17:30 – Dr. Fuentes's 1998 paper on monogamy, which he considers one of his first important contributions to the field. 22:00 – In 2008 Dr. Fuentes published Evolution and Human Behavior, a book-length comparison of different accounts of why humans are the way they are. 23:15 – The classic book on niche construction by Odling-Smee and colleagues. A single-article discussion of the concept of niche construction is available here. 26:00 – The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis website, which Dr. Fuentes recommends. 29:40 – A paper by Dr. Fuentes on the human niche. 32:00 – One distinctive aspect of the human niche—belief—is discussed extensively in Dr. Fuentes's book Why We Believe. 37:00 – Dr. Fuentes recently reviewed Kindred, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, who we had on the show previously. 39:30 – Dr. Fuentes's recent paper on the search for the “roots” of masculinity. 54:00 – Dr. Fuentes recently wrote a chapter on Darwin's account of the “races of man” in A Most Interesting Problem, a volume edited by Jeremy De Silva. See also his recent editorial in Science, which raised quite a stir. Dr. Fuentes also recommends the chapter in the De Silva volume by Dr. Holly Dunsworth titled ‘This View of Wife.' 1:03:00 – For the broader historical and biographical context of Darwin's ideas, I recommend Janet Browne's two-volume biography. 1:12:15 – Dr. Fuentes quotes Tim Ingold's idea that “anthropology is philosophy with people in it.” If you're interested in learning more about the topics we discussed, be sure to check out Why We Believe and The Creative Spark. Dr. Fuentes also recommends: Kindred, Rebecca Wragg Sykes The Promise of Contemporary Primatology, Erin P. Riley Emergent Warfare in Our Evolutionary Past, Nam C. Kim & Marc Kissel Recent books on race by Dorothy Roberts and Alondra Nelson Anthropology: Why It Matters, Tim Ingold Darwin's Unfinished Symphony, Kevin Laland Pink Brain, Blue Brain, Lise Eliot The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry   You can find Dr. Fuentes on Twitter (@Anthrofuentes) and follow his research at his website.      Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Max Beilby and Steve Colarelli discuss the application of evolutionary psychology to Human Resource Management. They cover Steve's academic career, and his books No Best Way: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Resource Management and The Biological Foundations of Organizational Behavior (which Steve co-edited with his colleague Richard Arvey). They also explore the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on the world of work. Stephen Colarelli is professor of psychology at Central Michigan University. His research is concerned with how evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology can influence how we think about, conduct research on, and manage behavior in organizations. Max Beilby is a professional organizational psychologist as well as a member of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology. Max has written extensively for This View of Life Magazine and is a member of TVOL's Business Action Group, which is focused on understanding and improving business from an evolutionary perspective. Anyone is free to join and take part of our networking events, discussions, and collaborative projects.

This episode of State of Emergence, features an additional conversation with last week's featured guest, the evolutionary biologist and important social theorist David Sloan Wilson.  If you haven't already listened to last week's episode with David — episode 069, titled “A Human Superorganism — The Higher Potentials of Cooperation” — we encourage you to begin there for a more concise and concentrated overview of his ideas. In this separate unedited conversation (which took place beforehand) David and Terry go into the practical application of his ideas at greater length and explored many nuanced distinctions, principles, and practices — it gives us valuable insight into some of the design principles and practices that can enable social experiments and cooperative communities to succeed and grow.  They consider the virtues and exploitations of competition, multiple layers of competition, genetic vs. cultural steams of evolution, the role of symbols in evolving our cultural narratives, and the Nobel laureate and political economist Elinor Ostrom's eight principles for “managing a commons.”) If you belong to and participate in a community of any kind, we hope this deep dive into the dynamics of cooperation serves you and inspires a new level of practice and efficacy in your group's efforts. For more information on David Sloan Wilson and Terry Patten, check out the following resources: David's new novel, Atlas Hugged is gifted, not sold, for whatever the reader wishes to give in return, with all proceeds going to Prosocial World. For this reason, it is available only on its website: www.AtlasHugged.world. David's nonprofit organization, Prosocial World David's book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution David's book, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes and the Welfare of Others David's book, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society Terry Patten's nonprofit, A New Republic of the Heart Terry Patten's personal website Join us as a Friend of State of Emergence We will be exploring this episode in greater depth during our next State of Emergence live Q&A (date and time to be announced soon). If you haven't already joined us, we invite you to become a Friend of State of Emergence and join these monthly Q&A sessions with me and other listeners episodes, as well as help the podcast become financially sustainable. A vibrant, intelligent, and caring community is already gathering around State of Emergence and we'd love for you to be part of it. Sign up here.

Brilliant evolutionary biologist and important social theorist David Sloan Wilson joins Terry to clarify the real implications of what we know about evolution, focusing on how “multi-level selection,” interpersonal cooperation and altruism are no less central to evolution than is competition. Groups of “prosocial” individuals, under the right conditions, robustly outcompete groups of self-interested individuals.   David shares important concrete principles that can be applied by small and medium-sized groups who are attempting prosocial experiments of their own. He gets specific about which special conditions and shared agreements are required to nurture prosocial behaviors — and, very importantly, protect them. We ask: Is rapid social transformation possible? What kinds of behavior would qualify human beings as a “superorganism” that prioritizes the wellbeing of the whole and responds collectively and effectively to its existential crises? In the coming week, we will release a second “bonus” conversation I had with David. In it, he goes into much greater detail about the core design principles that enable prosocial cooperation to succeed, and the practices of acceptance and commitment that make them possible. David Sloan Wilson is a "hard" evolutionary scientist who also champions Conscious Evolution. He is the author of books such as Darwin's Cathedral, Does Altruism Exist? and This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. His new book is a novel: Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III — a critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and its impact on the world. In addition to his writing and university teaching, David is President of the nonprofit organization Prosocial World, whose mission is to accomplish rapid positive multilevel cultural evolution in the real world. Here are some of the questions we explore in the episode: How is the latest evolutionary science now contradicting past misunderstandings, and actually validating spiritual and evolutionary perspectives? How do groups of altruistic or “prosocial” individuals outcompete groups of self-interested individuals? What makes individuals & groups “prosocial?” How can groups of prosocial individuals protect their cultures and ways of cooperating from selfish or predatory individuals and groups? Can groups reach a critical level of efficacy or creativity that catalyzes rapid transformation? What agreements, design principles & mechanisms are required? For more information on David Sloan Wilson and Terry Patten, check out the following resources: David’s new novel, Atlas Hugged is gifted, not sold, for whatever the reader wishes to give in return, with all proceeds going to Prosocial World. For this reason, it is available only on its website: www.AtlasHugged.world. David’s nonprofit organization, Prosocial World David’s book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution David’s book, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes and the Welfare of Others David’s book, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society Terry Patten’s nonprofit, A New Republic of the Heart Terry Patten’s personal website Join us as a Friend of State of Emergence We will be exploring this episode in greater depth during our next State of Emergence live Q&A (date and time to be announced soon). If you haven’t already joined us, we invite you to become a Friend of State of Emergence and join these monthly Q&A sessions with me and other listeners episodes, as well as help the podcast become financially sustainable. A vibrant, intelligent, and caring community is already gathering around State of Emergence and we’d love for you to be part of it. Sign up here.

David Sloan Wilson is one of the world's foremost evolutionary thinkers and a gifted communicator about evolution to the general public. He is a SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University in New York. In addition to his teaching and research work, David is President of Prosocial World – an organisation which aims to catalyze positive cultural change to consciously evolve who we are, how we connect with each other, and how we interact with the planet. He is passionate about making evolutionary science more accessible to a wider audience, and in 2019, he was invited to speak with the Dalai Lama about his work. David is the author of several books on evolutionary theory, including: “This View of Life”, “Evolution for Everyone”, “Darwin's Cathedral”, “Does Altruism Exist?”, and the co-author of “Prosocial”, along with Paul Atkins and Steven Hayes. In this conversation, we discuss some of the key insights and themes from David's first novel: Atlas Hugged. This book is a must read for anyone interested in evolutionary theory and its implications for how we can best understand human nature, and also how best to live in this world. In the novel, David weaves together a lifetime's worth of research and academic work into an engaging narrative, which offers science based solutions to some of life's biggest questions, including how we can solve the problem of excessive individualism, how to create a ‘meaning system' that is both highly motivating and based on scientific truth at the same time, and how we can use a managed process of cultural evolution to consciously evolve as a society. You can get the novel at: www.atlashugged.world, and learn more about David's work at www.darwinianrevolution.com. Links: Get a copy of Atlas Hugged: https://atlashugged.world/​ This View of Life: https://amzn.to/323MrWA​ TVOL Magazine: https://thisviewoflife.com/​ Prosocial World: www.prosocial.world David's books: https://amzn.to/3s31jiN​ Follow David on Twitter @David_S_Wilson Get our latest psychology lectures emailed to your inbox: http://bit.ly/new-talks5​ Check out our next event: http://theweekenduniversity.com/events/​ The Invention of Tradition - Eric Hobsbawm: https://amzn.to/3mxBQNe​ The Goodness Paradox - Richard Wrangham: https://amzn.to/3wJBaJt

If you’re one of the many people who have asked us to take down the concepts in Atlas Shrugged, which argues that we’re a fundamentally selfish species, this episode is for you! If you’re not one of those people, well, this episode is ALSO for you! Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson has infused the idea of prosociality (the desire to help others) into his new book, Atlas Hugged, and he joins us to explain why Atlas Hugged is a better predictor of how people act than Atlas Shrugged. David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. His books include This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution and the recently published Atlas Hugged.  Twitter: @David_S_Wilson Show us some love by leaving a rating or a review! RateThisPodcast.com/pitchforkeconomics  Ayn Rand Meets Her Match: David Sloan Wilson Fights Fiction with Fiction: https://evonomics.com/rand-meets-david-sloan-wilson-atlas-hugged/  Get Atlas Hugged for free: https://atlashugged.world/  Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com/ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Kurt Johnson wears many hats--a distinguished evolutionary biologist, a leader of the Interspiritual Movement, an authority on the scientific career of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, and most recently co-author of the anthology Our Moment of Choice: Evolutionary Visions and Hope for the Future. It was Kurt who introduced me to the Interspiritual Movement and who I invited to join me on my visit to converse with H.H. Dalai Lama last year. In this podcast, we discuss what my new novel, Atlas Hugged, adds to transformative change efforts in the real world.    --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

David Korten is the renowned futurist, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning among many other books, founder of YES! Magazine, and a prominent member of the Club of Rome. There is no better person with whom to discuss the world-changing theme of AH in relation to catalyzing positive change in the real world.   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

Brian Boyd is a renowned evolutionary literary scholar (The Origin of Stories), biographer of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1,2,3), and 2020 recipient of the Rutherford Medal, New Zealand's highest academic honor. He is the perfect person to discuss my first novel, Atlas Hugged, and the interplay between fiction and the real world. In the second half, we also discuss Brian's biography-in-progress of the legendary philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pioneered the study of epistemology from an evolutionary perspective.   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3fG96gvgLUDavid Sloan Wilson is an American evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. https://twitter.com/David_S_WilsonCurt Jaimungal is directing / writing an imminent documentary Better Left Unsaid http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com on the topic of "when does the left go too far?" Visit that site if you'd like to contribute to getting the film distributed (early-2021).Patreon for conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, and God: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungalHelp support conversations like this via PayPal: https://bit.ly/2EOR0M4Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurtiTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfPSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4eGoogle Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Id3k7k7mfzahfx2fjqmw3vufb44iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802* * *00:00:00 Introduction00:01:54 Is "the West" losing its values? What are those values?00:05:24 Multi-level selection vs. Group Selection00:11:10 The political right vs left in terms of level of evolutionary selection00:12:51 Identity Politics framed in terms of group selection (plus a definition of Identity Politics)00:15:04 Why can't a propitious argument made FOR Identity Politics?00:20:05 How can we adopt a "whole Earth ethic" as a country, when others don't adopt it?00:23:47 What do humans need to behave "selflessly" when animals get along with doing so?00:28:16 Link between evolutionary theory and Buddhism00:30:00 Humans are built to cooperate in small groups (not large)00:32:49 We've selected ourselves for timidity00:38:03 A synoptic view of "This View of Life" and the need for encompassing values00:38:32 Classical economics (and some contemporary) is wrong and unadaptive00:40:44 If we've been selected for altruism, why is it difficult?00:44:54 Carl Jung and selfish acts being unselfish (because they harm you in the long-run)00:50:24 A $1000 suit isn't to look good, but to look BETTER than the guy with a $500 suit00:53:00 How good is altruism as a motivational agent for behavior? 00:55:54 Tribalism is the answer, not the problem00:57:05 Problems with Social Constructionism00:59:18 Postmodernism and David Sloan Wilson's issues with it01:03:28 Women's studies / LGBTQ studies / etc. utilizing "tribal circuitry"01:06:53 The "Ultimatum Game" in evolutionary psychology01:09:55 On this "tribal circuitry" again01:17:40 On the Nordic countries and the "homogeneity" argument01:23:58 Is communism more adaptive than capitalism?01:28:31 "Tight and loose" compared to totalitarian systems (existential security)01:31:38 Which memes are prius to liberalism?01:36:28 Are the Inuit less adapted than the White Europeans who invented centralized heating?01:42:37 Is virtue as "honesty / forthrightness / generosity" a human universal given most studies are done on Westerners?01:45:10 Is David Sloan Wilson a moral relativist?01:47:38 The effects of arcane disciplines in Universities spreading outward to the culture01:49:47 Evolutionary theory as a unifying language for the disparate fields of science01:54:05 "When does the left go too far?"01:56:18 Memes that last so long they affect our evolution01:57:26 Dawkin's concept of "gene" was problematic, and thus so is "meme"02:00:06 Jordan Peterson vs Susan Blackmore on memes and Jung02:02:10 Chomskyan grammar and Pinker's language instinct is wrong02:04:06 On Victor Huang's "innovation oasis"02:08:58 Applying Victor's Huang's concept to Curt's non-profit indiefilmTO02:14:46 Is there such a thing as biological sex?02:16:08 What's the definition of "adaptiveness" in evolution?02:17:54 David Sloan Wilson's thoughts on free will02:18:39 The "Theory of Everything" being encompassed by evolutionary theory02:20:21 His thoughts on Donald Hoffman's ideas02:24:43 Extra: On Daniel Dennett's 2nd endosymbiotic revolution02:26:57 Extra: Is history an example of humans "externalizing" their code? Computers? (via memes)Subscribe if you want more conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, God, and the mathematics / physics of each.

Since the Third Way series is centered on entrepreneurship, even though it also applies to all forms of positive social change, it is only fitting for the capstone episode to be a conversation with Victor Hwang. Victor developed an evolutionary and ecosystem approach to entrepreneurship in his private consulting practice and served as Vice President for Entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation between 2016-2019. Few people have played a larger role or have a more comprehensive knowledge of entrepreneurship in the 21st century and the need for it to follow the Third Way.   This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship". --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

Again and again—including some of the previous episodes—the Nordic countries are identified as exemplars of good governance and the Third Way. In this episode, we hear directly about the so-called Nordic model from Nina Witoszek, Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment, and Atle Midttun, a professor of Norway’s largest Business School, BI. Nina and Atle have become thoroughly familiar with viewing Norway through an evolutionary lens as participants of the Evolution Institute’s Norway Project. Nina and Atle's Sustainable Modernity (open access)   This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship". --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

As part of TVOL's "Third Way" series of conversations, I explore the concept of "Development" as a type of cultural change effort with Scott Peters, Professor of Developmental Sociology at Cornell University. While many development efforts fail due to centralized planning, disruptive special interests, or having the wrong systemic goals, other development efforts have converged upon the Third Way.    This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

Modern life has been transformed by electronic communication, starting with the telegraph and now in full force with the Internet Age. There are many blessings but also many curses associate with the Internet Age. Can the thesis of the Third Way explain both and forge a path to an electronically connected future designed for the common good? Tim O’Reilly, Internet pioneer and founder of O’Reilly Media, is our perfect guide. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

Urban planning represents one kind of positive change effort that has suffered from excessive reliance on laissez-faire in some instances and centralized planning in other instances. The Smart Cities movement is a new breed of urban planning that makes use of technology. Daniel T. Obrien, who directs the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), helps me explain how the Smart Cities Movement can avoid the mistakes of the past by traveling the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship". Dan's book: The Urban Commons: How Data and Technology Can Rebuild Our Communities --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

The economic and political school of thought known as Libertarianism is most closely associated with laissez faire as a public policy prescription. George Mason University’s Mercatus (which means “market” in Latin) Center might seem like a bastion of Libertarianism, but think again. My conversation with Peter Boettke, who directs the center’s F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, provides a far more nuanced view that is consilient with the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

The economics profession includes many schools of thought–some that emphasize laissez faire, others that emphasize centralized planning, with many admixtures in between. David Colander, an acute observer of economics who is sometimes described as the profession’s court jester, helps me identify the economic schools of thought that best exemplify the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship". References from the Show: 12:00- Why aren't Economists as Important as Garbagemen? by David Colander 23:30- Chaos by James Gleick --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

Socialism and Capitalism will be among the hot words thrown around during the 2020 US presidential elections. Geoffrey Hodgson, a great scholar of economics and the social sciences, helps me explain how both forms of national governance fail in their pure forms but how they can be—and even have already been– blended together into the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

In the late 19th century, a tiny group of intellectuals who called themselves Pragmatists were to have an outsized influence on the nation and the world. They were inspired by Darwin and included well-known figures such as William James and John Dewey. Trygve Throntveit, a distinguished historian of the period, helps me tell the story of how the Pragmatists discovered the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is part of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

I talk with David Sloan Wilson about his book “This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution”. We discuss multilevel selection theory, core principles for healthy groups, cooperation vs selfishness, Agile, self-organization, leadership, personality theory and more!

Max Beilby and Mark van Vugt discuss the science of evolutionary mismatch how it can help us understand human behavior in modern novel environments such as the workplace. Mark van Vugt is a professor in Evolutionary and Organizational Psychology at VU Amsterdam and is also a research associate at the University of Oxford. His latest book is, "Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day (and What We Can Do About It)". Max Beilby is is a professional organizational psychologist as well as a member of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology.   Both Mark and Max have written extensively for This View of Life Magazine and are members of TVOL's Business Action Group which is focused on understanding and improving business from an evolutionary perspective.

In 1992, the evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby predicted, "Just as one can now flip open Gray's Anatomy to any page and find an intricately detailed depiction of some part of our evolved species-typical morphology, we anticipate that in 50 or 100 years one will be able to pick up an equivalent reference work for psychology and find in it detailed information-processing descriptions of the multitude of evolved species-typical adaptations of the human mind...” Finding it unnecessary to wait until 2042 or 2092, Niruban Balachandran first proposed and published a classification table of human evolved psychological adaptations in 2011. He then teamed up with Daniel Glass in 2012 to co-found and co-publish a research paper announcing PsychTable.org, an open-science taxonomy devoted to uncovering the richness and complexity of our evolved human behavior. In addition to these two peer-reviewed research papers, Niruban and Daniel have also written a This View of Life article to accompany this podcast episode. The PsychTable team is crowdfunding $10,000 in order to hire the highly experienced web designers and developers needed to create a robust and intuitive web interface. Interested TVOL readers can help support PsychTable by donating here.

The idea that nature, left to itself, reaches some sort of harmonious balance is still widespread in the lay public and some public policy circles. "This View of Life" leads to a different conclusion; that "niceness" can evolve, but only when special conditions are met. Otherwise, evolution results in organisms that impose suffering on each other. David explores this theme for primate societies with the pre-eminent primatologist and evolutionary behavioral ecologist, Joan Silk. 

For Steve’s book, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (2012) see: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/darwin-god-and-the-meaning-of-life/A3055F89051D5F4ADE4AFE9473BF0AAB For Steve’s book, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2019) see: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ape-that-understood-the-universe/3448755E3BF801C936343555DA7AECBB Find out more about Steve here: https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/ Follow Steve on Twitter @SteveStuWill Further References Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976) David Sloan Wilson, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution (2019) Erwin Frey, see the survival of the weakest Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2001) Tim Taylor, The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution (2010) Wilhelm von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) Iona Italia, “A Wrong against Boys: An Impossible Conversation about Circumcision,” in Areo Magazine (2019) Battlestar Galactica remake (TV series, 2004) Timestamps 2:08 The gene’s eye view 7:04 Explaining altruism and strong reciprocity 13:44 Culture as an evolutionary accelerator 15:06 Lactose tolerance 16:12 The survival of the weakest 17:56 Sexual selection as an evolutionary ratchet 23:13 Intelligence and language 24:46 Homosexuality 32:22 Evolution and ethics 33:48 Technology and cumulative culture 38:39 The meme’s eye view 44:50 Inclusive fitness 48:46 Evolutionary psychology doesn’t provide a moral template 53:03 Memes and ethics 53:57 Gene-culture co-evolution 57:06 Traits vs. the selection processes that produce them 58:09 Romantic love and jealousy 1:00:39 Why do men hunt? 1:04:00 How will humanity develop in the future? 1:06:40 Intrasexual competition and mate choices 1:15:46 Why women prefer pretty boys 1:19:07 Memetic fitness 1:20:53 Misconceptions about evolutionary psychology; & when adaptationism goes too far

In this episode, Dr. Keith Witt and I discuss evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson’s latest book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, where he challenges mainstream science to broaden its inquiry to include cultural and consciousness evolution, two pillars of integral theory.  The post Cultural Evolution Goes Mainstream appeared first on The Daily Evolver.

Most people think of cultural differences in terms of race, class, nationality, or religion. Michele Gelfand introduces the concept of 'tight" and "loose", which cuts across all of those other categories.   Michele is a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park and joins David to discuss cultural diversity from an evolutionary perspective and more, including why the working class cares more about following the rules, the fractal nature of social norms, gamma wave synchrony in response to threat, and the strengths and limits of a tight-loose axis approach.   Links from the Episode 00:56- Michele's book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World 04:00- "On the nature of religious diversity: a cultural ecosystem approach" 22:26- Michele's response to David and Harvey Whitehouse's TVOL article, "Developing the Field Site Concept for the Study of Cultural Evolution"   ---   Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

2:07 Evolutionary theory as a comprehensive way of looking at life 7:20 Evolutionary theory and English literature 11:52 Gene-centric evolutionary theory versus the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis 15:50 Looking at learning and management from an evolutionary standpoint: Toyota 17:07 How a knowledge of evolution can influence public policy 25:40 An evolutionary view of psychotherapy 27:00 Multi-level selection theory. Application to cancer therapies. 28:20 How chicken farming illustrates group level selection theory 33:37 The problem of good—how did altruism evolve? 36:54 Water striders 41:11 How these ideas apply to introverts and extroverts and business school hirings 42:41 How they apply to Battlestar Galactica 44:37 The neighbourhood project 48:25 Systems of meaning 50:15 Measuring prosociality among schoolchildren: what influences it? How to increase it? 54:03 Response from more gene-based evolutionary theorists; social science and humanities scholars who have adopted evolutionary approaches 57:10 Equivalence 58:35 Replicators versus vehicles 1:02:14 Applying these principles to our own lives: success and the morality of the cancer cell David’s book This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution (2019) can be found here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246844/this-view-of-life-by-david-sloan-wilson/9781101870204/. For more about David’s work see: https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/persons/david-sloan-wilson/ And https://evolution-institute.org/profile/david-sloan-wilson/ And https://www.prosocial.world/ Find David’s other books here: https://www.amazon.com/David-Sloan-Wilson/e/B001H6MNP6%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share, esp. The Neighbourhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time (2012): https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Project-Using-Evolution-Improve/dp/0316037672 Follow David on Letter.Wiki: https://letter.wiki/DavidSloanWilson/conversations Follow David on Twitter: @David_S_Wilson Further Notes I discuss Sloan Wilson’s ideas and correspondence with Massimo Pigliucci here: https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/10/human-cultural-evolution-a-letter-exchange/ For the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis see: https://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/ Steven C. Hayes and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): https://stevenchayes.com/category/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy/ For Omar Tonsi Eldakar’s work on waterstriders see https://phys.org/news/2009-11-mom-nice-guys-girls.html Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking (2012). See also: https://www.quietrev.com/ Battlestar Galactica: https://www.syfy.com/battlestargalactica For a critical view, see Jerry Coyne: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/david-sloan-wilson-loses-it-again/ See David Sloan Wilson on social constructivism: https://evolution-institute.org/saving-social-constructivism/ Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene (1976)

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT Dr. David Sloan Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He applies evolutionary theory to all aspects of humanity in addition to the rest of life, both in his own research and as director of the Evolution Institute, a unique campus-wide evolutionary studies program that recently received NSF funding to expand into a nationwide consortium. His books include Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society; Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives; The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time and Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others; and a recently edited book, Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science. In this episode, our conversation we focused initially on Evolutionary and Contextual Behavioral Science, the recently published book edited by Dr. David Sloan Wilson and Dr. Steven C. Hayes. We discuss what evolutionary theory brings to the table, and its shortcomings in dealing with behavior (human and non-human), and the contributions of Skinner, behaviorism and contextual science that have been mostly ignored by mainstream Psychology. We then talk about the extended evolutionary synthesis, and how Lamarckism might still have a saying in how evolution by natural selection works. Finally, we briefly talk about religion as a human construct, and what the New Atheist get wrong about it; and about group selection included in a multilevel selection process. Time Links: 01:05 Evolutionary and Contextual Behavioral Science 06:26 The work of B. F. Skinner 12:32 What contextual behavioral science adds to the cognitive picture of the human mind 20:51 Modularity of the human mind, innate and environmental mechanisms 31:24 Environment, development, and phenotypic plasticity 36:58 The extended evolutionary synthesis 43:36 Lamarckism, Darwinism, and the new synthesis 49:27 Religion as a human construct 1:01:01 About group selection 1:03:50 Follow Dr. Sloan Wilson's work! -- Follow Dr. Sloan Wilson's work: Faculty page: https://tinyurl.com/yadbq9sw The Evolution Institute: https://tinyurl.com/ycyo8d7w The View of Life Magazine: https://tinyurl.com/ybnrencj Evonomics: https://tinyurl.com/yaoayddq Twitter handle: @David_S_Wilson Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: https://tinyurl.com/y9pypu7w Darwin's Cathedral: https://tinyurl.com/y8rhbbw5 Upcoming book, This View of Life: https://tinyurl.com/y9lh54ct Other relevant links: Tinbergen's 4 Questions: https://tinyurl.com/y9ge5984 Skinner's Selection by Consequences: https://tinyurl.com/ybzetc3a The Adapted Mind: https://tinyurl.com/yay653pf Adaptive genetic variation and human evolutionary psychology:

Classical economics argues that the economy is an equilibrium system—that for every winner there must be a loser. In this episode, author and professor David Sloan Wilson joins Nick live on stage at Town Hall Seattle to argue that economies are actually evolutionary systems—and once we shed the winner-take-all philosophy that has dominated Econ 101 classes for a century, we can change economic policy for the better. David Sloan Wilson is an American evolutionary biologist, a Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University, and co-founder of the Evolution Institute. In addition to his latest book ‘This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution’, he has also written ‘Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society’, and ‘Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives’.  Twitter: @David_S_Wilson Further reading: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246844/this-view-of-life-by-david-sloan-wilson/9781101870204/  http://evonomics.com/the-new-invisible-hand-david-sloan-wilson/ http://evonomics.com/complexity-economics-shows-us-that-laissez-faire-fail-nickhanauer/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Sloan Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is widely known for his fundamental contributions to evolutionary science and for explaining evolution to the general public. Listen as David talks to Ken Wilber about his recent book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, in this fascinating discussion of conscious, cultural, and biological evolution — and how we can use the fundamental patterns running through all three in order to create a more adaptable and sustainable future. It is often said that humanity represents the process of evolution becoming self-aware. We are a universe awakening to itself — and part of that awakening is a capacity to reflect upon the various core design principles and strategies that have been guiding our evolutionary emergence ever since the Big Bang, and to then consciously employ these same strategies in order to create a genuinely multi-cellular society for the human superorganism.

This week I am with Joe Brewer, modern Renaissance Man and Systems Thinker/Doer.Joe has dedicated his life to helping humanity navigate global challenges as a complexity researcher, innovation strategist, and transdisciplinary scholar who brings a wealth of expertise to the adoption of sustainable solutions at the cultural scale. He weaves people and knowledge across fields to build capacities for systemic change.He is a co-founder of the Cultural Evolution Society, a global scientific community dedicated to the study of cultural evolution, has been the culture editor for This View of Life at the Evolution Institute since 2014, is the co-founder of Evonomics Magazine dedicated to the evolution of economics, and has worked with a large variety of nonprofits, social-impact businesses, and government agencies to apply insights from the cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary sciences to large-scale social problems.Joe and I discuss the political system, effective spirituality, and why a focus on cultural evolution is our greatest chance for survival.Show Notes:Read his work on Medium: https://medium.com/@joe_brewerFollow Joe on Twitter.

David's new book, This View of Life ... In what sense, if any, could evolution be conscious? ... The need to complete the Darwinian revolution ... An evolutionary psychology discussion makes Bob tape his mouth shut ... How successful groups avert the tragedy of the commons ... Convergent cultural evolution ... David: Evolution shows that neither laissez faire nor centralized planning works ... A preview of the coming Bob vs. David showdown over group selection ...

We talk to influential evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson about his new book This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution.

This View of Life (starts 6:56) In this episode of How on Earth, we talk with David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist with a special interest in human biocultural evolution. Dr. Wilson is Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at SUNY Binghamton, and president of the Evolution Institute as well as editor in chief of its online magazine This View of Life.  It is not just about biology, these ideas are formed by decades of research and drawing on studies that cover topics from the breeding of hens to the timing of cataract surgeries for infants to the organization of of an automobile plant.  Last month he published his latest book, also titled This View of Life to present a comprehensive case for what he calls Completing the Darwinian Revolution. Hosts: Chip Grandits, Joel Parker Producer and Engineer: Joel Parker Additional Contributions: Shelley Schlender, Susan Moran, Alejandro Soto Executive Producer: Beth Bennett Listen to the show:

In this dialogue Dr. Shermer speaks with Dr. David Sloan Wilson, the renowned evolutionary biologist and Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. His previous books include Evolution for Everyone, The Neighborhood Project, Does Altruism Exist? and Darwin’s Cathedral. He is the president of the Evolution Institute and editor in chief of its online magazine, This View of Life. His new book, out this week, is This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. He and Shermer discuss… what it means to complete the Darwinian Revolution solving the “is-ought” and “naturalistic fallacy” through proper science and philosophy why evolutionary psychology is an equal opportunity offender for liberals and conservatives why both laissez faire and command economies fail what is morality? dispelling the myth of social darwinism policy as a branch of biology solving the tragedy of the commons through game theory the evolutionary origins of good and evil natural selection, group selection, multi-level selection and the debate with Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins over selfish genes why nationalism is like religion how a biologist thinks about immigration, nuclear deterrence and other policy issues the rise of nationalism and what to do about it. Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud. This Science Salon was recorded on February 1, 2019. We apologize for the quality of this episode; it was recorded before Michael moved to the new recording studio. We still have a couple episodes to release from the old studio. Quality of subsequent episodes will be better. You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.  

Welcome to Episode 10, where I talk to DAVID SLOAN WILSON, Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, about, well, a lot of stuff, from Skinnerian behaviorism to multilevel selection theory, to the behaviors that impede and facilitate scientific progress and even to what Wilson calls “the science to narrative chain,” which is the process by which scientists might most effectively engage with the general public.     Wilson is the author of numerous classic papers in the field of evolutionary biology and several books, including Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others, and others.   And as if that weren’t enough, Wilson also founded Binghamton University’s Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program, as well as the Evolution Institute, which sets as its goal the application of evolutionary science to the solving of pressing social issues, and, ultimately, to improve quality of life around the globe. The Evolution Institute in turn publishes a fascinating online magazine called This View of Life, “an online general interest magazine in which all of the content is from an evolutionary perspective.”    I was a little starstruck during our conversation, but David was an amazing sport about it, generously engaging with each topic and happily spending time with me. I’m extremely grateful for this. My advice for listening is to keep a notepad handy. David Sloan Wilson is almost perpetually quotable!    Enjoy!   *    *    *   As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network.   AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.