Social Engineering Doesn’t Work?

It’s possible for humans to change. In recent centuries we’ve lived as hunter-gatherers, as farmers, as factory workers, and as screen-absorbed technology drones—among much else. Different cultures do things in radically different ways even with the same technology. Specific individuals, too, change over the course of their lives and act differently in different environments.

And yet there are limits. Radical efforts at social engineering have resulted in starvation and mass killings. While w...