A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

by Heather E. Heying

First principles are those assumptions that cannot be deduced from any other assumption.

the biggest problem of our time:

Our species’ pace of change now outstrips our ability to adapt.

We are generating new problems at a new and accelerating rate, and it is making us sick—physically, psychologicall...

If we don’t figure out how to grapple with the problem of accelerating novelty, humanity will per...

The linking of minds is at the root of humanity’s success.

When times are good, people should be reluctant to challenge ancestral wisdom—their culture. In other words, they should be comparatively conservative. When things aren’t going well, people should be prone to endure the risks that come with change. They should be comparatively progressive—liberal, if you will.

This of course has a lot to say about the modern world, because for various reasons, there is little agreement at present on how well things are going.

Moments before the Titanic hit the iceberg, the ship was a marvelous testament to human achievement. Moments after, it was ...

Too often, it is only in retrospect that the rearranging of deck c...

Humans break niche boundaries by being both generalists and specialists. interpersonal boundaries by oscillating between culture and consciousness.

the Sucker’s Folly: the tendency of concentrated short-term benefit not only to obscure risk and long-term cost, but also to drive acceptance even when the net analysis is negative.

As our world becomes increasingly complex, though, the need for generalists grows. We need people who know things across domains, and who can make connections between them: not just biologists and physicists, but biophysicists; people who have switched gears and found that the tools they brought from their prior vocation serve them well in a new one.

We must find ways to encourage the development of generalists.

Whether cultural, genetic, or a mixture of the two, sex roles inherited from a long line of ancestors are biological solutions to evolutionary problems. They are, in short, adaptations that function to facilitate and ensure lineage persistence into the future.

the truth is that culture exists in service to the genes. Long-standing cultural traits are as adaptive as eyes, leaves, or tentacles.

the belief that some questions should not be asked if the answers to them might be ugly. This has led to ideologically driven censorship of ideas and research programs, which has slowed the rate at which we have enhanced our understanding of who we are, and why.

recognizing the evolutionary truth that women are both more agreeable than men, on average, and more anxious is neither a diagnosis of any individual nor an immutable fate.

Individuals are not the same as populations.15

We are individual members of ...

but we are more similar than dissimilar.

Omega Principle Epigenetic regulators, such as culture, are superior to genes in that they are more flexible and can adapt more rapidly. Epigenetic regulators, such as culture, evolve to serve the genome.

change, especially rapid change, isn’t always such a good thing.

Thomas Hobbes, who famously declared that humans, in our “state of nature” (that is, without government), are destined to live lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

We cooperate to compete, and our intergroup competition became ever more elaborate, direct, and continuous, until finally becoming nearly ubiquitous in modern times.

Asking “Nature or nurture?” isn’t wrong simply because the answer is nearly always “both,” or because the categories themselves are flawed, but also because once you understand that there is one common evolutionary goal, getting precise about mechanism is less important than understanding why a trait came to be.

we embrace careful application of the Precautionary principle.

When faced with a question of innovation, the Precautionary principle considers the risk of engaging in any particular activity, and recommends caution when the risk is high. In circumstances where the degree of uncertainty about the outcomes of a system is high—when it is not clear what negative effects might result if society engages in, say, carpentering corners or powering our electrical grid with nuclear fission reactors—the Precautionary principle suggests that changes to extant structures should be engaged in slowly, if at all.

Put another way: just because you can, doesn’t ...

The appendix, we are told now, is vestigial. But vestigial is often code for “we don’t know what the function is.” Has evolution really left us with an organ that is nothing but cost, poses risks to our health, and can be relatively easily surgically removed? As it turns out, the answer is no. Of course the answer is no.

Three-part Test of Adaptation If a trait is complex, has energetic or material costs, which vary between individuals, and has persistence over evolutionary time, then it is presumed to be an adaptation.

“hygiene hypothesis.” The hygiene hypothesis posits that because we live in ever-cleaner surroundings, and are therefore exposed to ever fewer microorganisms, our immune systems are inadequately prepared, and so develop regulatory problems, such as allergies, autoimmune disorders, and perhaps even some cancers.17 Our immune systems are not functioning as they evolved to do, suggests the hygiene hypothesis, because we have cleansed our environments too thoroughly.

There is an important parable to be invoked here, Chesterton’s fence, named for turn-of-the-20th-century philosopher and writer G. K. Chesterton, the man who first described it. Chesterton’s fence urges caution in making changes to systems that are not fully understood; it is thus a concept related to the Precautionary principle. Chesterton wrote this of a “fence or gate erected across a road”:

The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

Keep an eye out for other things that we moderns might be trying to rid ourselves of without sufficiently understanding their function—not

Chesterton’s fence reminds us that things that have been built by humans, or have been selected for over many generations, are likely to have hidden benefits.

In everything there are trade-offs.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of trade-offs.20 Allocation trade-offs

(meaning that there is a finite amount of resources to pull from—the pie has a size that does not change),

The second type of trade-off is design constraint. Unlike allocation trade-offs, design constraint trade-offs are insensitive to supplementation—you cannot just add more of something to solve the problem.

Those who can see the value of both physical and mental work, perhaps those who have tried both but are likely not best at either—the generalists—are often necessary to reveal the value of one type of specialist to another.

But for all of our cleverness, we can’t evade all trade-offs. Presuming that we can is one mistake of Cornucopianism, which imagines a world so full of both resource and human ingenuity that, magically, trade-offs no longer rule

Related to Cornucopianism, or perhaps fueling it, is the fact that the Sucker’s Folly can create the illusion that we have conquered trade-offs by blinding us with the richness and opulence of our short-term gains. This is a mirage. The trade-offs are still there, and the cost for all that w...

Any population that has more than enough resources will tend to grow until there is no longer any surplus; any population that has too few resources will naturally decline. This implies that populations tend to find and then oscillate around their upper limit, a number known as carrying capacity.

The Corrective Lens Become skeptical of novel solutions to ancient problems, especially when that novelty will be difficult to reverse if you change your mind later. New and audacious technologies—from experimental surgery, to the cessation of human development using hormones, to nuclear fission—may be wonderful and risk-free. But chances are, there are hidden (and not-so-hidden) costs.

Recognize the logic of trade-offs, and learn how to work with them. Division of labor allows human populations to beat trade-offs that individuals cannot. And by specializing in different habitats and niches, the human species beats trade-offs that no single population can.

Become someone who recognizes patterns about yourself. Hack your habits and your physiology. What stimulates you to eat? To exercise? To check social media? Understanding the patterns in your behaviors gi...

Look out for Chesterton’s fence and invoke the Precautionary principle when messing with ancestral systems. Remember this: “just beca...

Following directions when the people giving them seem to have no idea what they’re doing, or why, is neither honorable nor smart.

We look for metrics, and once we find one that is both measurable and relevant to the system we are trying to affect, we mistake it for the relevant metric.