What Are the Core Design Principles?

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In groups where those principles are lax, then of course you could be the mean chicken or you can be the cancer cell and the group will suffer as a result. And so I think that you can see that in a group that strongly implements the core design principles, it's just hard to be a cancer. So we have to change the theory in order to substantially change the practice.

It’s easy to tell ourselves we’re living in the world we want – one where Darwinian evolution drives competing technology platforms and capitalism pushes nations to maximize GDP regardless of externalities like carbon emissions. It can feel like evolution and competition are all there is.

If that’s a complete description of what’s driving the world and our collective destiny, that can feel pretty hopeless. But what if that’s not the whole story of evolution?

This is where evolutionary theorist, author, and professor David Sloan Wilson comes in. He has documented where an enlightened game, one of cooperation, rather than competition, is possible. His work shows that humans can and have chosen values like cooperation, altruism and group success – versus individual competition and selfishness – at key moments in our evolution, proving that evolution isn’t just genetic. It’s cultural, and it’s a choice.

In a world where our trajectory isn’t tracking in the direction we want, it's time to slow down and ask: is a different kind of conscious evolution possible?

On Your Undivided Attention, we’re going to update the Darwinian principles of evolution using a critical scientific lens that can help upgrade our ability to cooperate – ranging from the small community-level, all the way to entire technology companies that can cooperate in ways that allow everyone to succeed.

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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor Ostrom

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Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_