The End of the World Than It Is to Imagine the End of Capitalism

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I think it's really difficult to imagine how 8 billion of us in all these nations could cooperate together towards some more desirable than the default future. It is just simply not the case that collective threat all by itself results in any kind of sustaining cooperation. The profiteering begins immediately. And multi-level selection actually enables you to predict that. So the alien scenario, forget about that. Just return to the first one. I will agree with you that we need to talk more because we are pushing an hour and a half now. But there's been a sentence floated around. I forgot who said it, that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the

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