Do You Get a Response to Community Level Selection?

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David Frum: My intent was to talk about the evolution of cooperation and why multi-level selection, your main work is important. But I'm jumping the gun here and asking you questions that may not be interesting as much or relevant to the audience listening to this show. There's a wonderful example of how a community can become like an organism. He says genes evolved in both species that interacted with each other to increase the density of species A. The fact that you selected at the level of the whole community turned the species into chromosomes.

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