The robustness of this kind of network structure, I think is a wonderful lesson for human beings who intelligently design networks in computers or on the internet. And it's often because we try to imagine what the threats are ahead of time and we're not very good at that. Whereas natural selection just sort of has put up with a whole bunch of unpredictable threats and generates therefore a very generally robust way of dealing with them. That transitivity of elephant networks or dolphin networks is very similar to our own. Why should it be that the friend of a friend among dolphins is the dolphin's friend? Well, because it's purpose. You know, and it's clearly evolved independently because again, our
It’s easy to be cynical about humanity’s present state and future prospects. But we have made it this far, and in some ways we’re doing better than we used to be. Today’s guest, Nicholas Christakis, is an interdisciplinary researcher who studies human nature from a variety of perspectives, including biological, historical, and philosophical. His most recent book is Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, in which he tries to pinpoint the common features of all human societies, something he dubs the “social suite.” Marshaling evidence from genetics to network theory to accounts of shipwreck survivors, he argues that we are ultimately wired to get along, despite the missteps we make along the way. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Nicholas Christakis received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science in the Department of Sociology, with additional appointments in the Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Statistics and Data Science; Biomedical Engineering; Medicine; and in the School of Management. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Yale web page Google scholar page Amazon.com author page Wikipedia Twitter
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