We could make every human on Earth rich and happy—if we decided to | Agustín Fuentes

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Sep 29, 2025

Agustín Fuentes, a Princeton University anthropologist, challenges the notion that human population growth equals success. He argues for measuring our evolutionary triumph by health, security, and well-being rather than sheer numbers. Fuentes tackles the overpopulation myth and emphasizes the importance of human creativity in addressing global issues like climate change. He discusses niche construction, showcasing how humans, like earthworms and beavers, shape their environments, calling for a deeper understanding of our impact on sustainability and equity.

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INSIGHT

Population Size Isn’t The Whole Story

Human population size alone doesn't prove success; scale brings problems like climate and inequality.
Agustín Fuentes argues evolutionary success should measure capacity for flourishing and fair distribution.

INSIGHT

Niche Construction Is Two-Way

Niche construction is bidirectional: organisms change environments and environments shape organisms.
Fuentes uses earthworms to show how organismal activity reshapes ecosystems for future generations.

ANECDOTE

Earthworms And Beavers Rebuild Their Worlds

Fuentes describes earthworms changing soil by ingesting and excreting it to improve conditions for future worms.
He then compares to beavers who build dams and houses, altering water chemistry and flow for their offspring.

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The traditional measure of evolutionary success is a population's ability to continue, adapt and grow. By that measure, humanity has been a huge success: our population is only getting bigger, and for a lot of countries, so is our average life-span. Biological anthropologist Agustín Fuentes takes issue with this measurement. In his view, the sheer number of humans living on the planet doesn't necessarily equate to success. In fact, the argument that humans are doing better than ever before is problematic, because it only considers a narrow perspective of Euro-American societies, ignoring other vast cultures and populations. Instead, Fuentes argues, evolutionary success for humans should be measured by our capacity for flourishing, which includes health, security, interaction, and well-being — and importantly, how this flourishing is distributed across our species. 0:00 The overpopulation myth 1:20 Niche construction, explained 4:06 Human nature: Amazing and awful 5:46 The “it’s just nature” myth ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Agustín Fuentes: Agustín Fuentes, a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. Earning his BA/BS in Anthropology and Zoology and his MA and PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, he has conducted research across four continents, multiple species, and two-million years of human history. His current projects include exploring cooperation, creativity, and belief in human evolution, multispecies anthropologies, evolutionary theory and processes, and engaging race and racism. Fuentes’ books include Race, Monogamy, and other lies they told you: busting myths about human nature (U of California), The Creative Spark: how imagination made humans exceptional (Dutton), and Why We Believe: evolution and the human way of being (Yale). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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