Understanding the Uniqueness of Human Beings and Cultural Evolution

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Human beings are unique because we possess a cultural line of inheritance in addition to genetic inheritance and life experience.
Cultural evolution is an extension of population genetics into the world of culture.
Our behaviors, values, and technologies are often not fully understood and may be driven by unconscious influences.
Our ability to interact with the world and use technology is a result of cultural evolution.
Understanding ourselves and our future requires studying the software running on our brains rather than focusing solely on neuroscience.

A "Theory of Everything" is physicists' somewhat tongue-in-cheek phrase for a hypothetical model of all the fundamental physical interactions. Of course, even if we had such a theory, it would tell us nothing new about higher-level emergent phenomena, all the way up to human behavior and society. Can we even imagine a "Theory of Everyone," providing basic organizing principles for society? Michael Muthukrishna believes we can, and indeed that we can see the outlines of such a theory emerging, based on the relationships of people to each other and to the physical resources available.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/10/30/255-michael-muthukrishna-on-developing-a-theory-of-everyone/

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Michael Muthukrishna received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of British Columbia. He is currently Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Among his awards are an Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and a Dissertation Excellence Award from the Canadian Psychological Association. His new book is A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going.

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