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Category: social organization

Atlas Hugged

Atlas Hugged

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The renowned evolutionary biologist DS Wilson discusses his novel Atlas Hugged refuting Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I have an e-copy if anyone wants a copy. An excerpt: “My sequel to Atlas Shrugged is titled Atlas Hugged and its protagonist is John Galt’s grandson. Ayn Rand was not a character in her novel, but since anything goes in fiction, I could transport her into mine as Ayn Rant, John I’s lover and John III’s grandmother. Rant’s son, John II, parlays her Objectivist philosophy into a world-destroying libertarian media empire….

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Human large-scale cooperation as a product of competition between cultural groups

Human large-scale cooperation as a product of competition between cultural groups

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Article in Nature Communications, February 2020. Since this topic repeatedly comes up in our discussions. The abstract: “A fundamental puzzle of human evolution is how we evolved to cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers in transient interactions. Group-level selection on culturally differentiated populations is one proposed explanation. We evaluate a central untested prediction of Cultural Group Selection theory, by assessing whether readiness to cooperate between individuals from different groups corresponds to the degree of cultural similarity between those groups. We documented…

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Grandmothers were critical for human evolution

Grandmothers were critical for human evolution

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From the Into to this article from 2012: “According to a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the answer is grandmothers. ‘Grandmothering was the initial step toward making us who we are,’ says senior author Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah. In 1997 Hawkes proposed the ‘grandmother hypothesis,’ a theory that explains menopause by citing the under-appreciated evolutionary value of grandmothering. Hawkes says that grandmothering helped us to develop ‘a whole…

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Civilization requires virtue signaling

Civilization requires virtue signaling

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This is a frequent topic of interest to us. So here‘s an article by Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychology professor at UNM. A few excerpts follow: “We all virtue signal. […] Let’s not pretend otherwise.” “There’s virtue signaling, and then there’s virtue signaling. […] On the one hand, there’s what economists call ‘cheap talk’: signals that are cheap, quick and easy to fake, and that aren’t accurate cues of underlying traits or values. […] On the other hand, there’s virtue…

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2020-06-06 Check-in topics

2020-06-06 Check-in topics

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Here are some of the topic references Scott, Paul, Edward, and Mark discussed during today’s check-in. If these provoke any thoughts, please feel free to reply by comment below this article or by reply to all from the associated email message from Cogniphile. Socio-economic and political: Alternate social and economic system – https://centerforpartnership.org/the-partnership-system/ Dark Horse podcast (Weinstein) ep. 19 on co-presidency idea How could a shift to voting on issues rather than representatives work? What are the potential challenges? How…

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Hanzi Freinacht on Nordic Ideology

Hanzi Freinacht on Nordic Ideology

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We’ve briefly discussed metamodernism before. Hanzi has written two books on the subject. In this interview he discusses his latest book Nordic Ideology. There’s also a transcript available if you prefer reading. The blurb: “Hanzi Freinacht, political philosopher, historian, sociologist, & author talks with Jim about effective value memes, cultural code, what it means to have high depth, dynamics of cognitive complexity, the changeability of culture & systems, social engineering, compulsion vs seduction, prioritizing subjective states, cultural attractor points &…

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Progressive International

Progressive International

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A new, international vision and organization has emerged. Also see this link for the video. “A coalition of left-leaning intellectuals, activists, and political leaders from around the world officially launched Monday the Progressive International with the support of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 and the Sanders Institute. […] At launch, the Progressive International is supported by an interim Council of over 40 advisors, including Iceland’s Prime Minister Katriin Jakobsdottir, intellectual Noam Chomsky, former Greek Minister of Economy Yanis Varoufakis,…

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The psychology of rituals

The psychology of rituals

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Subtitle: An integrative review and process-based framework, by Hobson et al. (2018), Personality and Social Psychology Review 22(3). The abstract: “Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psychology of ritual, this article provides an organizing framework to understand recent empirical…

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