I recently read Trivers' "The Folly of Fools"* and was surprised how candid he was about his own self-deception, irrationality and undignified behavior (like compulsive kleptomania). But I wasn't aware of that history of interpersonal aggression or any mental diagnosis.
Random question but something I've been meaning to ask you sometime: at this point what do you consider yourself? I've been reading you for years and tend to think of you as "scientist guy who talks about DNA stuff a lot" (grossly oversimplifying, of course). But with all the writing and science communication and podcasting and now substacking you do, I am curious how you think of yourself career/profession-wise.
ok. I just bought Richard Wrangham's book on Kindle base on above.
My hesitation was his thesis (just based on reading some reviews/summaries) is we became human through domestication. And...at this point I think that's not even really a scientific statement, more of a stamp collecting observation. That is, any theory of what made us human has to come from the larger (correct) theoretical framework of gene-culture evolution. Which in turn firmly rests on the theoretical framework from evolutionary synthesis.
So I'll give it a try. But if the book is oblivious to what's going on with gene-culture theory, I'll probably just skim for the observations only. Unless I'm missing something. Books are cheap, worth a skim at least to see what it's about and give it a fair shake.
finished "Woke Racism" and now on to "Woke, Inc" books
I would like recommendations of books on Russian History, especially the Soviet Union.
I recently read Trivers' "The Folly of Fools"* and was surprised how candid he was about his own self-deception, irrationality and undignified behavior (like compulsive kleptomania). But I wasn't aware of that history of interpersonal aggression or any mental diagnosis.
*Review here: https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2021/09/24/the-folly-of-fools/
Random question but something I've been meaning to ask you sometime: at this point what do you consider yourself? I've been reading you for years and tend to think of you as "scientist guy who talks about DNA stuff a lot" (grossly oversimplifying, of course). But with all the writing and science communication and podcasting and now substacking you do, I am curious how you think of yourself career/profession-wise.
ok. I just bought Richard Wrangham's book on Kindle base on above.
My hesitation was his thesis (just based on reading some reviews/summaries) is we became human through domestication. And...at this point I think that's not even really a scientific statement, more of a stamp collecting observation. That is, any theory of what made us human has to come from the larger (correct) theoretical framework of gene-culture evolution. Which in turn firmly rests on the theoretical framework from evolutionary synthesis.
So I'll give it a try. But if the book is oblivious to what's going on with gene-culture theory, I'll probably just skim for the observations only. Unless I'm missing something. Books are cheap, worth a skim at least to see what it's about and give it a fair shake.