David Sloan Wilson: "Chickens, Cooperation and a Pro-social World"

Episode 56
February 1, 2023

(Conversation recorded on December 8th, 2022)  

Show Summary

On this episode, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson joins Nate to unpack how evolution can be used to explain and understand modern human behavior, particularly with respect to cooperation and pro-social behavior. David is a leading scholar in this field, especially on the resurgence of the concept ‘multi-level selection’. How can an evolutionary idea, first thought of by Darwin and subsequently ignored until recently, shed light on human’s inherent balance between competition and cooperation? And how might our improved knowledge of where we come from inform our behaviors and collective governance in the decades ahead?

About David Sloan Wilson

David Sloan Wilson is one of the foremost evolutionary thinkers and gifted communicators about evolution to the general public. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology Emeritus at Binghamton University and President of the nonprofit organization ProSocial World, whose mission is "To consciously evolve a world that works for all".  His most recent books are This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups (with Paul Atkins and Steven C. Hayes), and his first novel, Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III.

Show Notes and Links to learn more:

PDF Transcript

00:40 - David Sloan Wilson works and info

02:35 - Charles Goodnite

02:48 - Multi-level selection

03:12 - Evolution for Everyone

03:19 - Evolution Institute

04:58 - Sloan Wilson

05:41 - Theodosius Dobzhansky 

06:29 - Optimal Foraging Theory

06:48 - E.O. Wilson

06:55 - E.O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson’s paper: Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology | The Quarterly Review of Biology: Vol 82, No 4  

07:17 - Group Selection

08:12 - Reductionism

08:24 - Émile Durkheim 

09:30 - Lamarckism

10:03 - Darwin on Group-Selection

10:58 - The 6 Legacies of E.O. Wilson

11:18 - Kin Selection, WD Hamilton 

11:58 - Complex Systems Thinking

17:53 - Chimpanzee males obsession with status

18:30 - Stoning as a social adaptation

18:55 - Humans have been a species for 300,000 years

19:40 - Small groups are central to human behavior

20:03 - The Dawn of Everything

21:12 - Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson

22:32 - Elinor Ostrom

24:15 - The Capacity for Abstract thought is distinctive/unique characteristic of human thought

25:20 - Nature vs Nurture

25:44 - Blank Slate

26:10 - Evolutionary psychology

26:17 - Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Steven Pinker

26:58 - BF Skinner, Margaret Mead, Clifford Geertz

27:29 - Innate Component and Adapt Component of the Immune System

28:20 - Joe Henrich - Secret of Our Success & Weirdest People in the World

30:33 - Flour Beetles

33:20 - Microbiome

34:34 - Michael Wade

35:02 - William Muir Purdue University

37:55 - Rank and yank

38:31 - The Problem with Super Chickens National Geographic

40:15 - Elinor Ostrom’s Core Design Principles

40:53 - Tragedy of the Commons

45:40 - Business groups were deficient in all Principles

47:25 - B Corp, Conscious Capitalism

47:30 - Raj Sisodia, Firms of Endearment

47:40 - Everyone Matters, Bob Chapman

48:32 - Elon Musk Twitter Firings

53:03 - Tight Society vs Loose Society

53:20 - Michele Gelfand 

56:26 - Making Democracy Work

1:02:18 - Factors affecting behavior change

1:02:42 - Nate’s superorganism paper

1:04:49 - Satya Nadella 

1:05:08 - Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer

1:06:30 - Hit Refresh

1:08:37 - Overton Windows

1:10:40 - “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism” - (often attributed to Mark Fisher, Slavoj Zizek or Fredric Jameson)

1:12:52 - Baháʼí Faith 

1:15:15 - Generalized Darwinism

1:20:25 - Davidsloanwilson.world, Prosocial.world, and thisviewoflife.com 

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Erica Thompson: "Models, The Hawkmoth Effect, and the Future"