I’ve taken three months of 2021 off from writing for this blog. My dad passed away. My wife is a healthcare worker and needed support during the pandemic. Work was busy. I even paused my Google Ads campaign for my site because I couldn’t handle leads for even more work. And guess what? Work is...Continue reading
Category: Our Social Nature
Our Social Nature: The Evolution of Cooperation
Social behavior has an evolutionary advantage. We’re now seeing new ways that social behavior has evolutionary impact, too. Behavior and biology interplay in the evolution of cooperation.
Reparations for Racism: A Social Goods Approach
Recent and ongoing incidents of blatant racism and police brutality against African Americans has reignited the discussion of reparations for the US history of slavery and racism. After 250 years of legal slavery and another 150+ years of discrimination, what could reparations even look like? Here’s a design experiment for reparations, based on topics covered...Continue reading
Your ZIP Code and Your Genetic Code: Epigenetics and the Social Compact
We are social creatures, down to our genes. We live together because it’s an advantage for us, individually and collectively.
In Time for Elections, A New View of Health Care Costs
The United States is entering a major election year. You’re going to hear a lot of debate about public spending on health care costs and social services.
A Common Ethic Is Part Of Our Social Nature
This entire blog is built on the assumption that we share a social nature, even down to our biology.
Getting Into Social Debt–And Getting Out
In Silicon Valley, companies discuss and worry about their “technical debt.” That’s the friction caused by the accumulation of bad design choices, expedient compromises, avoided decisions, and postponed work.
Our Brains Are Wired To Be Social
When I say in this blog that we are social creatures, I’m being quite literal. Our brains are physically wired to be social. Each one of us has an interpersonal neurobiology that responds to the world around us.
The Evolutionary Benefit of Fairness
As shown in my previous post on fairness featuring video about Capuchin monkeys who were paid unequally, fairness is innate. But what is the evolutionary benefit of fairness? Brian Hayden, professor emeritus of archaeology at Simon Frazer University in British Columbia, Canada, has an interesting theory. It revolves around scarcity and the distribution of resources....Continue reading
New York Times Doubts We Can Inherit Trauma
Does trauma change our genetic makeup, and can our children inherit that change?