Nonzero
The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history--and discerning where history will lead us next.In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance--a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
16mentions
7people
2007–2022years
69% recommend31% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Societies lurch from tyranny to revolution and then back again.
Because preferential attachment leading to winner takes all is something akin to a natural law. Tyranny.
Because no open ended complex adaptive system can sustain a stable equilibrium. Revolution.
Democracy and other notions try to find a middle path, to avoid the two extremes.
Sometimes it works, a little bit, for a little while.
Just because no stable middle path is possible doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Over the ages, we've gotten a bit better at it.
h/t Robert Wright's book Nonzero.
- For the purposes of this OC topic, it's sufficient to say:
People are generally happy to tax themselves for the benefit of the in-group, and continue to oppose helping the out-group.
Optimistic me continues to believe that society's notions of in-group continues to expand. By fits and starts, including the cycles of backlash.
FWIW, I highly recommend Robert Wright's book Nonzero. Helped transmute me into an optimist, despite everything.
- Thank you!
I've been wondering how to continue learning about the ideas Graeber's writings introduced to me.
Graeber's work puts me in the same frame of mind as Robert Wright (Nonzero, Moral Animal) did. Very optimistic.
Hudson's anecdote about Deaton refusing to appear on stage with them is hysterical.
- Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright about biological and cultural evolution shaped and directed by "non-zero-sumness" or synergetic interactions.
- I like the game theoretic framing. Winners and losers. Currently a zero sum game. Where we non-zero sum games, filled with win-win outcomes.
Robert Wright's book Nonzero, which advocates for these kinds of reforms, deeply influenced my worldview, way back when.
https://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert-Wright/d...
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I'm a treehugger. During the 90s, I volunteered at Wetlands Conservation Network (WetNet), a short lived Audubon offshoot trying to save the Pacific salmon.
During my time there, I somehow got the impression that all environmental (ecological) challenges could be fixed with better accounting and fair markets.
More than just addressing externalities.
With our salmon, the (economic) winners were timber companies and developers. Who reaped outsized rewards for developing habitat. (Timber companies were turning second growth forests into urban sprawl thru their subsidiaries.)
Other beneficiaries were power (hydroelectric) and some farmers (irrigation).
The biggest losers were the commercial & tribal fishers, anglers, and the hard to quantify "culture".
But for some reason, beyond my experience and understanding, commonsense structural reforms were completely out of bounds.
For instance, (I'm told) that water rights in the West are "use it or lose it", so potato farmers in Idaho continue to grow an oversupply. Whereas if they somehow rent (or transfer) those water rights in an open marketplace, that water could be put to better uses.
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Note that I've been out of the treehugger game since 2000, so I don't know what, if any progress, has been made since.
Also, I continue to be surprised that Wright's Nonzero thesis apparently hasn't gotten any traction. Neither with the libertarian Freedom Markets™ cultists. Or the weirdly regressive leftists who reject markets and incentives, and continue to conflate corporatism & cronyism with capitalism.
Oh well.
- I hear ya. Pinko commie liberal me abhors the idea.
Legal fictions like "property", "money", and "rights" are practical innovations that make society work better (eg more moral, greater public good). Kinda like the tech tree in games like Civilization.
The books "The Mystery of Capital" and "Nonzero" influenced me a lot. Good starting points, optimistic, and more right than wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_Polar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wright_(journalist)
Until something better comes along...
