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124 reviews for:
A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life
Heather E. Heying, Bret Weinstein
3.25 AVERAGE
124 reviews for:
A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life
Heather E. Heying, Bret Weinstein
3.25 AVERAGE
I picked this up hoping for a meal, and instead got a big serving of junk food. Great claims require great evidence. This book has many of the former but little of the latter.
So, starting with the fact that I agree at a high level with a lot of the things the authors have to say here, I did not think this was a very good book.
The model of “we are hunter gatherers in the world beyond comprehension.” Is one that I regularly think of. It blows my mind that I travel daily in a box at speeds my ancestors only could reach by jumping off a cliff. I genuinely think a lot of first world problems stem from living in a world of abundance while running firmware that is predicated on scarcity.
The authors share these opinions and more. And I do think I would probably enjoy dinner with the authors. However, when writing a book, assuming that your audience agrees with all your points doesn’t work. And the glaring issues in this book make it an extremely frustrating read even if you do agree with most of the points.
This book is an aggregation of dubiously sourced counterfactual aphorisms about modern life. While interesting, many of the ideas contained will contradict each other, and no one idea is explored enough in depth to convincingly sway anyone who doesn’t already agree with it. This results in a sort of schizophrenic leap from concept to concept wherein the authors give condescending prescriptive advice about things as far ranging as nutrition, child rearing, healthy relationships, and the importance of bonfires.
One of the first chapters talks about the ill fittingness of our bodies and minds in modern society. Sitting for hours a day while over consuming carbohydrates and social media. But the support for that information is just assumed. An arm wave into “these are not the droids you are looking for” is not evidence that there are no droids.
The whole book follows this trend. Occasionally pointing to personal anecdotes, vague studies, and sometimes just eschewing evidence altogether. It’s like showing up to a talk where there was a handout with all the supporting evidence, except you didn’t get the handout.
So the authors discuss “brain old, society new” and the danger of that. While in the following chapter discussing the overconfidence of medicine, and to support their claim, they dredge up a personal antidote where the author‘s kid breaks their hand and heals organically without the use of pesky modern casts. Naturally, they write this with a straight face while talking about shooting spacefaring x-rays and other imaging into the appendage before the doctor exclaims at the miracle of natural healing to validate the supremacy of their point about natural healing.
And to repeat, I mostly agree. Not all modern medicine is good. Up until just a few decades ago our best Psychologists were descended from the Freudian tree of thought and would gather around in their trench coats (assuming on the apparel here) to discuss the wonderful enlightenment that lobotomies bring to their patients.
“Good sir, I do believe that man is fascinated with his own genitalia as a result of how his mother fed him too many bananas.”
“Very good, we shall never attribute human motivations to anything but sex”
“Yea verily”
“Interesting that you say Verily. How suspiciously close to the word ‘virile’ perhaps YOU have some latent sexual desires to uncover”
“Why you!”
*muffled sounds of one Psychoanalyst choking the other in an Oedipic rage….
And again, this skepticism is probably for a good reason. If the recent pervasiveness of the opioid crisis is any indication, it is good to continue to be skeptical of physicians bearing gifts. BUT THE AUTHORS DONT BACK UP ANY OF THEIR @#$%^%$ CLAIMS. How did this pass any sort of editor?
And that leads me to the second major issue with this book. There is absolutely no nuance or accounting for counterfactuals. Every statement is definitive. Every point is uncalibrated. If someone in JV High School Debate tried this they would be lampooned by every other JV HS debater misquoting Kant or the Social Contract.
I mean, to claim that a single chapter or two comprehensively covers any of the expansive subjects they claim to cover is not only ridiculous, it seems harmful to peoples health. It’s all fun and games to make wild claims, but Steve Jobs died because he valued natural healing over listening to a doctor. There is a tremendous amount of confidence in boldly presented ideas where that does not seem to be appropriate.
And so much of the book follows this trajectory, there’s a lot of folksy, anecdotal, emotional arguments towards the ability or inability of some group or another to accurately show our “true nature as hunter gatherers” depending on what side of things the authors choose to portray. There’s an assumed reasonableness that really isn’t warranted, and much of the advice comes off as prescriptive when it seems like it should be presented more akin to a smoke sesh on a faded futon amongst undergrads. What’s lacking from this book that I think someone like Robert Sapolsky does really well is to calibration of how accurate the statements being made likely are.
At one point the authors talked about how laugh tracks were responsible for falsifying human connection to such an extent that the disintegration of modern society could be pointed to from that. Like come on guys. Laugh tracks? That example can, and should, be made fun of, laugh track or not.
At another point, theres a digression about how parents should not take photos of their kids to "allow them to change." How does anyone see this as anything more than "Old man yells at cloud?"
And while those are amusing, where we get into trouble is when we venture into the murkier waters. Like I said above, I agree with the authors on a lot of the basics, but what this book fails to give is any sort of information on where their ideas come from, and as such it’s near impossible to disentangle the nonsense from the reasonable assumptions
I picked this up with the understanding that this was supposed to be a scientific book. Both the authors have PhD’s. And their folksy aphorisms probably play well to the undergrads they teach. But under any sort of critical lens, most of the claims couldn’t withstand a soft breeze on a summer day. I found myself looking up supporting evidence for points made in the book AND I AGREE WITH THE POINTS. I’m not particularly looking to blow holes in the side of my own belief system. But at least when I get high and talk about gut microbiomes or the prevalence of inflammation in modern life, I try to use actual evidence to back up the reasonability of those claims.
So, starting with the fact that I agree at a high level with a lot of the things the authors have to say here, I did not think this was a very good book.
The model of “we are hunter gatherers in the world beyond comprehension.” Is one that I regularly think of. It blows my mind that I travel daily in a box at speeds my ancestors only could reach by jumping off a cliff. I genuinely think a lot of first world problems stem from living in a world of abundance while running firmware that is predicated on scarcity.
The authors share these opinions and more. And I do think I would probably enjoy dinner with the authors. However, when writing a book, assuming that your audience agrees with all your points doesn’t work. And the glaring issues in this book make it an extremely frustrating read even if you do agree with most of the points.
This book is an aggregation of dubiously sourced counterfactual aphorisms about modern life. While interesting, many of the ideas contained will contradict each other, and no one idea is explored enough in depth to convincingly sway anyone who doesn’t already agree with it. This results in a sort of schizophrenic leap from concept to concept wherein the authors give condescending prescriptive advice about things as far ranging as nutrition, child rearing, healthy relationships, and the importance of bonfires.
One of the first chapters talks about the ill fittingness of our bodies and minds in modern society. Sitting for hours a day while over consuming carbohydrates and social media. But the support for that information is just assumed. An arm wave into “these are not the droids you are looking for” is not evidence that there are no droids.
The whole book follows this trend. Occasionally pointing to personal anecdotes, vague studies, and sometimes just eschewing evidence altogether. It’s like showing up to a talk where there was a handout with all the supporting evidence, except you didn’t get the handout.
So the authors discuss “brain old, society new” and the danger of that. While in the following chapter discussing the overconfidence of medicine, and to support their claim, they dredge up a personal antidote where the author‘s kid breaks their hand and heals organically without the use of pesky modern casts. Naturally, they write this with a straight face while talking about shooting spacefaring x-rays and other imaging into the appendage before the doctor exclaims at the miracle of natural healing to validate the supremacy of their point about natural healing.
And to repeat, I mostly agree. Not all modern medicine is good. Up until just a few decades ago our best Psychologists were descended from the Freudian tree of thought and would gather around in their trench coats (assuming on the apparel here) to discuss the wonderful enlightenment that lobotomies bring to their patients.
“Good sir, I do believe that man is fascinated with his own genitalia as a result of how his mother fed him too many bananas.”
“Very good, we shall never attribute human motivations to anything but sex”
“Yea verily”
“Interesting that you say Verily. How suspiciously close to the word ‘virile’ perhaps YOU have some latent sexual desires to uncover”
“Why you!”
*muffled sounds of one Psychoanalyst choking the other in an Oedipic rage….
And again, this skepticism is probably for a good reason. If the recent pervasiveness of the opioid crisis is any indication, it is good to continue to be skeptical of physicians bearing gifts. BUT THE AUTHORS DONT BACK UP ANY OF THEIR @#$%^%$ CLAIMS. How did this pass any sort of editor?
And that leads me to the second major issue with this book. There is absolutely no nuance or accounting for counterfactuals. Every statement is definitive. Every point is uncalibrated. If someone in JV High School Debate tried this they would be lampooned by every other JV HS debater misquoting Kant or the Social Contract.
I mean, to claim that a single chapter or two comprehensively covers any of the expansive subjects they claim to cover is not only ridiculous, it seems harmful to peoples health. It’s all fun and games to make wild claims, but Steve Jobs died because he valued natural healing over listening to a doctor. There is a tremendous amount of confidence in boldly presented ideas where that does not seem to be appropriate.
And so much of the book follows this trajectory, there’s a lot of folksy, anecdotal, emotional arguments towards the ability or inability of some group or another to accurately show our “true nature as hunter gatherers” depending on what side of things the authors choose to portray. There’s an assumed reasonableness that really isn’t warranted, and much of the advice comes off as prescriptive when it seems like it should be presented more akin to a smoke sesh on a faded futon amongst undergrads. What’s lacking from this book that I think someone like Robert Sapolsky does really well is to calibration of how accurate the statements being made likely are.
At one point the authors talked about how laugh tracks were responsible for falsifying human connection to such an extent that the disintegration of modern society could be pointed to from that. Like come on guys. Laugh tracks? That example can, and should, be made fun of, laugh track or not.
At another point, theres a digression about how parents should not take photos of their kids to "allow them to change." How does anyone see this as anything more than "Old man yells at cloud?"
And while those are amusing, where we get into trouble is when we venture into the murkier waters. Like I said above, I agree with the authors on a lot of the basics, but what this book fails to give is any sort of information on where their ideas come from, and as such it’s near impossible to disentangle the nonsense from the reasonable assumptions
I picked this up with the understanding that this was supposed to be a scientific book. Both the authors have PhD’s. And their folksy aphorisms probably play well to the undergrads they teach. But under any sort of critical lens, most of the claims couldn’t withstand a soft breeze on a summer day. I found myself looking up supporting evidence for points made in the book AND I AGREE WITH THE POINTS. I’m not particularly looking to blow holes in the side of my own belief system. But at least when I get high and talk about gut microbiomes or the prevalence of inflammation in modern life, I try to use actual evidence to back up the reasonability of those claims.
I like books that cut through the BS and go right for the primary point. Academics have a tendency to embed complex language in their writing and spend pages discussing the nuance of theory -- not this book! There are numerous chapters on hot-topic issues, like sex, gender, parenthood, childhood play, and other less political things like the importance of sleep. This is all delivered through an evolutionary perspective!
informative
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book started out fine then gets very conservative in the middle rendering it unreadable.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism, Transphobia
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Thought provoking, I feel like some complexity was missed
Insightful history of human and mammal evolution and guidebook with some nice tips on returning to more natural life habits.
It is pretty factual and I didn't agree with all of their viewpoints, especially around Sex and Gender, but it was interesting to learn about our evolutionary history and trajectory. Although I did start to lose interest near the end.
It is pretty factual and I didn't agree with all of their viewpoints, especially around Sex and Gender, but it was interesting to learn about our evolutionary history and trajectory. Although I did start to lose interest near the end.