A review by inquiry_from_an_anti_library
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve by Steve Stewart-Williams

adventurous emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

4.0

Is This An Overview?

Evolution effects more than just biology, evolution also effects the mind.  Many social behaviors have evolutionary explanations.  Evolution is the process by which the best genes are able to copy themselves, to propagate the gene pool.  Evolution is about the genes, not the organisms, nor survival of the species.  Evolution is competition within a species, that can enable favorable individual traits which are detrimental to the species.  Evolution captures historic beneficial adaptations, but lacks foresight.  Creating an evolutionary mismatch as behavior that was appropriate in the evolutionary past might not be appropriate within different contexts.

 

Genes and cultures coevolved.  Genes affected behaviors which formed cultures, while cultures are able to change which genes are selected.  Information within cultures evolve the same way genes do, through the ability to copy themselves.  Cultures enabled and were created by cooperation.  Within a group, selfish individuals do better.  Within a population, altruistic groups do better than selfish groups as altruistic groups waste less resources competing against their own members.  Reciprocal cooperation enables each individual to improve their outcomes, as they are unable to do everything on their own.   Cooperation is a form of competition, as members cooperate due to self-interest.  As the selfless would be exploited by the selfish, self-interest is needed to prevent the self-interest of others.   

 

Caveats?

This book shows the evolution of evolution, how the idea of evolution changed.  The organizational structure has mixed results.  Part of the organization relies on hypothesis testing, through an evolutionary process.  Showing the hypothesis that fail and why they fail, then the improved hypothesis in the following iteration until an appropriate hypothesis.  Another part of the organization is the use of an alien as an analogy to science, an objective observer.  An objectivity derived through subjectivity.  This book describes various socially sensitive topics, expressing how evolution effects them rather than just culture.  The socially sensitive topics could have been handled more sensitively.