Saved by Ajinkya Wadhwa
A Game of Giants — Wait but Why
Humans carry around legacy behaviors and biases, jerry-rigged holdovers from earlier stages of evolution that follow their own obsolete rules. What seem like erratic, irrational choices are, in fact, strategies created long ago for solving other kinds of problems. We’re all trapped in the bodies of sly, social-climbing opportunists shaped to
... See moreRichard Powers • The Overstory: A Novel
For most people, these disagreements are manageable, because at the end of the day, it’s the notion of a powerful them hiding the truth that motivated them to dig deeper, find one another, and form a community. They can all agree on that. Then group psychology took over; now they are bound by tribalism and reputation management, signaling to one
... See moreDavid McRaney • How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion
Our bodies and minds are built to live in a tribe in 50,000BC, which leaves modern humans with a number of unfortunate traits, one of which is a fixation with tribal-style social survival in a world where social survival is no longer a real concept. We’re all here in 2014, accompanied by a large, hungry, and easily freaked-out woolly mammoth who... See more
Tim Urban • Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think
David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto
When we band together with our in-groups to complain about the “others,” our adrenaline and other “fight” hormones spike, giving us an intoxicating, artificial sense of purpose and belonging. The more violently we speak and act, the more righteous we feel.