A human evolution book guide that doesn't include the book Sapiens. ft Dr Adam Rutherford Lesley Newson The Leakey Foundation Princeton University Press Vintage Books University of Oxford Pantheon Books Mariner Books Basic Books #BookmarkedReads📚 bookmarkedreads.substack.com/p/ultimate-hum…

Ed's interesting thread is misleading when it quotes "evo scholars" without mentioning that they see reliance on culture as a primary adaption and cultural differences as much more important than genetic differences in explaining why populations behave differently.

We're heading up the Thames to Oxford in 30+ degree heat. We're keeping cool because every hour or so we dip a T-Shirt into the river and put it on soaking wet. Thinking of you, Paul Paul Smaldino

I welcome this critique of Yuval Noah Harari. My own take on narratives of this sort, which claim to be science-based but often fall short, is here: thisviewoflife.com/evaluating-nar…. Athena Aktipis Jonathan Haidt Joe Henrich Peter Turchin.

It's wrong to imply that the possession and granting of "human rights" is something simple, "natural"", and obviously good. Humans are social animals. This concentration on the individual is an experiment and it's one that began very recently in the long history of our species.

They were so close I could wave to the people in the basket.

So I await the response of the right side of history crew to this thetimes.co.uk/article/4e7fc5…

Women's bodies are more efficient load barers than men's bodies. bit.ly/3Ai3dDv

This is an interesting question.

Why is it still part of Western culture for women to spend so much time and money to look "right" (shaved, toned, coiffured, and nailed)? And why do women who give vocal support to feminism still wear shoes that many of their sisters find unwearable?

Across 6 experiments (e.g., live interactions in field & lab), we found those in need of help tend to underestimate how willing and motivated others are to help and how positive helpers feel afterwards. Putting a prosocial lens (back) to why people help! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09…

I found this very useful.

I think this book could get more attention. The thesis is that (1) big tech economy is based on advertisement revenue, but (2) advertisements do not work that much, so (3) value of advertisements is misrepresented and the ecosystem is at risk of a bubble-like collapse.

Evolutionary endocrinology and the problem of Darwin's tangled bank: "This review synthesizes existing case studies, phylogenetic analyses, and experimental evolutionary research on mechanistic parallelism in animal behavior" sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Trust me to get Covid when it's no longer fashionable. Here's the standard photo.

Herb...so generous and so justifiably grumpy at times. It's a great loss.

Men do less work than women. But male humans are unusual among mammals that they do any work at all.

In 2021, my 40-year-old cousin was found lifeless in her Delhi apartment. Days later, her husband was arrested & charged for murder. In this week's The New Yorker, I tell the story of her death & examine the factors sustaining gender-based violence in India: newyorker.com/magazine/2023/…

I really wish Americans would pronounce "entrepreneur" the way the French do and not so that it rhymes with "sewer".

Our book "A Story of US" is now available in simplified Chinese.