Reddit reviews Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

In the episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Nicholas Christakis about his new book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.

Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist and physician known for his research in the areas of social networks and biosocial science. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. His books include Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care and Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (coauthored with James H. Fowler). He was on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009.

Website: humannaturelab.net

Twitter: @NAChristakis

The fact that we can have this discussion and debate over reason and primal urges is to me proof of the power of our reasoning. That does not mean it is absolute nor are we never incorrect. Fundamentally, we may be disagreeing about human nature. There was and still is a debate on whether human nature is greedy, selfless, or a mixture. I tend to side more on humans, on average, being good. There is a recent book by Yale professor Nicholas A. Christakis titled Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, which attempts to argue that natural selection pre-wires us for peaceful co-existence.

As for the desire to eat, as I mentioned, humans are able to choose not to eat. They, of course, cannot suppress the desire. You may have heard of the event that occurred in Pavlovsk Experimental Station during WWII. 12 scientists died of starvation while being surrounded by edible berries and seeds in order to protect the valuable collection for genetic variation and scientific knowledge. By explaining greed as genetics and protective nature as genetics, this explanation has explained nothing at all, at least to me. In other words, for genetics to be both altruistic and selfish does not get into the underlying substance. Again, this is the tendency towards over-reduction. I believe inexperienced researchers and scholars tend to over-reduce the world down to their respective fields, viewing the world in overly chemical terms, economics terms, biological terms, historical terms, and etc.

We are also dancing around the topic of free will. If I have gathered correctly, we disagree on this topic as well. For me, as long as a being is sentient and can choose between various actions, then it has free will. Just because there are physical limitations does not mean there is no free will. You may believe the opposite. That is, you may be firmly in the deterministic camp--at least biological determinism.