This View of Life
Magazine

Economics provides an outstanding example of the “you can’t get there from here” principle in academic cultural evolution.

In times of public health crisis, political leaders need to suppress dysfunctional personality traits and instead rely on and uphold public health experts.

The evolutionary approach tells us we can increase the chances of our group's survival through cooperation.

Evolutionary theory leads to a conception of socialism—governance for the common good—that works. It also explains why many attempts at socialism in the past and present have not worked.

Understanding why and how both Twitter bots and cancer cells create conflict in different kinds of cooperative social systems may help us find new strategies to bring both kinds of disruptive behavior under control.

Evolution denial is rooted in deeply held misconceptions and current practices in evolution education are not adequate to address the problem.

Researchers of cultural evolution may leverage this understanding to enable them to predict (and potentially intervene) in key domains of great global concern.

Just as COVID-19's genes initially selected for changes in our culture, in the future those changes in culture could in turn select for changes in their genes.

For aspiring scholars, there is a wealth of options for learning about evolutionary thinking as a foundation for applications in economics.

How can we turn around this trajectory towards a catastrophic future?

Another level of selection is now operating in the social universe: selection on the social structures and cultures of each society.