 First edition (Australia) | |
| Author | Mark Roeder |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Published | 2013, Harper Collins & Skyhorse |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 300 |
| ISBN | 978-1-62872-435-6 (first edition) |
| OCLC | 55586972 |
| 302 22 | |
| LC Class | HM1043 .G63 4102 |
Unnatural Selection: Why The Geeks Will Inherit The Earth is a book by Mark Roeder, first published by HarperCollins in 2013 [1] [2]
The book analyses the impact of technology on human evolution and the rise of the geek class. It suggests that the Man-made environment of the Anthropocene is selecting for more non-neurotypical traits in humans, compared to previous generations, which is fostering a cognitive revolution in the human species.
Roeder suggests that geeks often have behavioral or genetic traits that were previously considered detrimental, such as ADHD or autism spectrum disorders. [3] But the new high-tech environment has created a kind of digital greenhouse that favors these traits in certain circumstances, enabling many non-neurotypical people to bloom. They resonate with the technological zeitgeist in a way that turns their weakness into strengths.
The book examines various categories of geeks, and attempts to explain why they have become so successful in fields such as technology, finance, military, politics, and entertainment. [4]
Roeder suggests that the rise of the geek class will be further accelerated by advances in the fields of pharmacology, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence, which will ‘eventually enable many more people to have geek-like powers, fostering a cognitive arms race’. [5] [6] [7] ‘For the first time in human history,’ Roeder wrote, ‘humans will have the capacity to chart their own evolution - as the process of Darwinian natural selection is superseded by unnatural selection.’ He warns that 'human enhancement technologies will eventually threaten our sense of identity as human beings.' [8] [9] [10]
Steve Silberman, an editor of Wired magazine, wrote that Unnatural Selection ‘is a provocative book that explains why (geeks) have become a social force driving a new kind of human evolution.’ [11] Author Daniel Wilson suggested that the book ‘paints a compelling picture of human adaptability, identifying new traits within all of us that are helping us to survive and succeed in a world dominated by information. This is not just wishful thinking for geeks — technology is changing the landscape of society, and Roeder describes how humanity is changing along with it.’
Unnatural Selection was criticized by Canadian reviewer Jenny Henkelman, for its emphasis on ‘male geeks’, which implies that ‘we might find that the new digital world isn’t much different to the old one. A world in which the primary actors continue to be Steves, Julians and Jeffs’ (i.e. white males). [12] Nicola Gaston, writing in the New Zealand Association of Scientists Review, said, ‘The case that Roeder is making is rather logical up to a point…but it is the author’s insistence on ‘geekiness’ as an essential quality, which is now being selected for, that I lost some sympathy for.’ [13]
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations – that is, the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection in human evolution. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology. Some evolutionary psychologists apply the same thinking to psychology, arguing that the modularity of mind is similar to that of the body and with different modular adaptations serving different functions. These evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments.
Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents. Through heredity, variations between individuals can accumulate and cause species to evolve by natural selection. The study of heredity in biology is genetics.
Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely allied to evolutionary anthropology, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, and sociology.
Neurodiversity, or ND, refers to variations in the human brain and cognition, for instance in sociability, learning, attention, mood and other mental functions. It was coined in 1998 by sociologist Judy Singer, who helped popularize the concept along with journalist Harvey Blume, and situates human cognitive variation in the context of biodiversity and the politics of minority groups. This view arose out of the autism rights movement, as a challenge to prevailing views that certain things currently classified as neurodevelopmental disorders are inherently pathological. It builds on the social model of disability, in which disability arises out of societal barriers interacting with individual differences, rather than people being disabled simply as a result of having impairments. Some neurodiversity advocates and researchers, notably Judy Singer and Patrick Dwyer, argue that the neurodiversity paradigm is the middle ground between strong medical model and strong social model. The subsequent neurodiversity paradigm has been controversial among disability advocates, with opponents arguing it risks downplaying the suffering associated with some disabilities, and calls for the acceptance of things some would wish to see treated. Autistic self-advocate and researcher Ari Ne'eman, one of the major advocates in the neurodiversity movement, suggested a trait-based approach, meaning that elements of the medical model can be applied in treating certain traits, behaviors, or conditions that are intrinsically harmful, whereas neurodiversity approaches can be applied to non-harmful or adaptive autistic traits of the same individual. Furthermore, in recent years, there have been developments of neurodiversity-affirming interventions and reforms of some interventions.
Unnatural Selection may refer to:
The evolution of human intelligence is closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the origin of language. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately seven million years, from the separation of the genus Pan until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago. The first three million years of this timeline concern Sahelanthropus, the following two million concern Australopithecus and the final two million span the history of the genus Homo in the Paleolithic era.
Geoffrey Franklin Miller is an American evolutionary psychologist, author, and associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico. He is known for his research on sexual selection in human evolution.
Mate choice is one of the primary mechanisms under which evolution can occur. It is characterized by a "selective response by animals to particular stimuli" which can be observed as behavior. In other words, before an animal engages with a potential mate, they first evaluate various aspects of that mate which are indicative of quality—such as the resources or phenotypes they have—and evaluate whether or not those particular trait(s) are somehow beneficial to them. The evaluation will then incur a response of some sort.
The word geek is a slang term originally used to describe eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit. In the past, it had a generally pejorative meaning of a "peculiar person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual, unfashionable, boring, or socially awkward". In the 21st century, it was reclaimed and used by many people, especially members of some fandoms, as a positive term.
Evolutionary psychology seeks to identify and understand human psychological traits that have evolved in much the same way as biological traits, through adaptation to environmental cues. Furthermore, it tends toward viewing the vast majority of psychological traits, certainly the most important ones, as the result of past adaptions, which has generated significant controversy and criticism from competing fields. These criticisms include disputes about the testability of evolutionary hypotheses, cognitive assumptions such as massive modularity, vagueness stemming from assumptions about the environment that leads to evolutionary adaptation, the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, as well as political and ethical issues in the field itself.
The evolutionary psychology of religion is the study of religious belief using evolutionary psychology principles. It is one approach to the psychology of religion. As with all other organs and organ functions, the brain's functional structure is argued to have a genetic basis, and is therefore subject to the effects of natural selection and evolution. Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand cognitive processes, religion in this case, by understanding the survival and reproductive functions they might serve.
Sexual selection in humans concerns the concept of sexual selection, introduced by Charles Darwin as an element of his theory of natural selection, as it affects humans. Sexual selection is a biological way one sex chooses a mate for the best reproductive success. Most compete with others of the same sex for the best mate to contribute their genome for future generations. This has shaped human evolution for many years, but reasons why humans choose their mates are not fully understood. Sexual selection is quite different in non-human animals than humans as they feel more of the evolutionary pressures to reproduce and can easily reject a mate. The role of sexual selection in human evolution has not been firmly established although neoteny has been cited as being caused by human sexual selection. It has been suggested that sexual selection played a part in the evolution of the anatomically modern human brain, i.e. the structures responsible for social intelligence underwent positive selection as a sexual ornamentation to be used in courtship rather than for survival itself, and that it has developed in ways outlined by Ronald Fisher in the Fisherian runaway model. Fisher also stated that the development of sexual selection was "more favourable" in humans.
What Darwin Got Wrong is a 2010 book by philosopher Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, in which the authors criticize Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. It is an extension of an argument first presented as "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings" in the London Review of Books.
Cultural group selection is an explanatory model within cultural evolution of how cultural traits evolve according to the competitive advantage they bestow upon a group. This multidisciplinary approach to the question of human culture engages research from the fields of anthropology, behavioural economics, evolutionary biology, evolutionary game theory, sociology, and psychology.
The evolution of schizophrenia refers to the theory of natural selection working in favor of selecting traits that are characteristic of the disorder. Positive symptoms are features that are not present in healthy individuals but appear as a result of the disease process. These include visual and/or auditory hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and major thought disorders. Negative symptoms refer to features that are normally present but are reduced or absent as a result of the disease process, including social withdrawal, apathy, anhedonia, alogia, and behavioral perseveration. Cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia involve disturbances in executive functions, working memory impairment, and inability to sustain attention.
Evolutionary psychology of language is the study of the evolutionary history of language as a psychological faculty within the discipline of evolutionary psychology. It makes the assumption that language is the result of a Darwinian adaptation.
Mark Lewis Mendick Roeder is an Australian-British author and cultural commentator. He has written The Big Mo (book): Why Momentum Rules The World (2011), and Unnatural Selection: Why The Geeks Will Inherit The Earth (2013). Roeder's books and articles explore social phenomena and the impact of technology on human behaviour.
Evolutionary psychology has traditionally focused on individual-level behaviors, determined by species-typical psychological adaptations. Considerable work, though, has been done on how these adaptations shape and, ultimately govern, culture. Tooby and Cosmides (1989) argued that the mind consists of many domain-specific psychological adaptations, some of which may constrain what cultural material is learned or taught. As opposed to a domain-general cultural acquisition program, where an individual passively receives culturally-transmitted material from the group, Tooby and Cosmides (1989), among others, argue that: "the psyche evolved to generate adaptive rather than repetitive behavior, and hence critically analyzes the behavior of those surrounding it in highly structured and patterned ways, to be used as a rich source of information out of which to construct a 'private culture' or individually tailored adaptive system; in consequence, this system may or may not mirror the behavior of others in any given respect.".
Recent human evolution refers to evolutionary adaptation, sexual and natural selection, and genetic drift within Homo sapiens populations, since their separation and dispersal in the Middle Paleolithic about 50,000 years ago. Contrary to popular belief, not only are humans still evolving, their evolution since the dawn of agriculture is faster than ever before. It has been proposed that human culture acts as a selective force in human evolution and has accelerated it; however, this is disputed. With a sufficiently large data set and modern research methods, scientists can study the changes in the frequency of an allele occurring in a tiny subset of the population over a single lifetime, the shortest meaningful time scale in evolution. Comparing a given gene with that of other species enables geneticists to determine whether it is rapidly evolving in humans alone. For example, while human DNA is on average 98% identical to chimp DNA, the so-called Human Accelerated Region 1 (HAR1), involved in the development of the brain, is only 85% similar.
Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity is a book by anthropologist Brian Hare and writer Vanessa Woods, first published in 2020, based on Hare's research hypothesis of human self-domestication. The main thesis of the book is that late in human evolution Homo sapiens underwent a process of extreme selection for friendliness that led to the self-domestication syndrome, as seen in other animals. The self-domestication syndrome led to a series of cognitive changes that allowed modern humans to out compete other species of humans in the Pleistocene, including Neanderthals, and become the most successful mammal on the planet. Hare and Woods argue that self-domestication is an ongoing process that continues today.