Evolving Toward a Better Future with David Sloan Wilson

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Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

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a global leader in science, technology, and innovation.

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My name is Alan Lowe, director of the American Museum

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of Science and Energy, and the K-25 History Center.

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Each episode of AMSEcast presents world-renowned authors,

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scientists, historians, policymakers, and everyone in between,

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sharing their insights on a variety of fascinating topics.

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Welcome to AMSEcast.

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I’m honored today to be joined by David Sloan Wilson.

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With a doctorate from Michigan State University, David has had an

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incredible career at a variety of prestigious institutions, including—among

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others—Harvard University, University of Washington, Michigan State,

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and the State University of New York Binghamton, where he was a

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professor, now Distinguished Professor Emeritus of biological sciences

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and anthropology, and where he began their evolutionary studies program.

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David is the founder of the Evolution Institute, and co-founder of the

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nonprofit ProSocial World, which includes the New Paradigm Coalition Initiative.

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David is an award-winning prolific author, and today we’re going to touch

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upon topics in several of his books, including This View of Life: Completing

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the Darwinian Revolution, Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can

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Change the Way we Think About Our Lives, The Neighborhood Project: Using

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Evolution to Improve my City, One Block at a Time, and his novel, Atlas Hugged.

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David, welcome to AMSEcast.

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Thank you so much, Alan.

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Pleasure to be here.

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And I know we talked before we started today, our mutual friend, Guru

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Madhavan, brought us together, and our thanks to him for doing that.

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Yep, absolutely.

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In his new book, Wicked Problems, I’ll be bringing that in because we are—this

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is our age of wicked problems that we’re living in right now, isn’t it?

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We have a few of those, David.

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Yes, we do [laugh]

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.
[laugh]

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.
So, I think that you and Guru together can solve them.

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I have great faith.

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So, [laugh] he’s—

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With many others.

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Only with the help of many others.

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That is very true.

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Very true.

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So, I so enjoyed learning about your work, reading your work, and

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something very central to that is something called the evolution paradigm.

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Can you tell us this as just as we start, what is the evolution paradigm?

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Right.

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Well, I mean, a way to begin is to note that

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the word evolution has a very general meaning.

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People use the word all the time for any

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kind of change or any kind of development.

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But Darwin had a very specific meaning of

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evolution as the engine of change in nature.

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And so, he was pointing out three vital ingredients: first, that

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organisms vary in just about anything that could be measured about

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them; two, that those differences make a difference; and three,

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that traits are heritable, basically passed on to their offspring.

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And so, you put those three ingredients together, and then you get

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populations changing over time and adapting to their environment.

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So, there’s Darwin’s theory of evolution in a nutshell.

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There’s point one.

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And point two is, although Darwin knew nothing about genes, once genes

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were discovered and the science of genetics was born, then the study

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of evolution became constricted to the study of genetic evolution.

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So, around the world, when one person says the word

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‘evolution,’ other people hear the word ‘genes.’

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And that’s actually not as general as it needs

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to be because there’s other forms of evolution.

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There’s cultural evolution, there’s even our personal evolution.

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And so, what’s happened recently that’s new and worth talking

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about is this expansion of evolutionary thinking to explain all

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of the fast-paced changes taking place outside and within us.

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The applicability of Darwin’s theory of evolution is what my

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career is about and what’s so exciting to report to others.

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I know you mentioned this—I’m forgetting now, David, forgive me, in which of

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the books—but you talk about the evolution of cultures and how what you’re not

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talking about, essentially, is the very discredited theory of Social Darwinism.

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So, can you tell us, in terms of cultures, how this paradigm is implemented

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or seen, and how that’s different from those old ideas of Social Darwinism?

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Yeah, so Social Darwinism is the moral justification of inequality, and

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the idea that basically, the fit—first of all, the successful people

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in the world are the most fit, and they deserve to replace the unfit.

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One point to make historically, Alan, is that it’s not the case that

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Darwin’s theory led to Social Darwinism, and all these pernicious things.

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Darwin’s theory was interpreted in so many different ways from the beginning.

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I mean, many people interpreted Darwin’s theory as saying, “Oh, my heavens, this

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means that the existing social order is not fixed.” Societies were different

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in the past than in the present, and they can be different in the future.

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So, in other words, people with a socialistic bent embraced Darwin’s theory, and

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then others did embrace this idea that the successful deserves to replace the.

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So, Social Darwinism is a thing for sure, but it wasn’t the only thing.

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And it’s not the case that Darwin’s theory

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is inherently prone to this kind of a policy.

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But in any case, what’s proven to be the case is almost the very opposite.

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Because what’s so distinctive about our species is how cooperative we are.

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Cooperation is the signature adaptation of our

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species, and cooperation is what’s needed, basically.

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And what Darwin’s theory tells us is that cooperation—and everything

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associated with it: love, altruism, sympathy, empathy, all of the positive

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emotions, everything that we regard as morally good, basically—can

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evolve by a Darwinian process, but only if special conditions are met.

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And when those conditions are not met, then we get dysfunction, selfishness,

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and conflict, and lack of coordination, and disruption in all of their forms.

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And in both nature and in human life, what we find is both.

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I mean, you don’t need to be a scientist to know that.

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We find spectacular examples of cooperation, and spectacular failures.

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And so, I think that what Darwin’s theory of evolution, properly

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understood, does is enables us to diagnose that, and then

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work, in the future, towards more cooperative arrangements.

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I want to dig into some more of these specifics,

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but you mentioned those special conditions.

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So, what are some of those special conditions

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that need to be in place for that to be effective?

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They’re embodied in a meme that I’ve coined with the

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other Wilson, the evolutionary biologist, Edward O.

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Wilson.

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And the meme is, selfishness beats altruism within groups;

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altruistic groups beat selfish groups; everything else is commentary.

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So, to unpack that meme, what we need to know—and I think what’s often

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overlooked because we’re always encouraging people to be good in one way or

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another—and what that fails to appreciate is the vulnerability of goodness.

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When we act on behalf of others or on behalf of our groups as a whole, we are

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inherently exposing ourselves to exploitation and free-riding by others who are

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not producing social benefits, and are accepting them without producing them.

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And so, the vulnerability, everything we call

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prosocial is something that you have to know.

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There is an inherent disadvantage, and that disadvantage needs to

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be countered by the advantage of when cooperators work together.

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Then, as a group, they function better than other

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groups where cooperation is not taking place.

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And so cooperation, those special conditions require a process of

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selection among groups to offset their process of selection within groups.

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So, what we’re talking about as evolution as a multi-layered

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thing, that is what’s important, and the need for higher

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levels of selection in order to evolve cooperation.

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Very, very interesting.

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Let’s dig into some of the specifics that you mentioned in your writings.

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Decision-making and the creation of public policy.

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At one point in my life, I was very fortunate to be head of the Howard

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Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee—now the

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Howard Baker School, I’m glad to say—so I thought a lot about these topics.

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How should decision-making and the creation of public

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policy, how should or could they be informed by evolution?

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Well, one point to make is that the world is so complex for the

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decisions we need to make—back to Guru Madhavan with our wicked

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problems—that there is no group of experts that can make wise decisions.

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The world is too complex for that.

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Therefore, you have to experiment.

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And so, decision-making fundamentally has to be a form of experimentation.

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And by the way, experimentation is nothing more

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than a very conscious process of cultural evolution.

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When we make a decision, we have some goal—there’s our target of

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selection—we orient variation around the goal, we’ve heard what

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might work what might not work, and then we try it out and we

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identify what works best among those alternatives, then we replicate

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it, and then we repeat that process again, and again, and again.

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So, a decision-making process is an evolutionary, a Darwinian process.

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So, what we can is that experimentation is required.

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And the second thing we can say is

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that that needs to include all the stakeholders because you don’t have a

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special class of people who do the experimentation, so the decision-making

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process should be inclusive, it should include everyone that’s involved.

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First of all, everyone that might contribute to the solution—in other words,

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who knows about it—and anyone who might be influenced by the decision.

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So decision-making, we can say, must be experimental and inclusive.

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And let me give an example, Alan, from industry.

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One point to make is that sometimes cultural evolution works well, kind of,

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all by itself, without us explicitly thinking of it as an evolutionary process.

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And Toyota, the Toyota manufacturing method is famous, at least in the

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business world, but what it is an implementation of exactly what I described.

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So, you have this big assembly plant which has a very, very,

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very complex system, and if anything goes wrong on the assembly

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plant, then the worker there who notices it, signals it.

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It used to be that there was ropes hanging from

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the ceiling, that you’d actually pull the rope.

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And then there’s a swarm of activity, just around the solution to that problem.

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And the group that forms around it includes the workers that are there, plus

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the management whose offices are not on the top floor, but on the shop floor.

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So, the managers are working directly with the workers.

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And when they come up with a candidate solution, they don’t implement it.

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They try it out experimentally, and then they look at all the

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indirect effects that might take place, or that percolates

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through the whole system, and only then do they implement it.

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So, that’s a process of continuous improvement,

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and it’s why the Toyota method works so well.

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It certainly does.

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I guess the question, then, in terms of decision-making, in the

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world we live in today, we see so many conflicting opinions.

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How does that cooperation work to get to that initial decision that we’re

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going to make this as our first experimental approach to this problem?

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How do you bring those parties together to get to that if

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they are so—if they’re on opposite sides of the argument?

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Yeah, well, that’s a great point, of course,

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and what is needed actually is a common goal.

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A lot of this work traces to somebody, Elinor

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Ostrom, who should be familiar to everyone.

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If you’re not already familiar with Elinor Ostrom, then please do [laugh]

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.
Yeah, right [laugh]

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.
And she outlined eight core design principles for groups to

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function well, and my work is very much based on her work.

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And the first core design principle, it’s

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a strong sense of identity and purpose.

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In other words, we must see ourselves as the members

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of a group with a common purpose, what we’re about.

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And if we’re not, well, that’s just, like… a recipe for conflict.

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So, that means that we need to find a common goal.

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At a small-scale, that happens all the time.

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You know, it might be our business or a neighborhood or something.

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So, I think that there’s many, many cases in which groups

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do have a strong sense of purpose, and then there’s more

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roles that are required, but at least they have that.

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And ultimately, there’s a lot to convey here, Alan, in a short space,

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so I hope that I’m not, you know, seeming like a firehose, here.

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But I think what that ultimately means, what we need to

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work towards is a global identity, and that, the first

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and foremost, I’m a human being and citizen of the planet.

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And then I have many other identities.

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And those identities are important—my nationality, my religion, my town, up

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and down, different identities—but those identities will always exist, in some

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form, but they need to be coordinated with the planetary good in mind, I think.

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And so, that’s very important to work towards.

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And I don’t think it’s too idealistic to say that that’s possible.

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It’s already a reality for many people, and I

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think needs to become a reality for everyone.

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Also, I know we’re spending a lot of time on

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this question, but I think it’s so fascinating.

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One more question for you, in terms of those groups coming together.

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How is failure handled?

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So, you see, in many worlds, if you think, well, this is an

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innovative solution to this problem and it fails, that experiment—the

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first one—doesn’t work, then often you’ll pay a price for

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that, right, you know, your job or a demotion or something.

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How can that be handled better within this cooperation we’re talking about?

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Yeah, from an evolutionary perspective, failure is the leading edge of

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adaptation, and so it really does require an attitude towards failure

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of a constructive attitude towards failure is where we, you know,

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we have a goal, there’s alternatives, we’re going to try

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something out, and then we see how it works, and if it

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fails, we’ve learned something from it, for heaven’s sakes.

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We’ve learned something.

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And then we embrace the alternative, and

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then we repeat again, and again, and again.

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So, I think that’s really a wonderful attitude to

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have towards failure, a positive attitude to have.

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And just to, like, you know, you know, let’s fail again, and again, and again.

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But safely, of course.

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You can’t fail in a catastrophic way.

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Just like the Toyota assembly plant, when we try something

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out, we need to do it on a pilot basis and then expand.

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And we need to look at natural variation.

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I think that’s one reason that America—or any Federalist Society—works well:

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there’s so many different experiments, there’s 50 states, there’s hundreds

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of cities, there’s—and look around, and you’ll find stuff that works.

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And then, of course, there’s what theory might tell us to do.

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So, the variation comes in a number of forms.

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One is natural variation, the other is the variation when we think

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about things carefully with our theories, and do very carefully

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controlled experiments, and they all feed into this process.

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Another topic we think a lot about it at the AMSE Foundation is

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education, and you certainly talk about education in your writings.

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How can this approach be applied to how we educate our children?

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That’s a great topic.

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And let’s just take note that we could ask that question, let’s

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say—and I hope we will—for economics, and the fact that we can do

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that, that we have a framework that’s equally relevant to any subject.

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We might talk about religion, I’m not sure, but

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whatever we talk about, will be covered by this.

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And the economics education comparison, they share something in common,

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which is the current paradigm, placing such an emphasis on individual-level

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competition, the competition, it gets us a little bit back to Social

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Darwinism, and the idea that competition is always good, and that if

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we want progress, then we just pit individuals against each other.

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And that’s as much true in school as it is in many business

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corporations, where as a student, you work as an individual.

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I know you work in teams, but you get an individual grade, and whether you get

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into college depends on what their grade might be, and so on, and so forth.

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So, it’s an individual level competition treadmill in business and in

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school, and it turns out that it’s toxic because it’s basically lower level

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of competition when in fact what we want our various forms of well-managed

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competition at the group level: people succeeding as teams and so on.

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So, there’s one.

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That’s just one.

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But another one is, naively we think that we want our

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children to develop as fast as possible, and so we push

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formal education on them sooner than then we should.

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And it turns out that just growing up, you might say, in the

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absence of education, such things as play—our parents, and

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maybe as children, we were lucky enough where your mom would

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say, “Go out and play and don’t come back until dinner.”

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[laugh] . Yes.

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And you go out, and what do you do?

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You meet up with your friends, those friends are mixed age groups.

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Playing is so interesting.

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It’s much more sophisticated than we think.

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And so, when we push our young children into academic education

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too early, there’s a lot of research on this—we are stunting them,

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my friends, and we’re stunting them socially, and intellectually.

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What these studies find is that these academic programs for

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young children, they have very short-term benefits, small

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and short term benefits that wash out almost immediately.

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And then later on, we have deficits, sometimes extreme deficits.

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And so, the whole concept of education really needs to be reformulated

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with human development, what we know about human development.

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And it’s huge.

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It’s huge, and it’s tragic.

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When we talk about the anxiety epidemic in

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children, we blame it too much on social media.

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I mean, social media, of course, is a big factor, but there’s

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other factors involved, and seeing it from a evolutionary

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perspective leads to a much, much more humane form of education.

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We’re starting at the earliest age.

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I must say, as a student, pre-social media student, I had my fair

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share of anxiety, so I did not depend upon social media for that.

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I will say, I hope you can visit us in Oak Ridge.

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When you look at our high school here, for example, I think they’re

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leading the way in that team approach, really, truly phenomenal teachers

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and students over there, looking at kind of a new way of doing things.

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Have you seen other best practices elsewhere that

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we should be looking at for our education system?

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Well, I’ll mention two: one is called the Good Behavior Game.

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And what that involves—this is played at a very young age,

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like, kindergarten and first grade—you get the class together,

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you ask them to nominate what counts as good behavior.

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And even though—even kids that are, you know,

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Johnny the Badass knows what it means to be good.

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And so, what they come up with is very, very similar to what the teacher would

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have said, but the fact that they came up with it is very, very important.

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And so, this gets listed and is put everywhere on the wall and stuff like that.

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And then the class gets broken into small groups who

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compete to be good while they’re doing their schoolwork.

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So, they’re doing the same schoolwork anyone

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else might do, but they’re doing it in groups.

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And if they can manage to do it without too

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many misbehaviors, then they get a small prize.

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And so, now you’re basically, the kids are competing to be

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good, and if anyone within one of these little groups acts

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up, then the other kids are saying, “No, no, don’t do that.”

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[laugh] . Right.

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And just it turns within-group competition into cooperation.

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Now, this has been played—very good longitudinal studies have been done

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on this, and when this is played for a single year—that’s it, a year—in

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either the first or second grade, and then these kids had been followed

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through adulthood—the study is still in progress—their following the

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results of this one-year intervention, and is just so many benefits.

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It’s like money in the bag, and so—in terms of earning

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compound—there’s, like, 70-to-1 ratio in terms of the

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social benefits compared to the cost of the program.

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And the program is spreading.

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Dennis Embry is the person who’s known for this.

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And then the other example is a study, one of the first studies

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I did in Binghamton, where I had an opportunity to help design a

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school for at-risk students, and to make a long story short, these

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students had flunked three or more of their courses the previous

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years, so they were on their way to being dropouts, for sure.

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And what we were able to do in the class was to build

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in these core design principles that I’m talking about.

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We didn’t teach them; we built an end to the social environment.

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That’s an important point.

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And so, much depends on psychological safety and other protections, basically.

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So again, to make a long story short, without many resources at

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our disposal, we created what we thought was the ideal, or the best

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social environment we could, based on these evolutionary principles.

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And not only did these students perform better than

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a comparison group in a randomized control trial, but

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they did as well as the average student in the system.

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And then not only that, the main benefit was

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achieved during the first quarter of the year.

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And you got to ask the question, isn’t this too good to be true?

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And the answer is, I mean, the way to make sense of it is, is that

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all of us are like any sensible turtle or snail; we know how to

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pull into our shells when we’re dangerous and insecure environment.

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And we also know how to come out of our shell

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when we’re in a safe and secure environment.

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We’d like to be prosocial, we’d like to be

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cooperative, as long as you don’t get hammered for it.

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And so, the students, despite very hard lives—which we couldn’t change

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outside of school—in school, by providing this environment, they looked

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around, and within the first quarter, they came out of their shells.

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That’s what happened.

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And they were very resilient.

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You said in terms of post-school, going into adulthood,

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these programs still continue to show benefits, even when

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they go out into a world that often is uncooperative?

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In many cases, yes.

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Yes.

383
00:23:36,250 --> 00:23:37,935
I mean, there’s a lot to say about that.

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In one sense, you think I mean, it does seem contradictory.

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Let me note the apparent contradiction.

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In one sense, we’re saying that there were—we’re

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like turtles, we pull in and out of our shells.

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As soon as you leave that social environment, back into our shells, we go.

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But in another sense, you can do an

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intervention and it can have permanent effects.

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Both of those things are true.

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I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to unpack it.

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00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:09,600
In fact, there’s extraordinary studies—this is very science documented—there’s

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numerous studies that show, do a comparison pre, post, and follow up.

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So, pre and post, you hope for an improvement

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because that’s what the experiment was about.

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The post follow up is really interesting

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because nothing took place during that period.

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The experiment was over.

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And a lot of these studies, they showed not only an improvement between

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pre and post, but a further improvement between post and follow up.

402
00:24:33,009 --> 00:24:37,790
And what that means is, is that you did something [laugh] that was permanent.

403
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They’re different now.

404
00:24:40,100 --> 00:24:43,680
They’re thinking in a way that’s different, and that’s causing them to

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act in a way—and then they’re further improving upon it all by themselves.

406
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So, that’s the best possible outcome, and often that’s the outcome you get.

407
00:24:51,940 --> 00:24:55,579
You make a note that scientists, your fellow scientists

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00:24:55,580 --> 00:24:59,190
across the spectrum of disciplines should, and really

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must, embrace the concept of evolution in the work.

410
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:03,100
Why do you say that?

411
00:25:03,820 --> 00:25:06,710
Well, the first point to make there is that if you were to say that

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to a biologist, they’d just look at you and say, “Well, of course.”

413
00:25:09,390 --> 00:25:09,859
Of course.

414
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Right?

415
00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:10,880
Right [laugh]

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00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:11,160
.
“Stupid.”

417
00:25:13,180 --> 00:25:16,400
“Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.” That…

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00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:22,770
mantra, that statement was spoken in the 1970s by a geneticist named Theodosius.

419
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In the 1970s, you could say, “There’s something about this theory

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that just covers everything,” and so that’s commonplace in biology.

421
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The only thing that’s new is to extend that to all things human.

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00:25:35,340 --> 00:25:37,210
So, nothing about religion, nothing about

423
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economics, nothing about education, and so on.

424
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And that takes us back to this constriction that I talked about, that

425
00:25:43,230 --> 00:25:47,889
evolution was confined to genetic evolution all the way up to the ’70s, so when

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Dobzhansky made that statement, he was only referring to genetic evolution.

427
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And now the prospect is—which is the topic of my book, This View of Life:

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Completing the Darwinian Revolution—is that way of thinking middle, they

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00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:08,630
can be expanded to everything that matters to us, the entire human realm.

430
00:26:08,670 --> 00:26:12,150
And that’s very new, only within the last 50 years at most.

431
00:26:12,470 --> 00:26:16,740
One of those, for example, being human is the importance of faith and religion.

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00:26:16,929 --> 00:26:21,560
So, how do you see that applying to that part of human life?

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I think that once we see that cooperation is the signature

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00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:32,130
adaptation of our species, that we do so well to live in cooperative

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00:26:32,130 --> 00:26:35,820
groups, those groups, by definition, are larger than ourselves.

436
00:26:35,820 --> 00:26:39,630
And so, the idea that we are part of something larger than ourselves,

437
00:26:39,630 --> 00:26:43,629
which is the heart of the religious and spiritual sentiment, all of the

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00:26:43,630 --> 00:26:49,300
keywords associated with religion—worship, sacred, and the commandments—all

439
00:26:49,300 --> 00:26:55,830
of these can be seen as adaptations for highly cooperative groups.

440
00:26:55,830 --> 00:26:58,090
And so—and that’s not new.

441
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,439
Émile Durkheim said that.

442
00:27:00,439 --> 00:27:05,230
It’s fascinating that there’s two major definitions of religion: one is centered

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00:27:05,230 --> 00:27:10,820
on supernatural agents—you know, religion is a belief in gods, and that we call

444
00:27:11,130 --> 00:27:15,969
supernatural, they intervene in the natural order, so that’s one definition—the

445
00:27:16,209 --> 00:27:20,680
other definition of religion is a set of beliefs centered around the sacred

446
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:25,060
that unite into one moral community called a church all who adhere to them.

447
00:27:25,410 --> 00:27:28,720
That’s close to Durkheim’s definition of religion.

448
00:27:29,070 --> 00:27:33,490
It focuses on moral communities, the concept of sacredness,

449
00:27:33,809 --> 00:27:37,259
and doesn’t say a thing about supernatural agency.

450
00:27:37,290 --> 00:27:42,330
And so, when you look at religions, what you find is—and I think that this is

451
00:27:42,390 --> 00:27:47,270
a wonderful thing to say about religions—they’re amazing at forming community.

452
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:47,920
Yes.

453
00:27:48,349 --> 00:27:49,139
They’re amazing.

454
00:27:49,139 --> 00:27:51,159
And wouldn’t we want that to be the case?

455
00:27:52,510 --> 00:27:57,649
But then they’re also, from a scientific standpoint, a human construction.

456
00:27:58,580 --> 00:27:59,730
A human construction.

457
00:27:59,730 --> 00:28:04,559
And so, to think that all of the beliefs, that basically this great bushy

458
00:28:04,559 --> 00:28:09,429
tree of religion, and the great bushy tree of culture in general, can be

459
00:28:09,509 --> 00:28:13,250
studied in the same way as the great bushy Tree of Life, of biological

460
00:28:13,470 --> 00:28:17,939
life, and that the most successful religions are the ones that, in the

461
00:28:17,940 --> 00:28:21,320
first place, endow individuals with a very strong sense of purpose.

462
00:28:21,330 --> 00:28:25,359
So, you get up in the morning brimming with purpose, and the religion

463
00:28:25,370 --> 00:28:31,350
moves you to do the right things, to basically to exist in community.

464
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And historically, of course, those religious communities

465
00:28:34,170 --> 00:28:38,130
were often—not always—pitted against other communities.

466
00:28:38,130 --> 00:28:43,130
And so, the dark side of religion—and religion does have a dark side; do I need

467
00:28:43,130 --> 00:28:49,200
to tell anyone that?—can be explained along with the bright side of religion.

468
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:54,520
And it also points the way to the future, that just as the scale of human

469
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:58,519
society, including the religions, the great religions, has been increasing.

470
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:02,050
So, if you look, for example, at the Axial Age, what we call the

471
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:07,210
Axial Age Religions, the major religions today, they bind together,

472
00:29:07,210 --> 00:29:12,310
they form a social glue for tens and hundreds of millions of people.

473
00:29:12,310 --> 00:29:15,679
That only happened over the course of human history.

474
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,709
And what we need to do is to extend that further so that

475
00:29:19,719 --> 00:29:24,520
religion expands to, “Our common home,” as Pope Francis put

476
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:28,240
it, “Beyond religion,” as His Holiness the Dalai Lama put it.

477
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:31,850
And his message is that there’s 8 billion people in this

478
00:29:31,850 --> 00:29:35,240
world, and they will never belong to a single religion.

479
00:29:35,450 --> 00:29:36,340
Never ever.

480
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,250
And so therefore, we need some way of thinking

481
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:43,810
that can be applied on a worldwide basis.

482
00:29:43,810 --> 00:29:45,600
That’s why he could be such good friends with

483
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:48,860
Desmond Tutu, a Buddhist and a Christian.

484
00:29:49,190 --> 00:29:52,030
And David Bohm, a particle physicist.

485
00:29:52,230 --> 00:29:58,360
So, science and more than one variety of religion can somehow

486
00:29:58,369 --> 00:30:02,120
merge to the worldwide scale, and that’s back to the need to

487
00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:06,139
be, first and foremost, a human being and citizen of the earth.

488
00:30:06,410 --> 00:30:09,790
Everything that’s trending in that direction, and any religion

489
00:30:09,790 --> 00:30:13,060
that resists that, that says it’s only—you know, we’re the

490
00:30:13,060 --> 00:30:16,279
only way to go to heaven, well, you know that’s out of step.

491
00:30:16,279 --> 00:30:19,110
You know that is, and should be, antiquated.

492
00:30:19,219 --> 00:30:20,750
I mean, do you think that also?

493
00:30:20,830 --> 00:30:22,000
I mean, I do [laugh]

494
00:30:22,420 --> 00:30:25,890
.
I know there are so many—they always say, don’t discuss

495
00:30:25,900 --> 00:30:29,599
politics and religion, the bar, but, I mean, there are so

496
00:30:29,599 --> 00:30:32,840
many good things over history that have come from religion.

497
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:35,710
I was brought up in the Disciples of Christ Christian

498
00:30:35,730 --> 00:30:37,282
church, in Millersburg, Kentucky, thank you very much.

499
00:30:37,282 --> 00:30:40,060
But they are also, obviously, as you said,

500
00:30:40,060 --> 00:30:42,560
those dark moments looking through time.

501
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:44,949
And I think it really goes back to, as you say,

502
00:30:45,460 --> 00:30:48,350
our common humanity, how we treat one another.

503
00:30:48,780 --> 00:30:51,330
And you have to judge I think any religion

504
00:30:51,339 --> 00:30:53,399
of how you treat your fellow man and woman.

505
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:54,239
That’s the bottom line.

506
00:30:54,539 --> 00:30:55,620
That’s the bottom line.

507
00:30:56,220 --> 00:30:59,659
I’m going to—you’ve mentioned the term prosocial a few times.

508
00:30:59,730 --> 00:31:01,370
And easy for me to say today, David.

509
00:31:02,130 --> 00:31:05,780
What is the ProSocial World Initiative and the New Paradigm Coalition?

510
00:31:05,780 --> 00:31:07,729
I know when Guru first introduced this, he

511
00:31:07,730 --> 00:31:10,190
talked about this New Paradigm Coalition.

512
00:31:10,190 --> 00:31:11,969
Can you tell us in general what those are?

513
00:31:12,410 --> 00:31:15,130
Well, prosocial is a word which I think it

514
00:31:15,130 --> 00:31:17,649
speaks for itself, just the way antisocial does.

515
00:31:17,790 --> 00:31:18,255
Yeah, yeah.

516
00:31:18,420 --> 00:31:22,049
But it’s not a commonly used word until recently.

517
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,109
It’s now becoming more commonly used.

518
00:31:24,190 --> 00:31:26,290
You know, there’s Google Ngram, where you can look at

519
00:31:26,290 --> 00:31:30,900
the frequency of words from Google’s vast trove of text.

520
00:31:30,900 --> 00:31:34,220
And if you look at Google Ngram for the two words

521
00:31:34,220 --> 00:31:37,210
‘antisocial’ and ‘prosocial,’ there is a period of decades

522
00:31:37,210 --> 00:31:40,090
in which prosocial was a word that was almost never used.

523
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,170
Of course, antisocial has always been a common word.

524
00:31:42,460 --> 00:31:45,180
Now, prosocial is catching up, I’m glad to say.

525
00:31:45,690 --> 00:31:45,860
And—

526
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:47,020
[laugh]

527
00:31:47,020 --> 00:31:48,310
.
Yeah, how about that?

528
00:31:48,310 --> 00:31:48,410
Right.

529
00:31:48,670 --> 00:31:51,530
So, what it means is basically anything oriented towards

530
00:31:51,530 --> 00:31:55,090
the welfare of others or society as a whole is prosocial.

531
00:31:55,610 --> 00:31:57,510
It’s a more general word than altruism.

532
00:31:57,510 --> 00:31:58,790
Altruism is like that.

533
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:03,250
Altruism means other, but altruism for many people has the connotation of

534
00:32:04,330 --> 00:32:09,480
self-sacrifice, that in order to benefit others requires self-sacrifice.

535
00:32:09,540 --> 00:32:13,350
And prosocial is more agnostic about that.

536
00:32:13,350 --> 00:32:15,970
Sometimes that’s true, but sometimes there’s

537
00:32:15,970 --> 00:32:19,449
win-win situations: we all can benefit from things.

538
00:32:19,450 --> 00:32:20,920
In fact, that would be better, wouldn’t it?

539
00:32:21,660 --> 00:32:26,110
And so prosocial, I think, is a lovely term for its generality.

540
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:32,949
And ProSocial World, my nonprofit organization, is basically dedicated to

541
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:36,980
that, and our mission is to consciously evolve a world that works for all.

542
00:32:37,020 --> 00:32:41,899
What really differentiates us is this modern evolutionary perspective.

543
00:32:41,930 --> 00:32:44,590
We might be the only organization that’s really just

544
00:32:44,590 --> 00:32:49,990
at the forefront of Darwinian, generalized Darwinism.

545
00:32:50,070 --> 00:32:52,200
Who’s heard the term generalized Darwinism?

546
00:32:52,210 --> 00:32:52,860
Nobody.

547
00:32:52,910 --> 00:32:52,960
[laugh]

548
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:56,070
.
So, I’m sure that all your listeners—if there’s a

549
00:32:56,070 --> 00:32:58,809
listener out there that’s heard that term, write to me.

550
00:33:01,010 --> 00:33:02,150
That’s how new it is.

551
00:33:02,150 --> 00:33:05,660
And the New Paradigm Coalition applies all of this to economics.

552
00:33:06,100 --> 00:33:09,010
And when we do that—economics and business—and when

553
00:33:09,010 --> 00:33:12,210
we do that, we confront an elephant in the room.

554
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,599
The elephant is neoclassical economics, the dominant

555
00:33:15,870 --> 00:33:20,700
tradition in economics is called neoclassical economics, and

556
00:33:20,700 --> 00:33:24,800
it goes all the way back to Newton and Newtonian physics.

557
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:29,759
And back in the 19th century, of course economists, that was the new topic.

558
00:33:30,270 --> 00:33:32,870
It used to be called natural and moral philosophy.

559
00:33:32,940 --> 00:33:36,879
But people studying economics, they wanted to be scientific, and back

560
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:41,760
then that meant emulating Newton and his planetary laws of motion.

561
00:33:41,760 --> 00:33:45,080
And so, they would say, “Oh, yeah, we want a physics of social behavior.

562
00:33:45,190 --> 00:33:47,509
That’s where we want.” And that’s whatthey set about.

563
00:33:47,800 --> 00:33:49,230
It was very mathematical.

564
00:33:49,700 --> 00:33:54,429
It had to treat individuals as this kind of atom, and it went on from there.

565
00:33:54,710 --> 00:34:00,460
The New Paradigm Coalition, so on the one hand, we have this evolution paradigm.

566
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:03,360
We haven’t said much about complexity yet, Alan, and I’m not

567
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:07,880
sure that we will, purely for lack of time, but of course, your

568
00:34:07,889 --> 00:34:11,960
museum is all about—and you know, science—is all about complexity.

569
00:34:11,980 --> 00:34:14,509
So yeah, just to mark it.

570
00:34:14,889 --> 00:34:17,390
Two bodies of knowledge new within the last 50 years.

571
00:34:17,390 --> 00:34:20,230
One thing I like to say is that the last 50 years

572
00:34:20,230 --> 00:34:23,009
is more than just 10% of the scientific revolution.

573
00:34:23,050 --> 00:34:26,360
Two bodies of knowledge that are foundational and new.

574
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:29,349
One is complex systems science, and it’s new because

575
00:34:29,350 --> 00:34:31,699
it required the advent of widespread computing.

576
00:34:32,139 --> 00:34:36,000
So, before—the Santa Fe Institute, for example, was founded in

577
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:41,730
1984—so before that, you could talk about complexity, but you couldn’t

578
00:34:41,739 --> 00:34:45,770
model it because it was too complex for math, analytical math.

579
00:34:45,790 --> 00:34:48,089
You had to have computers, and they weren’t

580
00:34:48,090 --> 00:34:50,620
available until the ’70s or the ’80s.

581
00:34:50,650 --> 00:34:54,359
So, everything we associate with complex systems science, new.

582
00:34:54,409 --> 00:34:55,319
Isn’t that amazing?

583
00:34:55,330 --> 00:34:55,650
Yeah.

584
00:34:56,020 --> 00:34:56,300
Yeah.

585
00:34:56,429 --> 00:34:57,620
It’s amazing to me.

586
00:34:57,800 --> 00:34:58,740
A real revolution.

587
00:34:58,800 --> 00:34:59,090
Yeah.

588
00:34:59,750 --> 00:35:03,429
And then everything about evolution beyond genetic evolution,

589
00:35:03,469 --> 00:35:07,201
as we have said, new [laugh] since the 1970s, and ’80s.

590
00:35:07,201 --> 00:35:07,410
And so now,

591
00:35:10,700 --> 00:35:14,160
this combination, this complexity of evolution paradigm

592
00:35:14,190 --> 00:35:19,330
is what provides an alternative to neoclassical economics.

593
00:35:19,770 --> 00:35:24,319
And so, the New Paradigm Coalition is all about evolution complexity,

594
00:35:24,340 --> 00:35:32,250
but applies it specifically to economics, business, and public policy.

595
00:35:32,250 --> 00:35:38,020
And the difference is as profound as what we talked about with education.

596
00:35:38,070 --> 00:35:41,470
I mean, in some ways, just night and day.

597
00:35:41,559 --> 00:35:43,000
And let me give you one example.

598
00:35:43,710 --> 00:35:47,380
It’s a common practice in businesses called force distribution

599
00:35:48,010 --> 00:35:54,089
ranking—otherwise known as rank and yank—where a company evaluates

600
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:57,630
all of its staff members on their performance, rewards the

601
00:35:57,630 --> 00:36:02,700
best, fires the worst, maybe does something with the middle.

602
00:36:03,150 --> 00:36:05,860
And so, when you think of this, what does that assume?

603
00:36:05,870 --> 00:36:08,520
That assumes that a performance of the individual is

604
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:11,070
based purely on the properties of that individual.

605
00:36:11,219 --> 00:36:14,659
It accords nothing to social interactions at all, doesn’t it?

606
00:36:14,980 --> 00:36:18,710
It that some people are gold nuggets, other people are gravel, and all you have

607
00:36:18,710 --> 00:36:22,050
to do is sift them, you get the gold nuggets and then your organization works.

608
00:36:22,390 --> 00:36:25,600
Well, it accords nothing to social interactions.

609
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:30,320
And what it causes is a complete shutdown of cooperation because in that

610
00:36:30,330 --> 00:36:33,860
system, if that’s the system that you’re locked into, and if you want to get

611
00:36:33,860 --> 00:36:38,140
ahead in that system, you never do anything to make anyone else look good.

612
00:36:39,450 --> 00:36:41,100
You’ve turned it into a hunger game.

613
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:43,595
And that’s the way some corporations are run,

614
00:36:43,820 --> 00:36:45,960
and that’s the way some of our schools are run.

615
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:50,509
And so, just to make the most elementary points, is that for any group to work

616
00:36:50,509 --> 00:36:54,400
well, including the business group, it has to foster cooperation, friends.

617
00:36:55,100 --> 00:36:58,009
And in order to do that—and then it just goes on from there.

618
00:36:58,070 --> 00:36:59,490
So, it’s watershed.

619
00:36:59,530 --> 00:37:00,670
I mean, it’s truly watershed.

620
00:37:00,980 --> 00:37:06,340
And that’s what the New Paradigm Coalition is intended to catalyze.

621
00:37:06,849 --> 00:37:11,639
So, on a broader scale, let’s say on a governmental scale, the New Paradigm

622
00:37:11,639 --> 00:37:16,379
Coalition, it’s certainly not founded on laissez-faire principles, but

623
00:37:16,380 --> 00:37:21,410
also you don’t call for a centralized or command structure in our economy.

624
00:37:21,730 --> 00:37:26,260
So, how does that cooperative approach work on a governmental

625
00:37:26,260 --> 00:37:30,169
level at that point, in terms of the economic future of a nation?

626
00:37:30,990 --> 00:37:33,490
Well, we already covered, I think earlier in this

627
00:37:33,490 --> 00:37:36,810
conversation, the impossibility of centralized planning.

628
00:37:37,070 --> 00:37:39,640
And so, no group of experts is capable.

629
00:37:39,660 --> 00:37:43,470
So basically, we’ve already covered the necessity of experimentation.

630
00:37:43,630 --> 00:37:46,380
To broaden that, we can say two things don’t work.

631
00:37:46,629 --> 00:37:47,890
Only one thing can work.

632
00:37:48,219 --> 00:37:50,520
One thing, centralized planning, we’ve covered that.

633
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:56,289
The second is laissez-faire because it’s just not true that the

634
00:37:56,290 --> 00:38:00,030
lower level pursuit of self-interest is led by an invisible hand.

635
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:00,640
No.

636
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:02,230
No, forget about that.

637
00:38:02,759 --> 00:38:08,520
That’s the foundational message of multi-level evolution.

638
00:38:08,530 --> 00:38:11,010
Therefore, the only thing that works is experimentation.

639
00:38:11,010 --> 00:38:13,290
I think, in some ways, we have covered that.

640
00:38:13,290 --> 00:38:16,009
And that goes for a government agency or governmental

641
00:38:16,010 --> 00:38:18,650
process no less than any other kind of process.

642
00:38:18,650 --> 00:38:22,780
I actually have a series of interviews on all different topics:

643
00:38:23,059 --> 00:38:28,215
government, business, entrepreneurship, development, innovation, and in

644
00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:32,780
all cases, we can show that the only thing that works is experimentation.

645
00:38:32,980 --> 00:38:35,550
And people are pushed into that pragmatic zone.

646
00:38:35,580 --> 00:38:39,069
We have our theories, but when people are actually on the ground, just

647
00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:43,159
trying to make things work, they just get pushed into that pragmatic zone.

648
00:38:43,170 --> 00:38:45,650
They don’t have a theory for it, but it’s what they do.

649
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:49,720
And I think providing a theory for it is—you can

650
00:38:49,720 --> 00:38:52,399
ask the question, it’s a kind of a humble question.

651
00:38:52,650 --> 00:38:55,130
“Well, if it’s what you’re already doing, then what good is the

652
00:38:55,380 --> 00:39:00,049
theory?” I mean, the theory is kind of a late arrival, isn’t it?

653
00:39:00,119 --> 00:39:03,270
And the answer to that is no, no, the theory is pretty important.

654
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:07,190
To be able to understand this on the benefits

655
00:39:07,190 --> 00:39:09,060
of first principles is very important.

656
00:39:09,309 --> 00:39:13,720
Even if you’re a good practitioner, [man] , you want to know about the theory.

657
00:39:14,380 --> 00:39:20,960
Let’s talk, as we draw to a close here, the role in your system of cooperation.

658
00:39:21,090 --> 00:39:24,470
We have the state, you have the group… groups

659
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:27,330
working within that state, and you have individuals.

660
00:39:27,820 --> 00:39:32,090
So, we put, I think, for good reason, a lot of focus on individual rights in

661
00:39:32,090 --> 00:39:36,070
the United States, in the western world in particular, but elsewhere, obviously.

662
00:39:36,219 --> 00:39:40,390
What’s the role and the status of the individual in a

663
00:39:40,390 --> 00:39:44,060
world that’s then built around these groups cooperating?

664
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:46,540
If I’m an individual and I disagree with the

665
00:39:46,540 --> 00:39:49,250
group’s end result, how do I express myself?

666
00:39:49,250 --> 00:39:50,089
How am I heard?

667
00:39:51,219 --> 00:39:52,430
That’s a great question, Alan.

668
00:39:52,430 --> 00:39:55,000
I’m really happy that you focused on that.

669
00:39:55,010 --> 00:39:59,080
And I want to answer it first in the context of a smaller group because I

670
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:02,960
think it makes so much sense in a smaller group, but then we can expand it.

671
00:40:03,290 --> 00:40:05,670
And one of the amazing virtues of these

672
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:08,090
ideas is that they are scale independent.

673
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:11,009
So, whatever we might say about individuals in a village,

674
00:40:11,010 --> 00:40:13,600
you might say, it also goes for nations in the global

675
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:17,230
village, or global corporations in the global village.

676
00:40:17,230 --> 00:40:19,300
But let’s begin with a smaller group and Dr.

677
00:40:19,300 --> 00:40:20,020
Ostrom.

678
00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:23,320
What’s needed is, first of all, the group is the focus.

679
00:40:23,340 --> 00:40:27,029
We’re trying—the group—to function as a cooperative unit.

680
00:40:27,230 --> 00:40:31,769
But the members of the group have a tremendous amount of agency, and they must.

681
00:40:31,820 --> 00:40:35,060
And we’ve talked about this: decision-making must include the whole group.

682
00:40:35,110 --> 00:40:36,290
We can’t have freeloaders.

683
00:40:36,300 --> 00:40:39,770
The benefits that you get from the group must be proportional to the cost.

684
00:40:39,770 --> 00:40:43,000
We have to monitor what we do.

685
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:45,859
If we’re not doing what we should, we need—so with all of this stuff about what

686
00:40:45,860 --> 00:40:52,470
we need to do to govern our group, and it’s the individuals who are doing that.

687
00:40:52,470 --> 00:40:56,980
I mean, so much so that actually, the concept of leadership is

688
00:40:56,980 --> 00:41:00,259
something which needs to be questioned because so often we think of

689
00:41:00,259 --> 00:41:05,279
groups as having leaders, and those leaders having a lot of power,

690
00:41:05,469 --> 00:41:08,410
but what this is telling us is that power needs to be distributed.

691
00:41:09,150 --> 00:41:12,260
And if you’re going to—and decision-making needs to be decision.

692
00:41:12,270 --> 00:41:15,280
Yes, you do need leaders, actually, but they have to be servant-leaders.

693
00:41:15,330 --> 00:41:18,170
And the concept of a servant-leader is one of the

694
00:41:18,530 --> 00:41:21,870
religious concepts, I think, that’s worth identifying.

695
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:23,899
When I’m leading, I’m not a boss.

696
00:41:24,699 --> 00:41:27,620
I’m helping to orchestrate all of us.

697
00:41:27,620 --> 00:41:31,010
And upon not doing a good job, and somebody else should be the leader.

698
00:41:31,020 --> 00:41:34,100
And so, there you have the ca—first of all, the group

699
00:41:34,100 --> 00:41:36,759
is the focus, but the individuals are the agents.

700
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:41,040
And so, everything that we associate in democratic

701
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:44,299
terms with individual rights and so on is found there.

702
00:41:44,370 --> 00:41:48,730
It’s equitable, it’s participatory, it’s just beautiful,

703
00:41:48,740 --> 00:41:52,360
basically, around the standpoint of those values.

704
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:55,680
And just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of doing

705
00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:59,659
my own podcast with Robert Putnam of Social Capital fame.

706
00:41:59,660 --> 00:42:03,430
He’s the author of Bowling Alone, and is the best-known

707
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:06,770
figure for—he coined the term ‘social capital.’

708
00:42:06,870 --> 00:42:08,920
He’s written an essay which pointed out that

709
00:42:10,310 --> 00:42:13,049
in 1831, there were two voyages of discovery.

710
00:42:13,590 --> 00:42:16,399
One was Charles Darwin sailing around the world on the

711
00:42:16,410 --> 00:42:20,680
Beagle, and the other was Alexei de Tocqueville, coming

712
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:24,100
to the United States within a few months of each other.

713
00:42:24,550 --> 00:42:28,700
And Bob Putnam does a great job of weaving Tocqueville and Darwin

714
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:33,860
together and focusing on the phrase of Tocqueville’s, “Self-interest

715
00:42:33,860 --> 00:42:38,980
rightly understood.” And Tocqueville’s theory of democracy, it made

716
00:42:38,980 --> 00:42:43,500
a distinction between individualism—which would be, like, just pure

717
00:42:43,500 --> 00:42:48,710
greed; I’m out for myself—and self-interest rightly understood, which

718
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:52,949
is, well, I’m out for myself, but I’m doing it in the context of

719
00:42:52,949 --> 00:42:57,490
cooperating with others, ultimately, in the creation of a great nation.

720
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:01,660
And so, Bob and I updated the concept of self-interest rightly understood.

721
00:43:01,670 --> 00:43:03,630
He channeled Tocqueville and I channeled Darwin.

722
00:43:03,639 --> 00:43:03,669
[laugh]

723
00:43:05,620 --> 00:43:11,069
.
But I think that that, to say that what’s new about all of this can

724
00:43:11,070 --> 00:43:17,080
actually be traced back and can be true to something like Tocqueville

725
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:22,690
and the ideals of democracy, which currently are in such tatters.

726
00:43:22,750 --> 00:43:26,170
I mean, if you read some of the work on this, and you realize

727
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:32,440
how much America is a plutocracy run for the benefit of the

728
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:37,190
elites, it’s sad and shocking, and ultimately self-destructive.

729
00:43:37,350 --> 00:43:39,010
There’s so much that needs to be done.

730
00:43:39,330 --> 00:43:45,330
What I hope for in our civics world is that we do a better job of teaching

731
00:43:45,410 --> 00:43:49,919
our young people about how they can be engaged in the political system.

732
00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:51,170
And that’s something, when I was director

733
00:43:51,170 --> 00:43:52,690
at the Howard Baker Center, we did a lot.

734
00:43:52,710 --> 00:43:54,290
They’re doing that now at the Baker School.

735
00:43:54,290 --> 00:43:59,130
But yeah, I share your concerns about democracy

736
00:43:59,130 --> 00:44:01,639
in the world writ large today, for sure.

737
00:44:01,940 --> 00:44:04,619
And David, before we run out of time today, I want to

738
00:44:04,619 --> 00:44:07,660
make sure I at least mentioned your novel, Atlas Hugged.

739
00:44:07,660 --> 00:44:10,180
I mean, you’re in the world of fiction now, too.

740
00:44:10,190 --> 00:44:12,129
Can you tell us just a bit about Atlas Hugged?

741
00:44:12,430 --> 00:44:15,800
Well, first, my dad was a famous novelist in the 1950s.

742
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:17,900
He got the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and A Summer

743
00:44:17,900 --> 00:44:21,250
Place, so the idea of writing a novel was not new to me.

744
00:44:21,250 --> 00:44:23,520
But it was in the early days of economics

745
00:44:23,549 --> 00:44:26,339
when I was beginning to read about economics.

746
00:44:26,340 --> 00:44:30,340
And then somebody said in a workshop, “You know, Ayn Rand did so much

747
00:44:30,340 --> 00:44:35,260
with her book Atlas Shrugged to popularize the neoclassical paradigm.

748
00:44:35,260 --> 00:44:36,870
Shouldn’t we be doing the same?”

749
00:44:36,980 --> 00:44:40,310
In an instant, the title Atlas Hugged floated

750
00:44:40,310 --> 00:44:42,409
into my mind, and the beginning of a plot line.

751
00:44:42,490 --> 00:44:46,170
And so, over seven years, as I was actually thinking about

752
00:44:46,170 --> 00:44:50,880
economics as a scientist, I was writing my novel on the side.

753
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:53,319
And then ultimately it got published, and

754
00:44:53,999 --> 00:44:56,070
it has made a pretty good name for itself.

755
00:44:56,070 --> 00:44:59,040
So, if you want to learn about these ideas through a story—and

756
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,060
stories are so much more captivating than—even the best-reading

757
00:45:02,070 --> 00:45:05,330
nonfiction book is no match for a story, in my opinion.

758
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:07,480
So, check out Atlas Hugged [laugh]

759
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:08,030
.
Definitely.

760
00:45:08,030 --> 00:45:10,149
I read both of yours, and enjoyed the both

761
00:45:10,150 --> 00:45:12,470
fiction and nonfiction very much [laugh]

762
00:45:12,540 --> 00:45:12,770
.
Oh, thank you.

763
00:45:12,770 --> 00:45:13,089
Thank you very much.

764
00:45:13,089 --> 00:45:17,009
And in Atlas Hugged, a worldwide transformation takes place in a hundred days.

765
00:45:17,750 --> 00:45:21,575
So, beyond those things, what’s—not that you haven’t done [laugh]

766
00:45:21,590 --> 00:45:24,120
a lot already, David, but what are you working on right now?

767
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:25,170
What’s next for you?

768
00:45:25,490 --> 00:45:28,390
I think I’d like to end on the concept of catalysis.

769
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:33,880
In chemistry—you know what catalysis means in chemistry—basically,

770
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:37,140
it’s a molecule that you can sprinkle into a chemical

771
00:45:37,150 --> 00:45:40,890
broth, and it increases the rate of reaction by orders of

772
00:45:40,890 --> 00:45:44,360
magnitude—incredible—without being used up in the process.

773
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,600
And so, the idea of cultural catalysis, the idea that there’s something

774
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:52,819
we can do culturally, to make things go faster and better in years, not

775
00:45:52,830 --> 00:45:57,500
decades or not at all, can this really take place in months and years?

776
00:45:58,300 --> 00:45:58,770
Can it?

777
00:45:59,100 --> 00:46:02,460
And if we take the concept of catalysis seriously

778
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:06,130
for culture, then the answer would be yes, we could.

779
00:46:06,759 --> 00:46:13,229
And then of course, then if that gets planted as a genuine possibility,

780
00:46:13,250 --> 00:46:16,300
well, it highly motivates you to do it if you possibly can.

781
00:46:16,390 --> 00:46:20,230
And so, this was what causes me to be very highly motivated and to

782
00:46:20,230 --> 00:46:25,319
work through my organization and with other organizations, and to make

783
00:46:25,319 --> 00:46:29,080
this kind of positive catalysis happen as soon as it possibly can.

784
00:46:29,090 --> 00:46:31,080
And so, that provides plenty to do.

785
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:31,940
I’m sure.

786
00:46:31,940 --> 00:46:34,370
Where can people go to learn more about your organizations?

787
00:46:34,730 --> 00:46:38,640
Well, they can go to prosocial.world is the website, and

788
00:46:38,650 --> 00:46:42,569
they can email hello@prosocial.world in order to get in

789
00:46:42,570 --> 00:46:44,970
touch with us, and then we’re very happy to work with you.

790
00:46:45,270 --> 00:46:49,729
We work on multiple fronts: education, economics, religion, spirituality.

791
00:46:49,950 --> 00:46:53,339
“Nothing about humanity makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

792
00:46:53,339 --> 00:46:57,150
And so, whatever your interest might be, we hope to provide engagement.

793
00:46:57,620 --> 00:46:59,799
And whatever your current level of knowledge might be,

794
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:02,830
where you are on your learning curve, it doesn’t matter

795
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:05,330
whether you’re highly educated or not, it doesn’t matter.

796
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:09,399
Just check out hello@prosocial.world, and we’ll

797
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:13,210
see if we could engage you in this new paradigm.

798
00:47:13,690 --> 00:47:16,230
Well, what a thought-provoking conversation, David.

799
00:47:16,250 --> 00:47:18,480
Really enjoyed having you on AMSEcast.

800
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:19,850
Thanks so much for joining us.

801
00:47:20,240 --> 00:47:20,589
Thanks.

802
00:47:20,589 --> 00:47:22,369
Thanks very much to you, and all that you’re doing.

803
00:47:26,009 --> 00:47:28,710
Thank you for joining us on this episode of AMSEcast.

804
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:33,440
For more information on this topic or any others, you can always visit us at

805
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:40,079
AMSE.org or find, like, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

806
00:47:40,580 --> 00:47:42,909
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807
00:47:42,910 --> 00:47:45,710
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808
00:47:46,030 --> 00:47:50,190
You can also shop at our online store and become a member at AMSE.org.

809
00:47:50,650 --> 00:47:54,089
Thanks to our production team with Matt Mullins, plus our supportive colleagues

810
00:47:54,090 --> 00:47:57,939
at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Environmental

811
00:47:57,940 --> 00:48:01,920
Management, and Office of Legacy Management, as well as Oak Ridge National

812
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:07,759
Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, NNSA, and the AMSE Foundation.

813
00:48:08,270 --> 00:48:10,000
And of course, thanks to our wonderful guests

814
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:11,810
today, and to all of you for listening.

815
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:15,089
I hope you’ll join us for the next episode of AMSEcast.

816
00:48:17,709 --> 00:48:20,690
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offered by the American Museum of Science and Energy Foundation.

819
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821
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822
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825
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Benefits of membership includes special access to video

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828
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To learn more, go to AMSE.org.

829
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830
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