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Category Archives: Evolution
What Makes Humans Unique?
There are many features of humans that differentiate us from all other species, but there is one that stands out to me as a key influence for many of the others and the main reason for our huge success as a species, and that is our practice of the Division of Labour, facilitated through trade1. We are the only species where each individual specialises, and depends on the specialised skills and resources of other unrelated individuals for their survival2. Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Evolution, Philosophy, Psychology
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Are Humans Special?
We instinctively believe there is something which sets humans apart from other species. One day I was thinking about why it is we think this, and it suddenly occurred to me the most obvious reason – It’s because we ARE humans! Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Philosophy, Psychology
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Tragedy of the Commons – Part 2
Tragedy of the Commons is the natural extension of the Prisoner’s Dilemma to an arbitrary number of players. Just as we used Prisoner’s Dilemma as a model to understand the limitations of pairwise cooperation1, so too Tragedy of the Commons is an essential model for understanding the limitations of group cooperation. Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Ethics, Evolution, Politics
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From Sex Cells to Gender Behaviours and Mating Systems
In a previous post, ‘Why 2 sexes?’, I explained a hypothesis for why the sexes first diverged (the original asymmetry was that the females pass on the mitochondria to their offspring whereas the males don’t). In this post I want to hypothesise and speculate1 in more detail about how this initial asymmetry could naturally lead to the (statistical) differences between male and female behaviours and roles with which we are familiar with today, in the context of the species’ mating system. Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Philosophy, Psychology
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Tragedy of the Commons – Part 1
‘Tragedy of the commons’, and it’s special two player case which is known as ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, is a game (or class of game) in game theory; which is interesting, both in it’s own right as a mathematical concept because it is so simple and yet has a surprising – even paradoxical feeling – result, but also because it is such a useful and natural model in evolution, economics and ethics, for understanding the limits of cooperation.1 Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Ethics, Evolution, Mathematics
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Why 2 Sexes?
Why do we have 2 sexes? It’s something we take for granted, but is there an evolutionary reason for it? The standard evolutionary arguments of ‘survival of the fittest’ don’t seem to easily apply here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is just an accident of history. There is a story behind it, and it’s beautiful. Continue reading
Posted in Evolution
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