.................from Radical Uncertainty: Decision Making Beyond The Numbers by John Kay and Mervyn King:
Evolution has produced a collective intelligence and social norms and institutions which are the 'secret of our success'; these social capabilities provide the reason that humans dominate the planet.
The World Values Survey shows a strong positive correlation across countries between per capita income answers to the question 'Do you think that most people can be trusted?'
Most behaviour is the product of both nature and nurture. The biological determinism that it is 'all in our genes', and the behaviourist claim that the mind is a 'blank slate' on which anything can be written, are both untenable.
Evolution has fitted humans to deal with many kinds of radical uncertainty encountered in large worlds. Different attitudes to uncertainty influence the chances of survival of individuals and groups.
. . . as Taleb has emphasised, evolution favors those who survive, and they are not necessarily those who maximise expected value. Perhaps rational economic man dies out because no one would want to mate with him.
Humans are all better off because we are all different, and because there is no single way to be rational.
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