The Science, Health, and Technology Room
Why humans evolved into such good bullshitters
Roughly 6 million years ago, our ancestors migrated from the dense rainforest to the open savannah in East Africa. It was one of the most significant events in the history of human evolution.
Life on the sprawling grasslands precipitated a shift from individualistic ways of living to more cooperative ways. This was the birth of what you might call “social intelligence,” and it changed the way our minds work forever.
It explains why our psychological health depends so heavily on our status within a particular social group. It even explains why we love to exaggerate and why we’re so good at believing each other’s bull$#@!.
This is the argument psychology professor William von Hippel makes in his fascinating new book The Social Leap. According to von Hippel, the move from the rainforest to the savannah produced a cascade of advances in human intelligence and innovation that led inexorably to the world we live in today. But it also cemented pathologies in the human mind that continue to shape how we live, think, and judge.
"a shift from individualistic ways of living to more cooperative ways"? Either that's BS or "individualistic" is the wrong word to use here.
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