Aeon+Psyche

Key takeaways from For 97% of human history, equality was the norm. What happened?

For 97 per cent of human history, all people had about the same power and access to goods. How did inequality ratchet up?

View original

379

Made me smarter

Read later

Most highlighted

Our particular species of humans has been around for about 300,000 years and, best as we can tell, for about 290,000 of those years we lived materially poorer but much more equal lives.

Your notes & highlights

Save highlights in Reader View or with our Chrome extension.

This your link? Claim it

More like this
Aeon+Psyche
A history of disruption, from fringe ideas to social changeAeon+Psyche
~14 min read · 2021-12-23 · Major disruptions in world history follow a clear pattern. What can upheavals of the past tell us about our own future?
Reader View · Shared by 631, including Marylin Delgado, Larry G. Maguire 🇺🇦, Ines Bieler, Tactical Tech, Jason Silva
history
innovation
culture
disruption
Most highlighted
Ideological change is crucial for major societal change, such as that pursued by Lenin, because societies promote ideologies that support their way of doing business
Aeon+Psyche
A history of the smile through art, culture and etiquetteAeon+Psyche
~14 min read · Jun 10th · How our toothy modern smile was invented by a confluence of French dentistry and Parisian portrait-painting in the 1780s
Reader View · Shared by 609, including Tactical Tech, Anne Thériault, Stephanie A Kowalski, Jason Silva, Larry G. Maguire 🇺🇦, Anita Leirfall, Marylin Delgado
art
culture
Most highlighted
The smile comes easy to human beings. The facial muscles required to smile are in fact present in the womb, ready for early deployment to anxious parents.
Aeon+Psyche
Your brain does not process information and it is not a computerAeon+Psyche
~18 min read · From 2016 · Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer
Reader View · Shared by 1366, including worms cited, Daniel Boos, 🟣 Antonio Vieira Santos #FutureOfWork, Data Science Renee, Ricky Yean, Howard Getson, Nir Eyal, hiten.eth, Klaus Eck, Chris Messina, Matthias Sala, John Hagel, Ron McIntyre, Andreas Staub, Gideonro, Jonathon Moore, Werner Vogels, Todd Henry, Thomas Power, Mara Averick
brain
science
research
cognitive science
experience
Aeon+Psyche
If history was more like science, would it predict the future?Aeon+Psyche
~14 min read · From 2020 · Historians believe that the past is irreducibly complex and the future wildly unpredictable. Scientists disagree. Who’s right?
Reader View · Shared by 377, including Barry C Smith, Larry G. Maguire 🇺🇦, Matthias Lampe, Tauno, Massimo Pigliucci, John Hagel, Marylin Delgado, Howard Getson, sircharlsxavier, Josep M. Ganyet
history
science
Most highlighted
he identified two repeating patterns as crucial to making sense of political history: secular sociodemographic cycles and father-son cycles.
Aeon+Psyche
The tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous mythAeon+Psyche
~14 min read · 2021-05-04 · Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight
Reader View · Shared by 462, including Philanthropy News Digest, Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis, Julia Kumari Drapkin, Cory Doctorow, Massimo Pigliucci, Dr. Marigo Raftopoulos, Timothy Taylor, Esther Schindler, Mark Bradley, Anita Leirfall, Marylin Delgado, Jason Silva, Mark Kaigwa, Eli Pariser 🏞📲, Matteo Furia, Ceferino Díaz
psychology
society
economy
nobel prize
Most highlighted
The challenge of understanding the complexity of all species continues, as does the challenge of seeing possibility in what so often looks like a collective tragedy.
Aeon+Psyche
How we came to depend on the week despite its artificialityAeon+Psyche
~13 min read · 2021-11-30 · The week is the most artificial and recent of our time counts yet it’s impossible to imagine our shared lives without it
Reader View · Shared by 442, including Martina Pugliese, Larry G. Maguire 🇺🇦, Anita Leirfall
society
week
Most highlighted
to the ubiquitous memes that called all days ‘blursday’ or renamed the weekly cycle as ‘thisday, thatday, otherday, someday, yesterday, today and nextday’, the collapse of the week quickly became a comic cliché.
Aeon+Psyche
Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credoAeon+Psyche
20+ min read · 2021-10-19 · It started as a fringe philosophical theory about humanity’s future. It’s now richly funded and increasingly dangerous
Reader View · Shared by 407, including Jason Stanley, T. Greer, Emily Johnston, Nigel Warburton 🧡 #RejoinEU 🇺🇦, Mel Andrews, Timnit Gebru, Larry G. Maguire 🇺🇦, Marylin Delgado, Jason Silva, Kevin Marks
future
society
philosophy
aeon
Most highlighted
Everything, on this account, is an engineering problem, and hence every problem arises from too little rather than too much technology.
Aeon+Psyche
We are failing people with severe mental illness. What can we do?Aeon+Psyche
~15 min read · 2021-11-23 · As a society we are failing people with severe, persistent mental illness. It’s time to reimagine institutional care
Reader View · Shared by 241, including Carly, Timothy Lomauro, Vaughan Bell, Ben Miller, Miguel Angel Escotet, Jason Silva, Aníbal Monasterio Astobiza, Larry G. Maguire 🇺🇦
mental health
psychology
Aeon+Psyche
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listeningAeon+Psyche
~14 min read · May 30th · To listen well is not only a kindness to others but also, as the psychologist Carl Rogers made clear, a gift to ourselves
Reader View · Shared by 704, including Tactical Tech, Miguel Angel Escotet, Larry G. Maguire 🇺🇦, mary elisabeth, Anita Leirfall, Nir Eyal
better living
personal development
Most highlighted
Rogers held that the basic challenge of listening is this: consciousnesses are isolated from one another, and there are thickets of cognitive noise between them.

More like this

Get smarter every day

Get smarter every day

Share link