Rao: Individualistic conceptual thinking emerged less than 500 years ago
Venkatesh Rao · #7 Venkatesh Rao: The Three Types of Decision Makers · Jan 28, 2016 · at 13:08
Author Venkatesh Rao outlines the evolutionary chronology of three decision-making archetypes in human history to host Shane Parrish.
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“So if you want to stack them in sort of evolutionary primacy order, I think tribal affiliational is the sort of most ancient of our decision making frameworks. The good and evil framework is slightly more recent in evolutionary history because you have, you need a certain capacity for abstract thought before you can frame good and evil as categories. And then the kind that you and I try to promote in our writing and thinking is the most recent of all. It might be, I don't know, no more than 500 years old.”
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