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Title: Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright ISBN: 0-679-75894-1 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 January, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.77 (75 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A great read in history and human destiny
Comment: Does humanity have a purpose? A difficult question that the author doesn't attempt to answer in this book. However, he undertakes another question that, if answered, could make answering the first question a little less difficult. Robert Wright, author of "The Moral Animal", asserts that civilization is inevitable and that cultural and biological evolutions are driven toward complexity. In other words, cultural evolution is moving forward by a force and not here only as a result of a long string of serendipitous shots of good fortune, although luck does help. A lot.
Mr. Wright identifies this force as what he calls Nonzero-sumness. Nonzero-sum is the name given in Game Theory to the interaction that leaves every party involved in a more favorable state than (or, at least, similar to) its state prior to the interaction, or what is informally known as a win-win situation. That is in contrast to zero-sum interactions where parties gain through the loss of others. A soccer match is a typical zero-sum interaction for the playing teams since the triumph of one means the loss of the other. However, the same game is a nonzero-sum interaction for the players of a team since a goal scored by a player is a goal for all players in the team.
The author says that nonzero-sumness is embedded in nature and that all forms of life and social structures are rewarded if they tap into its nonzero-sumness potential. Just as well, structures or forms that do not make use of this potential are taken over by other structures or forms that do. In addition, if nonzero-sumness is tapped into in one way, possibilities for further nonzero-sumness multiply exponentially. Complex civilization, in other words, is inevitable. Even intelligence is inevitable, albeit not necessarily in a human form.
This is a strong claim, but it doesn't go unsubstantiated. Mr. Wright spends the first and bigger part of the book analyzing history from the first appearance of hunter-gatherer societies to our day and age. He takes head-on many mysteries such as the reason why the industrial revolution appeared in Europe and nowhere else any earlier, or why did the Chinese civilization regress from complexity and expansion to isolation and decay in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.
The first common notion that he refutes is the claim that agriculture was invented as a result of a dry up of abundant natural resources available to hunter-gatherer societies. He refutes this by proving that agriculture was invented several times throughout history, and was not necessarily an invention to elude fresh hardships. He looks thoroughly into several civilizations that started independently from scratch and found its way to complexity driven by the force of exploiting nonzero-sumness.
He also explains how some major zero-sum activities, such as wars and commercial competition, seem to drive civilization further when in fact they are either mere failed attempts or serve a wider nonzero-sum purpose.
Sounds boring? It's probably my review that is boring because the book is extremely entertaining and the arguments will leave you with a lot of thoughts to say the least. The depth of Mr. Wrights' knowledge in history is manifest throughout the book and serves his arguments extremely well.
In the second part the author attempts to prove that not only cultural evolution is driven by nonzero-sumness, but biological evolution as well. And although science doesn't seem to extend solid confirmation of Mr. Wright's arguments, it doesn't prove it erroneous either. He will extend many examples that are explained perfectly by his theory.
Things, however, begin to get a bit too controversial for my taste in the third part. Here the author pushes the notion of nonzero-sumness a bit too far. Too far to the extent of actually saying that god is nonzero-sumness, although equivocally. He also theorizes that the process of evolution (biological and cultural that is) is in fact conscious. Based on one philosophical definition of consciousness as the ability of some kind of information processing, he argues that by processing the feedback of genetic mutation and social development; evolution is self-conscious. Finally, I did not find myself agreeing with his attempt to conform the force of life to the second law of thermodynamics of entropy.
Nevertheless, this does not subtract value from the book overall but indeed adds to it. Even those claims that I did not find myself in agreement with left me with a lot to think about and helped me reshape many of my ideas and notions. And in the end, the author contemplates lightly the question that started this review, although he doesn't claim to have the answer. But as I said, the question seems a little more accessible in the light of the information provided by this book.
Another thing that I liked about this book is its accessibility. The layman reader will not have to worry about unfamiliar terms because everything is explained rather simply and difficult concepts are properly introduced into the discussion.
In conclusion, I think that this is a very good book to read if you're interested in humanity or history as it will offer the reader a lot to learn in both fields.
Rating: 4
Summary: Intriguing book
Comment: This book dicusses an intriguing thesis - that win/win scenarios (nonzero-sum cooperation) are primarily behind societal and cultural development, as opposed to win/lose (zero-sum competitive) scenarios.
While the book is very thought-provoking, I feel that Wright glossed over significant information (he gives short shrift to the influence of religion, and ignores the development of constitutional democracy). He also makes a lot of generalizations and has a short and simplistic consideration of the nature of a supreme being. However, the book advances ideas that would be good for the author or others to fully develop in further, more detailed works.
Rating: 2
Summary: Informal, wide ranging treatise to Heaven on Earth
Comment: This book has a clear message - that the tendency toward
organizations and groupings of people that are "non-zero-sum"
will lead us to a Heaven on Earth. "Non-zero-sum" interactions
are those that are "win-win", where mutual co-operation leads
to mutual benefit. The increasing interaction in various
rich ways of all people around the World will, by Wright's
thesis, do as it has done in smaller biological and historical
contexts - favor "good" co-operative behaviour.
His rhetorical style is simple - no complex structure spanning
pages and chapters. Just taking issue after issue, and quickly
casting in the light that agrees with his thesis. He makes
frequent use of "name dropping" - brief mentions of things,
people and events likely known to a recent America audience,
such as the internet, Pol Pot, SUV's, TV, the Bible, the U.N.,
and on and on. It reads more like a reasonably edited version
of a conversation between two or three educated and optimistic
East Coast liberals over some beers.
I profoundly disagree with his thesis. In his brief effort at
the end of the book to incorporate God and morality into his
vision, he perhaps unconsciously recognized what was missing.
But he can only trivialize Faith as the wonder we might hold
for what science has not yet rationalized.
There was a famous quote, that I saw yesterday and cannot find
now, something about one of the great dangers being those who
would attempt to build Heaven on Earth. Mr. Wright provides us
with just such an attempt.
His trivializing of a Higher Authority, of God and Faith,
resemble an Earth Scientist trying to study the Heavens by
the shadows cast at his feet.
He is a useful idiot, providing a tool for the convenient use
of Leftists to lure the masses with visions of World Peace
and Harmony. The men who have held power behind that seductive
curtain have been the greatest murdering tyrants of all time.
Thank God for the Christians in fly-over country in the heartland
of America. They have saved the world from tyranny a couple of
times already in the last century, and are doing so again in the
current War on Terror. No thanks to the kumbaya crowd at the
United Nations. Thanks instead to their Faith and their
understanding of the importance of Freedom.
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Title: The Moral Animal : Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright ISBN: 0679763996 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0140264450 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0670031518 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 26 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0670031860 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0140245480 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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