Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

Back in 1794 the Enlightenment philosphe Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet wrote his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind--the boldest of the eighteenth-century declarations that humanity had and was destined to see Progress with a capital P. Condorcet was a powerful and convincing advocate--Malthus wrote his Essay on Population explicitly against Condorcet. But that was the high water mark of belief in Progress. By and large the past two centuries have seen the reaction, and confidence in human Progress--technological, political, humanistic, and moral--fell out of intellectual favor.Now comes Robert Wright, previously author of Three Scientists and Their Gods and The Moral Animal, with an excellent book accompanied by an enthusiastic blurb by William McNeill. Wright's purpose to set out the gospel of progress anew, this time using the language of game theory as his principal mode of rhetoric. At its most basic level Wright's point is that interactions are positive-sum: there are gains from cooperation. Thus human cultural evolution has an arrow and a direction: toward greater complexity, toward higher civilization.The direction arises at two levels. First, individual humans seek out things that increase their own powers and capabilities. Cooperation tends to do this, so people find ways to cooperate. But the most important form of cooperation is one that is almost impossible to stop: the simple sharing of knowledge. Two heads are better than one. The denser the population (and the better the means of communication) the more ideas will be generated, the larger the number of ideas that turn out to be useful, and the faster will be progress. People are, Wright argues--in my view correctly---naturally acquisitive in that they want useful things, and will eagerly copy new technologies they hear about. Thus Wright sees inventions such as agriculture as inevitable--not as a lucky accident.Second, at the level of human societies, the societies that are more powerful--have better technologies, more effective social arrangements, greater population densities, and so forth--either swamp their neighbors or force their neighbors to copy them in order to maintain their autonomy. In Eurasia, where contact was constant from an early age--from the year 200 on one could travel from Gibralter to the mouth of China's Yangtze River and cross only three borders--a good innovation at one end would diffuse all the way to the other in a matter of centuries. He believes that the wide spread of religion in agricultural civilizations proves that its productivity-boosting and division of labor-enhancing effects outweigh its exploitative side: those societies that did not have temples and priests did not flourish.Wright dismisses gloomy talk of barbarian invasions and the fall of empires by asserting that one goes from furs-and-swords to linen-and-pens in three generations: "The Romans weren't exactly hailed by the Greeks as cultural equals when they happened on the scene.... Yet they were massively infiltrated by classical Greek memes, which they then spread across the wider world. In Horace's phrase, 'The Greeks, captive, took the victors captive'. And, anyway, who were the Greeks to look down on intrusive barbarians?... The early Greeks had a title of honor, ptoliporthos, that meant 'sacker of cities'.... But whether these 'barbarians' sack cities, or hover on the periphery and trade... or ally with them in war or ally against them, one outcome is nearly certain: win, lose, or draw, the 'barbarians' become vehicles for advanced memes...." For what truly matters are the basic technologies of agriculture and craft, not the products of high civilizations. And even when you do have significant regression--in the post-Mycenean Dark Age, in the post-Roman Dark Age, or in the wake of the Mongols--Wright reminds us that "the world makes backup copies."Wright also dismisses gloomy talk of the stagnation of Ming and Qing China, the fall of the Mughal Empire, and the technological and organizational stasis of the Ottoman Empire by arguing that the key unit is not Europe vs. Asia but is instead Eurasia. Sooner or later, Wright argues, some part of Eurasia--it did not have to be Europe--would have hit up on a superior social and technological recipe to that of the mid second millennium empires, and when it did the rest would have copied it. Wright is of the school that holds that China almost broke through to modernity, writing of how paper and woodblock printing were used to distribute useful texts--Pictures and Poems on Husbandry and Weaving, Mathematics for Daily Use, and the Treatise on Citrus Fruit. The recipe that ultimately proved successful--what Wright calls the economic logic of freedom--was stopped in many places: "indeed, on balance, in the centuries after the printing press was invented, European governments grew more despotic." But it only had to succeed once. And given sufficient cultural variation, sooner or later a breakthrough was inevitable.But even if you buy all of Wright's argument that forms of increasing returns--non-zero-sum-ness, as Wright calls it--impart an arrow of increasing complexity and division of labor to human social, cultural, and economic evolution, this does not necessarily amount to Progress--at least not to anything we would see as progress in human morality or human happiness. For why should organizational complexity be Progress? As Wright puts it: "...it would be hard to argue that there was net moral gain between the hunter-gatherer and ancient-state phases of cultural evolution. The Egyptians had slaves--which virtually no known hunter-gatherer societies had--and their soldiers returned from wars of conquest proudly brandishing the severed penises of their slain foes."So in the end Wright is forced to play a game of three-card monte to reach conclusions that support his belief in Progress. The card labeled "complexity" must be switched for the card labeled "Progress" without our noticing. In the industrial core, at the end of the twentieth century, we are inclined to tolerate this switch--to say that it is obvious that a highly complicated and productive civilization will have widely-distributed individual wealth, lots of individual freedom, and soft forms of rule, and that social complexity is civilization. But back in the middle of the twentieth century this switch could not have been accomplished at all: "complexity yes," people would have said, "but progress no." And who knows how things will look in a hundred more years?Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743- 1794), was an aristocrat, a mathematician, an official of the Academy of Sciences, and was a friend of Voltaire (1694-1778). He strongly supported the revolution of 1789 as an example of human progress. But the Committee of Public Safety turned on him: he was arrested, and died in prison before he could be executed.

Robert Wright is an American journalist, scholar, and prize-winning author. In his landmark book `Nonzero - The Logic of Human Destiny'(1) he opens with the following quote from Charles Darwin:"As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races."(2)If we asked archeologists to present us with a list of archeological laws or truths, one of them would undoubtedly be that as we rise through soil samples two things happen:1. We approach the artefacts of the present day2. Artefacts grow in complexityThese two facts together form the basis of Robert Wright's argument that the human race does indeed have a destiny and that destiny is greater complexity.Increasing Complexity in Human CivilisationIn the first half of his book he takes us on a tour of the history of human civilisation from savages through tribes and chiefdom's to city states and nations. In doing so it becomes evident that human civilisation is in the process of creating larger and larger social brains. The culmination of which, through the growth of transport and communications technology, is perhaps happening in our lifetimes - the development of one planetary brain!!!Increasing Complexity in Organic LifeIn the second half of the book, Wright turns our attention to how the same pattern of a movement towards greater complexity, is also the case in organic life. Single cells work together by specialising in certain tasks to form more complex life forms. The single cell benefits from the increase in complexity and flourishes. This process continues until we end up with the bewilderingly complex organic life forms we see today. Just watch any program with Sir David Attenborough in it to marvel at how many niches in the environment have been exploited in some astonishing way. Game Theory as the DriverWright believes that the driving force for all this is Game Theory and the seemingly limitless number of nonzero sum games that cam be played over billions of years. What is a nonzero sum game? Well an example of a zero sum game is tennis. When one person wins the other loses. So crudely put, the winner gains 1 and the loser loses 1. Sum total = 0.An example of a nonzero sum game is as follows: Imagine that you and I live in two different hunter gatherer tribes around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Let's also suggest that my tribe lives on the coast and your tribe lives in the hills. We would both be involved in activities that revolve around fishing, trapping, preparing food, repairing tools and turning by-products into useful items; for example: turning fur pelts into clothing.Because my tribe lives near the coast we have developed an advanced method of catching fish and often have a surplus of fish. Our traps, however, aren't as fruitful. As a result, red meat is a delicacy and we are poorly clothed.Meanwhile, up in the hills, your tribe have evolved trap technology. As a result you have a surplus of red meat and your wardrobe of clothes is astonishing. The challenge for your tribe is to vary the diet with the limited number of fish you can find and the time it takes to catch them.When we meet, we could either exchange fish for red meat and fur pelts or we could exchange fishing technology for trapping technology. Either way, through the exchange we are both better off and both tribes experience an increase in the quality of their lives through a varied diet and my tribe might become almost a well dressed as your tribe.This is a nonzero sum.Increasing Opportunities to Play Nonzero GamesIf we accept that nonzero games lead to a better quality of living through greater complexity (1850's London would have been a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there) then the question organisations and individuals would do well to ask themselves is how can I maximise my opportunities to play nonzero games?Here are some suggestions:* Take an honest interest in others for example: Friends, customers, team members etc.* When listening to someone talk about a problem or challenge they are facing, ask yourself "How can I help them over and above just giving advice?"* Say `Yes' more often - For a classic illustration on this read "Yes Man" by Danny Wallace. (3)Bibliography:(1) Wright, Robert; 2000 "Non Zero - The Logic of Human Destiny" Pantheon Books, New York(2) Darwin, Charles; 1871 "The Descent of Man" Published by John Murray, United Kingdom.(3) Wallace, Danny; 2005 "Yes Man", Simon Spotlight Entertainment, New York - London - Toronto - Sydney.

To be completely Frank I never finished this book. It's not boring or anything like that. The font is so damn small it's really tiring to read. So my intention is to get either a kindle or audible version in the future.

Very interesting information and ideas

Great book

Robert Wright's 'love' for non-zero-sumness, distances him more and more from getting closer to love as we understand it. This commoner's view finds eloquence in Radha-Krishna lore stimulating Octavio Paz to pen a memorable volume in the last years of his life.Wright also distances himself from experimental psychologist Harry F. Harlow's discovery of love in infant monkeys. Equally unforgivable is the neglect of the foundation of social bonding in attachment theory of John Bowlby.The outcome therefore is replication of 'selfish gene' or 'self interest' by thrusting 'non-zero-sumness' from cellular organelles to global organizations. Yet throughout the book NONZERO, most surprisingly, the author wonders to embrace Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: the noosphere, the Omega, the God.In this goal, the author begins with the biological evolution; where arguments become shaky Wright invokes cultural evolution; at places curious amalgam of gene-culture coevolution is applied. How biological and cultural streams meet remains an open question. However, Wright keeps students of animal behaviour and students of history busy in trying to understand each other!Does the author ultimately succeed in giving a new perspective on cooperation? On humanly bonds of love! The attempt is marvelous; the author questions the authority of God as reflexively as the authority of science. The twin beliefs needs to reconcile in good karma. This is a savvy thesis of Robert Wright for our common future. Indeed to reinforce the layers of the noosphere.

The book starts off with, an incredible listing of historic events. Wright is attempting to explain how life advances towards more complex forms. I did not always agree with his historic examples. He also has a habit of over looking events, that would contrast with his theories. But I throughly enjoyed, reading the historical perspectives. Wright also explains, that eventually all human societies would evolve and develop social complexities. Events like the Industrial Revolutuion, would eventually take place in all societies. I just flat-out, did not agree with Wright`s assumption, regarding social evolution. Wright`s over all conclusion; is that the advancement of human evolution and progress, will lead to the development of a world government. A world government will be the pinnacle of humanities social evolution. This is where, I came into a strong case of disagreement with the author. Wright ignores examples like; the successful Swiss government model of decentralization and massive big government corruption at places like the UN. I am sure a lot of potential readers, support the idea of a world government. In which case, you will want to give Wright`s book a five star rating. Over all, I loved reading this book. I did however, have strong reservations with the Wright`s final conclusion.