Michael Muthukrishna is an Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at LSE. He has been awarded a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholarship for outstanding early career research, and is a board member of the One Pencil Project which combines academic research with philanthropy. He uses a combination of mathematical and computational modelling, experimental research and data methods from psychology and economics to understand the psychological and evolutionary processes underlying culture and social change and to look for ways to apply this understanding to the challenges currently facing us as a species.
Introduction 1
PART I: Who We Are and
How We Got Here 11
1. Laws of Life 21
2. The Human Animal 65
3. Human Intelligence 97
4. Innovation in the Collective Brain 141
5. Created by Culture 162
6. Cooperation 181
PART II: Where We’re Going 211
7. Reuniting Humanity 219
8. Governance in the Twenty-first Century 261
9. Shattering the Glass Ceiling 283
10. Triggering a Creative Explosion 314
11. Improving the Internet 334
12. Becoming Brighter 344
Conclusion 373
Acknowledgments 379
Further Reading 383
Index 427
