| Title | : | A Hunter-Gatherers Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 |
| Publication | : | First published September 14, 2021 |
For evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, the cause of our woes is clear: the modern world is out of sync with our ancient brains and bodies. We evolved to live in clans, but today most people don't even know their neighbors' names. Differences between the sexes once served a necessary evolutionary purpose, but today many dismiss the concept of biological sex as offensive. The cognitive dissonance spawned by trying to live in a society we're not built for is killing us.
A Hunter-Gatherers Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life Reviews
-
Considering that humanity has spent more than 95 percent of its collective 200,000-year history as hunter-gatherers, we should not be surprised to find some mismatches between our evolutionary predispositions and the post-industrial environment we currently inhabit. And if this is the case—which to some extent it surely is—then by studying evolutionary biology and psychology, along with modern hunter-gatherer groups, we can gain some insights on the roots of many of our physical, mental, and social problems. Then, and only then, can we begin to reevaluate some of our behaviors to better align with our nature and our history, thus resolving many otherwise intractable problems. This, in a nutshell, is the argument and purpose of the book.
The problem, of course, is how far you’re willing to take this argument. It’s one thing to concede that evolution gives us certain predispositions (e.g., the compulsion to binge eat) that no longer match environmental realities (an overabundance of sugary foods), leading to disastrous consequences (obesity, heart disease, etc.), and that by understanding the mismatch, we can modify our behaviors (whole food diets, intermittent fasting, etc.), leading to better outcomes. Few reasonable people would argue against these more clear-cut cases.
But the authors don’t stop there. They want to take the argument further and claim that all long-standing cultural adaptations “evolve to serve the genome” (and they really mean this). This tactic, however, seems little more than using genetics and evolution to support the beliefs and practices approved by the authors. If every long-lasting cultural practice can be said to support the genome, then those practices can be defended on seemingly scientific grounds. But this is nothing more than an illusion, and should be recognized as such by the reader.
It’s not necessarily useful to think of humans in this way. Humanity separated itself from the rest of the animal kingdom primarily via our ability to transcend genetic determination and to decide how to live using reason and experience. And if a cultural practice is bad for the genes but good for the individual, to hell with the genes. The classic example is contraception. This long-running practice of enjoying sex without bearing children cannot have “evolved to serve the genome,” and yet those who practice it by intentionally not having children are not living an impoverished or defective life in any sense simply because their genes may not like it.
If reason tells you that you would prefer a child-free life, then that’s what you should do, irrespective of what your genome would tell you. Similarly, in many matters, evolutionary biology offers us no help whatsoever in making life choices; rather, philosophy becomes far more important. But the authors want to pretend that every aspect of our lives can be guided by evolutionary logic when in reality they’re simply using a particular reading of evolution to justify their own beliefs (don’t watch porn, have casual sex, or take medication). Readers should be able to see through this ruse pretty easily, I would hope.
So take the content for what it’s worth. As I said above, there’s much to learn about our evolutionary past, which can provide deep insights into how we can modify our behavior for the better. But don’t think that evolutionary logic can make all the decisions for us, or that our own reason and capacity for independent philosophical thought cannot or should not override what may or may not be “best” for our genes, or for whatever traditional practices justify themselves on the basis of longevity alone (a bullshit argument often used by conservatives or religious fundamentalists). -
To say that I was disappointed when I finally got this book after preordering it would be a vast understatement. This book had so much potential to be an interesting and scientific trip through how our evolution leads us to be who we are today.
Instead what I found was a lot of unsubstantiated correlation based thinking. Especially when it came to medicine and food. It seems like if the authors had their way we wouldn’t do anything advanced until knowing every possible parameter, which is just not possible or realistic.
Also a note for the audiobook is that they should not have narrated their own book. There are a lot of great audiobook voice actors and they are not among them.
I managed to slog through 75% of this book and while it gets 2 stars for chapters 2 and 3 the rest is just untenable. Take this review for what you may, but this will be one that I’ll be returning to audible. -
Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein are evolutionary biologists. They are a married couple and taught as professors for many years. Their ongoing studies of evolution and adaptation have brought them invitations to speak around the globe. As we read through this, their first book, we come to understand they spend a lot of time trekking through various sparsely-inhabited regions and communing with a variety of cultures. As such, they are particularly well-suited to discuss humans from a species standpoint, and how we fare (or falter) in the adjustments our societies tend to ask of us.
Topics covered here include medicine (there's far too much of it), sleep (far too little and poorly regulated), food (largely misunderstood), parenting (overly comparative), and culture (heavy on novelty, short on tradition). Each chapter ends with a feature they've titled The Corrective Lens which serves as a thumbnail advisory for alterations the reader might choose to make, or at least keep in mind.
I thought this whole approach was a terrific idea. And timely, too, as we finally imagine cracking open our doors to step out from what has essentially amounted to a world-wide lockdown. Years have passed. Thoughts have been formulated, reckonings made. Change is in the air. It felt like a fine point for me to chisel down to the fundamentals. Only, as it turns out, there was more than that going on here.
About a third of the way through the book, its tone began to creep into mission-speak. There emerged an assertion that there was a right way to live and a sadly ignorant one, a clear set of choices and an obvious set of mistakes. Science became what religion so often becomes, a clique composed of those walking a superior path. And maybe I'm just a little sensitive to that sort of assertion these days. And maybe Heather and Bret have spent a little too much time in those jungles to get a keen sense of what their modern-day readers have been up against. Tone's a critical matter now, whether one likes it or not.
Let's just say, by the time they got around to suggesting we could have avoided this pandemic altogether had we only pitched tents in our backyards? I was not in the mood to hear it.
Fortunate for my authors, they saved this to their Afterword. -
The amount of times in the last couple of months that I've checked my pre-order to see when this releases is absurd. I'm on the edge of my seat in excitement.
-
All the good bits are old and all the new bits are not that good. I highly recommend reading the following review since it says every thing I want to say and more with much more authority and style(
link ).
Ok it seems I have to add some of my own dislike here.
1. Book is titled " A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide" but the justifications the authors provide for most claims are anecdotal . It is either about them or their children or some other combination of their family.
2. B & H were professors at a third rate college and both of them have very little original work to their name . In fact it seems they haven't really kept up with the literature since a lot of their arguments are based on some sort of hyper-adaptationism.
3. Bret in particular pushes for criticizing pharmaceuticals based on his theory . He believes lab mice have longer telomeres and this renders them more resistant to drug toxicity. Thus, since they are used for human pharmaceutical research we can not be sure which drugs are potentially toxic to humans. Bret also thinks he should have received a noble prize for this claim and that his idea was stolen ( He is wrong on all counts as detailed
here ) . I should also mention that B & H don't actually mention all of this in their book but we need this context to make sense of their advice in regards to fluorides in water , sunscreen etc etc.
Edited to include more links to a diverse range of people and their reactions to this book:
Review by biologist PZ Myers: (ignore Myers petty takes, just focus on his critique of the ideas)
Review in Areomagazine:
Lengthy but well worth the read
Related but not about the book. Jerry Coyne calling out Weinstein on his bullshit:
Jerry Coyne is probably 10 times the biologist Weinstein thinks he is -
Very disappointed. Official DNF.
Okay, this bothered me so much I had to expand on this review. Here it is:
The messiah complex is a state of mind in which a person believes they are the savior of the world. Usually the person can be found on a street corner or a soapbox. Or in a treehouse.
The Book
is titled A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, co-authored by a middle-aged married couple. Both of whom earned PhDs in Biology and recently resigned teaching positions from a liberal college in the Northwest. "They cohost weekly livestreams of the DarkHorse podcast." The podcast is shot in what looks like a backyard treehouse.
When I learned of the book I preordered it. I am a proponent of Evolutionary Psychology and an author, too. I was very much looking forward to reading it. It sounded like something right in my own backyard.
DNF
is book-speak for "did not finish". I couldn't - it was that bad. However, I don't disagree with the major premise - that we humans evolved in a world that is much different than the one we have created. And that we are therefore "mismatched" to it. Ironically, or of a paradox as the authors purport.
But by page 90, I'd had enough. Though I did skim the rest. The writing is redundant, pompous, poorly constructed and the thinking magical. The authors like to make up words, principles, rules, and concepts, then pretend they're doing "science".
There are boxes at the end of most chapters wherein they list remedies, or instructions / rules, to "guide" the reader toward survival. They call the lists "The Corrective Lens". In fact there are 103 of these corrections. The implication being if you follow these instructions you'll correct the mess we've made.
The Writing
and story telling is awful. They mix metaphors, stories, philosophies. Repeat themselves. It reminded me of children I used to counsel in residential treatment. Six, seven, eight-year olds with their nonsensical yammering. Kids in a tree house using their imaginations to construct a make believe world.
Examples
are so numerous you can open to any page and find them. Why use mutual when you can use "mutualistic"? Did you know that fire is "abiotic"? Why be precise when you can flood the page with maybes, probably's, suggests, mights, may have been's, almost's, etc. and so on. And commas, oh my word. Blah,blah, blah, and yada, yada.
Did I want to turn the page and keep reading? Nope. That defines bad writing and 'did not finish'.
The Noble Savage
myth is the belief that those people - the "natives" who we white folk killed, enslaved, conquered and oppressed - had it right. And yet, almost in the same sentence, Heying and Weinstein deny they are romanticizing that lifestyle and belief. The authors label us (readers of the book) WEIRD.
WEIRD
stands for Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic. It's one of the authors' clever (?) inventions. What they mean is: English speaking white people, with some college, living with indoor plumbing and full-time electricity, adequate income, and voting rights.
That's hardly a majority of people living in the "West". Even in the US! Yet, here's another one of their favorite paradoxes: we are killing ourselves. With all our convenience. We are too soft and too clean. Furthermore, we live in square buildings with "carpentered corners"! And those corners prevent us from seeing the world as it is.
This book is amazing. At least so far in the 21st Century, 2021. The worst year ever? What's truly amazing is that it's gotten any traction at all. Moreover, some high praise from some pretty smart people (Sebastian Junger for one).
Seems like the magical (crooked) thinking of kids in a treehouse works. Robert Wright takes exception. Calling the Weinsteins "crackpot". I agree with Mr. Wright. Skip this one. Try these: Set Yourself Free: Twelve Books to Read on Human Nature in stead. -
I was looking forward to this book (I pre-ordered it and started reading it just a couple of days after it arrived). I like the authors, have listened to a number of episodes of their podcast and have watched a number of interviews of Weinstein in previous years. So I really wanted to like this book, but it was a disappointment.
My main issue is that I don’t think this book is well-argued. It is clear the authors have good intentions (for the betterment of society and individuals) but the book seems more like a collection of opinions/assertions rather than anything resembling rigorous argumentation.
For instance: there is the claim that sleep evolved because eyes can’t be excellent at both seeing in the day and in the night. But we know that organisms like the worm c elegans also sleep and they don’t have eyes (and it is almost certain our most recent common ancestor didn’t have eyes either, so the hypothesis of sleep evolving due to trade-offs relating to eye function doesn’t seem reasonable).
Sometimes there were not even enough details to understand a point. For instance: there is the claim that, in animals with breeding seasons (as opposed to animals who, like humans, can be fertile year-round), it is easier for a single male to monopolize the reproduction of several females. No explanation is given as to why, and I can see an equally (if not more) valid argument for the contrary: if all females ovulate at the same time a single male should have a harder time to control and mate with all of them.
Considering the above, I felt that even some factual claims might be suspect. For instance this claim: “an octopus can die in contact with her hatching eggs, thereby handing over the nutrition of her own body to her hungry offspring.” Now, I love octopi but I hadn’t heard of this fact. As the book offered no reference for it, I tried looking it up online but was unable to find any information that supported it (on the contrary, all relevant information I found seemed incompatible to it). Some other statements seemed cryptic to me (e.g. “[human] software is the interplay of experience and knowledge with capacity”; I definitely think this statement required additional explaining for its meaning to be clarified).
Another point I found particularly surprising... in the chapters about sexual behavior (which do offer some interesting food for thought), the authors describe three possible “reproductive strategies”: pair-bonding, forced reproduction (i.e. rape) and free/consensual sex without commitment. They consider the third opinion to be “junk sex, formulaic and without depth”; this is an opinion they provided some arguments for (through their “evolutionary lens”), so it is a position the reader is free to find convincing or unconvincing (I think their analysis is narrow, overlooking alternative points of view that could also have merit). But later on they write: “...if you are a man engaging in reproductive strategy two or three, it does not benefit you to fall in love. While reprehensible, these strategies have been effective for men throughout history...”. So consensual sex without commitment is reprehensible; I think that’s blatant moralizing and crosses a line of good taste (and is also counterproductive if the authors want to change the minds of people who don’t already agree with their opinion).
The book does have some interesting thoughts to offer: their culture vs consciousness analysis (although the authors define consciousness very differently than the term is commonly used: according to their definition an octopus doesn’t have consciousness), the chapters on child upbringing and education (very interesting ideas which I wholeheartedly agree with; although, still, not that well-argued for) and their analysis of addiction as reward vs opportunity cost (with boredom signifying zero opportunity cost) have some merit. But even those are generally not that well explored (mostly offered as opinions).
In general: the book contains some interesting and/or thought-provoking ideas (regardless of whether one agrees with them or not), but too often there are generalities, claims are offered without adequate argumentation (some claims seem suspect of being “just-so stories”), mechanisms are not explored to a deep level and possible counter-arguments are generally not addressed. I wanted to like it but, as it turns out, I don’t think I gained much from it. -
I’ve enjoyed listening to Bret on the Joe Rogan Experience over the years, and I’ve dabbled in his (and Heather’s) podcast as of late as well. Both he and Heather are great thinkers and scientists, and they present things in a straightforward and practical way. That’s why I decided to grab this title.
Overall, I thought it was pretty good. It’s got a similar vibe to their “DarkHorse” podcast in terms of its pragmatic and scientific approach.
The basic structure of the book is this: take a subject (say, sleep, for instance), discuss its evolutionary purpose, talk about what helps or harms it, then make some recommendations on it. For example, when it comes to sleep, the pair says we should reduce our use of blue-light-emitting devices, sleep in dark, cold rooms, and be careful not to consume caffeine within eight hours of going to bed.
Though some of the conclusions they draw are ones you may have heard before, it’s the evolution-based science that makes such findings interesting and drives them home; this book isn’t just a “do this, don’t do that” guide — it’s also a thoughtful explanation as to why we should or shouldn’t act in specific ways.
There’s no doubt in my mind that implementing the ideas in this one would improve one’s quality of life overall. The only reason I’m going four stars is that the book does, at times, feel overly academic or like it could use a little more excitement. An extra story here or there would’ve helped tremendously. The science is great, but it does get a tad dry at times.
-Brian Sachetta
Author of “Get Out of Your Head” -
Is it me, am I the problem? Because this was torture. Long ramblings about philosophy, psychology, sociology and any other kind of –ology you can name that seemed a bit too subjective to be scientific. Paragraph after paragraph about animals (there’s nothing wrong with literature about animals, but I was promised a book about humans, so I wasn’t particularly interested in swans and their sex lives). Also, what’s with all the personal stories? They might have seemed cute for the authors, but I really don’t care about their life-changing trips to the jungle or their son. Not to mention that all of this was presented with such a know-it-all and holier-than-thou tone that made the book extremely irritating (for instance, the chapter on parenting, the way people do it – wrong, authors’ way – yes, you guessed it, the right one). Ah, must be wonderful to have all the answers.
-
The whole book feels poorly thought through. The authors clearly have particular views on issues like GM food, casual sex, sleep patterns and water fluoridation. They then cherry pick scientific studies to support their beliefs and move on without properly considering the literature. It’s a self help book with a sciencey veneer.
-
I wanted to give this book a better review, perhaps a solid 2-stars, for some fun interesting facts and perspectives inside. However, so much of this book is stinky doo doo, and I would not want anyone to use their free time reading that much stinky doo doo. I once heard a saying which went like this, "a little poop in the pudding makes the whole pudding poopy", well there is a lot of poop in this pudding.
-
A pop science book by a husband-wife duo that bridges evolutionary science with the challenges of the modern world. The authors write that the rate of change is so rapid now that our brains, bodies, and social systems are perpetually out of sync and that our species is essentially in danger of destroying itself and the world. The book’s aim then is to navigate these terrains through first principles reasoned thinking through an evolutionary lens in this age of hyper-novelty in order to move forward in a logical manner that’s best for the survival of our species. The tone is a bit on the alarmist and preachy side of things, and the propositions often times reflects their own personal philosophy and familial values-- for better or worse. Some of the reviewers here are also claiming that the science isn’t up to date or accurate, which doesn’t come as a surprise if you’re familiar with Bret’s recent history. Despite it’s issues, it’s still a decent read for the layman to think about the currents and trends that are challenging/changing us in a very readable way.
2.5/5 -
This is philosophy masquerading as scientific thought. The author's assert that floride in water is bad because it's not natural; nevermind the decades of hard scientific evidence showing otherwise. The authors say we should trust cultural norms that have been around for a long time because they must have evolutionary advantages, except when the authors disagree with the long-standing norms of other cultures, like infant-swaddling--then it's a bad thing. Authoritative parenting is bad because it coddles children, and then they describe the ideal parenting style... which is a perfect description of authoritative parenting. I could go on and on, but I learned long ago not to waste my time on pseudoscience.
-
“Seek authorities who are willing to both show you how they arrived at their conclusions and admit when they have made mistakes.”
I've read this book twice and really enjoyed re-reading it. In the book, Bret & Heather argue that the modern world is out of sync with our evolutionary biology. For example, we evolved to live in small tribes. But many of us live in cities and don't even know our neighbor's names.
It's a fascinating book!
Five stars. -
I hate this book.
I stumbled upon it on Overdrive and seeing as I teach evolutionary biology, the themes really appealed to me.
However, it is much more self help than any kind of piece of science writing. Most of the points are reinforced by anecdotes or analogies and very little actual data. Being evolutionary biologists does not make them any sort of authority on parenting or managing relationships. Further, being evolutionary biologists does not also mean they are experts in education, pharmaceuticals, or medicine in general.
Basically, all their points boil down to one argument: in the span of evolutionary time urbanization and industrialization are pretty new and some of the aspects of these processes could be bad but we do not know which ones are, so avoid as many as possible. Therefore, they are against fluoride, screens (sleep outside), vaccines, plastic, porn, vitamins, gmo's, surgeries, dating apps, wearing casts for the requisite amount of time, people transitioning, and the list goes on. This argument is simple and harmful, and does nothing to reflect the overall scientific consensus that refutes it.
The main problem with all of this is that the book is very well written and very readable, and they do a good job of making basic evobio principles interesting (speaking from experience this is tough to do). I later found that these two frequent the Joe Rogan, Bill Maher circuits, promoting ivermectin and discouraging people from receiving mRNA based vaccines. It checks out, they're good at communicating and their good at nonsense.
I would give it a half a star if I could. -
Endlessly interesting, thought provoking, wise, fun. One of the few books I think EVERYONE should read!!! Every single paragraph is deliciously loaded with lateral thinking - of things we know, deep down.
I'm so happy they finally wrote this book!!! -
Society needs this book: perhaps most importantly because it presents an evolutionarily-based model for understanding our species in all domains, as well as a toolkit for determining how we should best move forward together. To get the most out of this book—if you do not already have a science background—it is imperative that you approach it with an open, yet healthily critical, mind, as the authors do an excellent job explaining complicated evolutionary phenomena for the lay ear.
The most controversial idea, that culture ultimately exists to serve the genes, is not fundamentally controversial: though, it sounds an awful lot like social Darwinism to those who are not paying attention. To combat this misunderstanding, Bret and Heather kindly provide the Omega principal, which states that in order for an observable trait to be adaptive, it must satisfy three criteria: (1) it is complex, (2) it has energetic or material costs, which vary between individuals, and (3) it has persistence over evolutionary time. Therefore, many phenomena within culture, such as religion, can be interpreted as adaptive as they are complex, expensive, and increase survival rates among individuals who practice them. Moreover, many religious beliefs are literally false but metaphorically true—meaning those who behave as if such stories within religion are true prosper and their genes move forward in time at rates higher than those who do not. If it were maladaptive, those who practiced religion would have experience differential success against this who didn’t that dwindled to zero.
In addition to this important idea, the authors provide other useful models for interpreting information in our age of hyper-novelty. Chestertons fence and the precautionary principle in particular provide one with a safeguard against making myopic decisions based on short-term vision. As a species, we are running out of time. We are destroying our planet and wasting resources at an extraordinary rate with seemingly no plan to fix it. At base, the authors argue, this is a problem of cornocopianism: essentially a faulty viewpoint characterized by a misguided belief that because resources seem abundant now, they will always be so.
Interestingly, I found many parallels between this book and Jordan Petersons beyond order, in that they both share a central philosophy that dichotomizes order and chaos. In this book, Heather and Bret unpack culture vs consciousness, which is essentially similar in structure to order vs chaos. Culture, or tradition, is a culmination of ideas and behaviors that persist over time. Consciousness is a mechanism used to amend anachronistic traits that no longer benefit those practicing them. This idea can be extrapolated to the political realm, for example with regard to conservative vs liberal ideology. In general, this mechanism exists to maintain homeostasis. It is extremely important, perhaps more than ever, that humanity recognizes this.
Overall, this book is an absolute gem and I couldn’t find many things I disagreed with. Congratulations Bret and Heather!
-Michael Whetsel Setford -
Poorly researcher pop science book from people who clearly haven’t been keeping up to date on scientific literature.
The prevalence of ADHD diagnosis amongst boys/men is not due to biological differences in men and women but rather due to the fact that ADHD presents differently in women and girls/women are under-diagnosed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
While monogamy is a mating strategy which benefits children, polyamory may be of more benefit since children are exposed to many adults (ie, it takes a village to raise a child.) This is more ancestrally consistent to how humans lived 10,000+ years ago. Polygyny may have been beneficial especial for women practicing fast mating strategies- if you purposefully confuse paternity, more men and women will team up together to raise kids. This is even easier when practicing mainly polygamy- there is an essential endless supply of sperm and several females to help raise children. Nuclear, monogamous families are a modern concept spearheaded by the need for guaranteed paternity in passing down of property, finance, etc.
This is an argument coming from a woman who has absolutely no desire to be with a polygamous/polyandrous partner.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Heying and Weinstein refer to a study talking about the Big 5 traits and rank women as more agreeable, altruistic, and extroverted. However, this study doesn’t look into whether this pattern is created by normal biological nature or whether it is created by nurture.
In families, girls are often expected to take care of their younger siblings- something that is less required of older male siblings. From a young age, women are taught to be nurturing and agreeable. As such, women end up doing more emotional labor in families as adults and even in the workplace. These are traits that can be cultivated by men provided they are also forced to perform this level of emotional labor within families.
Beyond this, Big 5 tests are also known for their acquiescence bias- especially in developing populations. Personality test responses in general reflect what a person wants to be vs who they actually are. Self response personality tests are fundamentally non empirical forms of psychological analysis and evidence.
So are women naturally more agreeable, extroverted, nurturing, and neurotic or are are we just inclined to believe that these traits are desirable and marks of womanhood?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/bl...
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-ins...
Heying and Weinstein also discuss the variability hypothesis as though it is biology that dictates IQ and representation amongst top performers in STEM fields. However, recent studies have shown that this is neither found outside the US and in fact, even within the US, this phenomenon is consistently disproven by Asian and Indian American women who perform higher on math/stem exams than their Asian and Indian American male counterparts (ie top 10% is 7% female, 3% male).
Additionally, even amongst the general American population- the top 10% of people in STEM courses are 5% male, 5% female. In other fields, women actually make up a higher proportion of the top 10%.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146...
I do agree with a lot of their points on ancestral consistency with diet and staying away from medical intervention unless absolutely necessary. -
A lot of what is in this book is common sense to me but it seems that it's not common sense to every one. After reading the chapters on parenting and childhood, I actually went and thanked my mom for allowing me to go to funerals, play with friends on my own, and grow and learn by suffering the consequences of my actions. She encouraged me to go outside and tromp through the woods and get injured and solve my own problems and she trusted me to ask for help when I needed. It was almost like she read those chapters herself before raising me. Of course that is impossible. But now, even as I'm typing this, I realize the problem is that what was common sense when I was growing up is no longer common sense today. In less than 40 years, everything about raising children has changed. We are no longer interested in raising children that can become happy adults who are functioning members of society capable of solving problems. We are interested in keeping kids safe, in a protective cocoon that makes them think that they are the center of the universe, which leads to dissatisfied adults who aren't really adults at all. How could that happen so quickly? That is one of the questions Heather and Bret address in this book.
The last chapter is a bit scary. I've read similar warnings from other authors. What is new for me to think about is the American obsession with growth. It's been at the back of my mind before but I've always pushed it away as an uncomfortable thought to worry about later. They also mention crises that I have thought a lot about, like a Carrington Event, or a nuclear event, either of which could take out society as we know it. Of course, it's obvious to most intelligent people that the status quo is unsustainable. That's why people like Elon Musk want humans to go to Mars. Heather and Bret lay out some ideas that do not require going to Mars, but I don't know if our society is capable of accomplishing them without some major catalyst occurring first. In any case, wouldn't it be nice to have more than one plan in place? -
I can’t recommend this book at all. It’s very apparent the authors are academics. They can certainly string well worded sentences together and present information within their field of study, but after diving in for about an hour something felt really off. Although they were presenting a broad picture of evolution and where we are today, their opinions and beliefs structures starting leaking through. They interjected their prescriptions of what we need to do in order to avoid doom. I both agreed and disagreed with some of their ‘recommendations’, but the fact that opinion was interjected into the book makes it lose credibility. Presenting a book as an academic work then trying to sell your personal beliefs within isn’t good. Authors should have picked a genre and left the sale of their beliefs out of this text. If they had it would have been a whole different experience.
Note: I had no idea who the authors were when reading the book. I researched them a bit afterward and now can see why my radar was blasting. There’s a lot of controversy around them both. -
I picked this up hoping for a meal, and instead got a big serving of junk food. Great claims require great evidence. This book has many of the former but little of the latter.
So, starting with the fact that I agree at a high level with a lot of the things the authors have to say here, I did not think this was a very good book.
The model of “we are hunter gatherers in the world beyond comprehension.” Is one that I regularly think of. It blows my mind that I travel daily in a box at speeds my ancestors only could reach by jumping off a cliff. I genuinely think a lot of first world problems stem from living in a world of abundance while running firmware that is predicated on scarcity.
The authors share these opinions and more. And I do think I would probably enjoy dinner with the authors. However, when writing a book, assuming that your audience agrees with all your points doesn’t work. And the glaring issues in this book make it an extremely frustrating read even if you do agree with most of the points.
This book is an aggregation of dubiously sourced counterfactual aphorisms about modern life. While interesting, many of the ideas contained will contradict each other, and no one idea is explored enough in depth to convincingly sway anyone who doesn’t already agree with it. This results in a sort of schizophrenic leap from concept to concept wherein the authors give condescending prescriptive advice about things as far ranging as nutrition, child rearing, healthy relationships, and the importance of bonfires.
One of the first chapters talks about the ill fittingness of our bodies and minds in modern society. Sitting for hours a day while over consuming carbohydrates and social media. But the support for that information is just assumed. An arm wave into “these are not the droids you are looking for” is not evidence that there are no droids.
The whole book follows this trend. Occasionally pointing to personal anecdotes, vague studies, and sometimes just eschewing evidence altogether. It’s like showing up to a talk where there was a handout with all the supporting evidence, except you didn’t get the handout.
So the authors discuss “brain old, society new” and the danger of that. While in the following chapter discussing the overconfidence of medicine, and to support their claim, they dredge up a personal antidote where the author‘s kid breaks their hand and heals organically without the use of pesky modern casts. Naturally, they write this with a straight face while talking about shooting spacefaring x-rays and other imaging into the appendage before the doctor exclaims at the miracle of natural healing to validate the supremacy of their point about natural healing.
And to repeat, I mostly agree. Not all modern medicine is good. Up until just a few decades ago our best Psychologists were descended from the Freudian tree of thought and would gather around in their trench coats (assuming on the apparel here) to discuss the wonderful enlightenment that lobotomies bring to their patients.
“Good sir, I do believe that man is fascinated with his own genitalia as a result of how his mother fed him too many bananas.”
“Very good, we shall never attribute human motivations to anything but sex”
“Yea verily”
“Interesting that you say Verily. How suspiciously close to the word ‘virile’ perhaps YOU have some latent sexual desires to uncover”
“Why you!”
*muffled sounds of one Psychoanalyst choking the other in an Oedipic rage….
And again, this skepticism is probably for a good reason. If the recent pervasiveness of the opioid crisis is any indication, it is good to continue to be skeptical of physicians bearing gifts. BUT THE AUTHORS DONT BACK UP ANY OF THEIR @#$%^%$ CLAIMS. How did this pass any sort of editor?
And that leads me to the second major issue with this book. There is absolutely no nuance or accounting for counterfactuals. Every statement is definitive. Every point is uncalibrated. If someone in JV High School Debate tried this they would be lampooned by every other JV HS debater misquoting Kant or the Social Contract.
I mean, to claim that a single chapter or two comprehensively covers any of the expansive subjects they claim to cover is not only ridiculous, it seems harmful to peoples health. It’s all fun and games to make wild claims, but Steve Jobs died because he valued natural healing over listening to a doctor. There is a tremendous amount of confidence in boldly presented ideas where that does not seem to be appropriate.
And so much of the book follows this trajectory, there’s a lot of folksy, anecdotal, emotional arguments towards the ability or inability of some group or another to accurately show our “true nature as hunter gatherers” depending on what side of things the authors choose to portray. There’s an assumed reasonableness that really isn’t warranted, and much of the advice comes off as prescriptive when it seems like it should be presented more akin to a smoke sesh on a faded futon amongst undergrads. What’s lacking from this book that I think someone like Robert Sapolsky does really well is to calibration of how accurate the statements being made likely are.
At one point the authors talked about how laugh tracks were responsible for falsifying human connection to such an extent that the disintegration of modern society could be pointed to from that. Like come on guys. Laugh tracks? That example can, and should, be made fun of, laugh track or not.
At another point, theres a digression about how parents should not take photos of their kids to "allow them to change." How does anyone see this as anything more than "Old man yells at cloud?"
And while those are amusing, where we get into trouble is when we venture into the murkier waters. Like I said above, I agree with the authors on a lot of the basics, but what this book fails to give is any sort of information on where their ideas come from, and as such it’s near impossible to disentangle the nonsense from the reasonable assumptions
I picked this up with the understanding that this was supposed to be a scientific book. Both the authors have PhD’s. And their folksy aphorisms probably play well to the undergrads they teach. But under any sort of critical lens, most of the claims couldn’t withstand a soft breeze on a summer day. I found myself looking up supporting evidence for points made in the book AND I AGREE WITH THE POINTS. I’m not particularly looking to blow holes in the side of my own belief system. But at least when I get high and talk about gut microbiomes or the prevalence of inflammation in modern life, I try to use actual evidence to back up the reasonability of those claims. -
Heying and Weinstein are standing athwart modern culture and politely yelling stop. These two academic refugees from a great idea turned racket (Evergreen College) are wonderful teachers. They are the professors we all wished we had experienced and their love/passion for their subject is clear with every chapter of this book. They tell the story of human development to modern day through the lens of practically experienced evolutionary biologists. They start with the beginning of life and proceed through our development including civilization, culture, medicine, food, sleep, sex and gender, parenthood, childhood and school. It is a holistic interpretation of what humans are evolutionarily as well as how our current reductionist thinking is in direct opposition to the evolutionary process. Every open-minded reader will gain something from this book.
The ending is a bit fatalist/Malthusian from my point of view. However, it does not detract from the insights gained from the first 13 chapters. After reading it, I will exercise and sleep more, eat better and be more social (maybe).
In the audiobook, I would have preferred hearing the conclusion from Heather's comforting voice instead of Bret's cautionary one. No spoilers here - read the book. You'll be glad you did. -
لقد انخرطت كل ثقافة في تاريخ البشرية في كل من التعاون والمنافسة ، وتصرفت بطرق يجب أن تجعلنا فخورين بكوننا بشرًا وبطرق تجعلنا نشعر بالعار . كانت الأعمال المجيدة والمروعة منتشرة على نطاق واسع.
عند النظر إلى التاريخ ، تقع على عاتقنا مسؤولية الاعتراف بهذه الحقيقة ، وكذلك الاعتراف عندما تكون انتصارات أسلافنا - شرعية أو في كثير من الأحيان غير شرعية - قد وفرت لنا ميزة لم نكتسبها بأنفسنا. ومع ذلك ، فليس من مسؤوليتنا إخضاع أنفسنا لتلك التواريخ.
لقد سرق الأوروبيون أرضًا من الأمريكيين الأصليين ، بطرق شنيعة وحقيرة في كثير من الأحيان. الأمريكيون الأصليون الذين تم إخضاعهم هكذا كان لديهم تاريخ من الحروب والغزو أيضاً ؛ أخذوا الأرض من بعضهم البعض. وبالط��ع ، لم يكن أي من هذا جديدًا - لقد جلبوه معهم إلى العالم الجديد عندما عبروا من بيرنجيا قبل عدة آلاف من السنين.
دعونا لا نلوم أي شخص أو فترة. بدلاً من ذلك ، دعونا نفهم الإنسانية بشكل كلي ، ونعمل على توفير الفرص على قدم المساواة للجميع.
.
Heather Heying
A Hunter Gatherer's Guide
Translated By #Maher_Razouk -
I was hoping for a book that would encourage me to embrace ancestral practices in the modern world, but what I got was exhortation in eschewing modern medicine and other modern conveniences of all kinds.
The premise of this book is that all new things should be treated with suspicion, which is why it comes as no surprise that outside the pages of this book, the authors are spreading misinformation online about lifesaving vaccines and promoting alternative treatments for covid (which coincidentally are more dangerous than the vaccines and were also developed by pharmaceutical companies).
If I had been familiar with the authors before reading, I would have skipped it. Even excepting their current online rhetoric, I am not more knowledgeable or prepared to take on the modern world because of this book. -
DNF’d at 6%
Well this is a hard pass. I don’t normally rate books I DNF (how could you give something an overall rating if you haven’t finished it?), but I’m making an exception. Obviously, I didn't make it very far into the audiobook version, but a couple of sentences were worded weird enough that they made me pause and research the book (and authors). Turns out, not only are they right-wing conspiracy theorists, they’re also sexist antivaxers who are aggressively transphobic online. Incredibly disappointed to have accidentally picked up a pseudoscience book, and from other reviews (on Goodreads and the StoryGraph), I’m glad I decided to set this aside early on.
[Side note: My DNF shelf is labeled as "Maybe Later" because usually I do intend to revisit books I set aside for one reason or another. This book, however, I won't be returning to.] -
My thoughts on using hunter-gatherers as a guide to better living in the modern world are mixed. On one hand, I am inherently skeptical of people claiming we should live like hunter-gatherers. Some branches of humanity stopped being hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago. That’s a lot of time to evolve. On the other hand, there are many recent changes in the modern world that seem to have completely disrupted our traditional way of life. It is one thing to switch from being a hunter-gatherer to farming over several generations. It is a much bigger change to go from farming to sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day with zero physical activity within two or three generations. And that is just one change. There are probably dozens of changes from food, sex, physical activity, etc. that have all changed dramatically within the last 80 or so years. Many of our modern problems (obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, drug abuse, suicide, etc.) are new or are on scales so much larger than in the past, that they are likely caused by some of the trappings of modern life.
So when I first saw A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying on Joe Rogan’s Instagram, the title caught my attention immediately. I have previously been exposed to Weinstein’s work from Rogan’s podcast and my general impression is that he is someone I don’t particularly agree with, but is kind of an interesting dude. I knew that he was a biologist and his wife and coauthor was an evolutionary biologist. I know they are both liberal-ish and secular, so what I hoped to get out of this book was some science-based advice on how to overcome the various ways that modern life disrupts human existence. Although this book isn’t bad, it is a mere introduction to the idea that the modern human lifestyles is often in direct opposition to the way we evolved and it lacked the depth and originality I was hoping for.
What really drew me to this book was a clip of the authors on Mikhaila Peterson’s podcast where they talked about dating strategies. This is a subject that interests me and I found their take (pro-monogamy) interesting, considering the fact that they were secular. The clip made me recall a book I read a few years ago titled, Sex at Dawn. In that book, the authors describe the sexual practices of various ape species as well as the recorded sexual practices of various hunter-gatherer groups (some historic and some who still exist as hunter-gatherers to this day). The message of the book, though flawed in some parts, was pretty clear: for most of human history our sex was non-monogamous, but also not with random people. The issue with looking to hunter-gatherers for any information regarding modern day life is obvious: we are no longer hunter-gatherers. We live in a totally different environment now compared to the vast majority of our evolution. Not to mention, considerable genetic evolution has occurred since we stopped being hunter-gatherers.
So yes, we evolved having lots of sex with various people in our tribes. But unlike today, they weren’t random people from the internet. They weren’t people who would abandon you if you got pregnant. They were close friends who cared about you. Friends with benefits might sound fun, and the appeal of it makes sense because it is how we evolved. But the reality of hunter-gatherer sexual arrangements is much less appealing. A small tribe where sex is mostly free and and the father of any given child isn’t known means that no one knows who is related and how. This means that the sex arrangements in hunter-gatherer groups that some portray as utopian because of fewer sexual taboos was actually just one disgusting incestual orgy. This is where the whole application to modern day life falls apart as this sort of sexual arrangement violates widely accepted taboos regarding sex.
I bring all this up because sex is a great example of the follies of trying to apply hunter-gatherer practices to the modern world, and the authors do a good job at explaining this fact in various ways. For one, there was no monolithic experience for hunter-gatherers. The most obvious examples are probably diet and culture. Diet was dependent on your tribe’s environment and cultures vary widely depending on many factors.
Unfortunately, this also means the kind of advice one might hope to get from a book like this does not exist. It is even possible that it cannot exist. We cannot possibly know how all the various hunter-gatherer groups lived. Even if we did, we wouldn’t know which groups we descended from. And even if somehow, a person was able to properly identify all the hunter-gatherer groups they descended from and all their various practices, you still wouldn’t know which practices to follow. If a person descended from Inuits and Ethiopians, which diet should they follow? Which clothing will react better to your skin? Does any of this actually matter or is any perceived benefit in our heads?
My hope with A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century was that I would have a few key takeaways on better living in the modern world. Instead, the authors really focused on presenting ways for individuals to analyze their lives and find better ways for themselves. On one hand, I appreciate this approach. No author is going to have all the answers about modern living inside of hunter-gatherer bodies. So an intellectual framework for people to discover things for themselves makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, I felt like this book was mostly underwhelming with very little to offer in terms of actionable information.
One perfect example of the underwhelming amount of information was the question of diet. I get it, diet is very complicated. You could easily write multiple books on the question of the evolution of the human diet and how best a person could optimize their diet to fit their genetics. But the author’s main advice seemed to be to follow the traditional diet that your ancestors ate, be skeptical of GMOs, and listen to your body. This is not bad advice, but it also isn’t particularly detailed. They mention off-hand that maybe the perceived issues with wheat has to do more with modern wheat and that maybe an older, non-GMO versions of wheat would be more suitable for more people. This is an idea I was interested in, but they didn’t elaborate. It is the perfect example of what disappointed me in this book.
It really isn’t the fault of the book, but my expectations. Rather than reading a book that tells you everything about how humans should adapt to the modern world, you will have to read a dozen books that cover each subject individually: diet, sex, relationships, community, clothing, sleep, etc. There is just no way to fit all of this information into one book. The one thing I came away thinking was that it would actually make a great podcast series with each episode being about a specific subject with a guest that is an expert on that issue. There’s just too much info to cover otherwise.
I wouldn’t particularly recommend this book. The one thing it does is get you thinking about all the various ways that the modern world messes with our wellbeing. This book might be a good starting point to explore these questions, but you won’t find much in-depth or actionable information here. I would generally recommend that if you are interested in a given subject, to just read a book by an expert or two on that one issue. You will get much more information that way. I give this book two stars. -
Bret and Heather do a show without the jokes. It's worth hearing.
If you have a thing for indigenous ingenuity, this is the kind of book that will make you giddy with delight. To me, on the other hand, it sounds like celebrity name dropping. But that doesn't change the unique wonder of listening to folksy scientists working to popularize deep and consequential ideas that are generally only obliquely referenced by actual hack celebrities.
Their approach to evolutionary biology is methodological and yes a bit simplified for the reader but substantial nonetheless. What I have come to see is their counterweight using the Precautionary Principle to David Deutsch's open-ended infinity [stone] approach to applying knowledge to life. Where Deutsch is a die-hard epistemologist who asserts that the human mind will achieve all, Heying and Weinstein see how 'we moderns' have managed, after a virtual infinity of evolutionary years, to get a whole lot wrong. Knowledge is not only created, but destroyed. This book reminds us of how much we arbitrarily destroy for the sake of modern convenience.
If you come to this book looking for their last word on COVID vaccines and such, don't bother. It's in the appendix or the afterword. It's no big reveal. The point is rather that you come to understand their thinking process. There are no cheat codes. There are mysteries about why, when most of us only want what and sometimes how.
The team shines most in their retelling of parenting stories. If you've ever sat in school and dreaded the idea of one or both of your parents being schoolteachers, they will relieve you of such fears. They are the absolute opposite of helicopter parents and understand something deeply important about what a child knows and how he is supposed to learn. This is marvelous because it is without a doubt the most important job any of us are likely to have. For that alone, I cannot recommend this enough.
On the other hand, as the book draws to its conclusion, there is more than a whiff of Malthus in the air. I would have expected them to have a better grip on economic theory, but they clearly do not. They do understand that we are rats in an urban rat race, and from the POV of the rat, they do excellent work. But they fall short in their understanding of what can be properly engineered and evolved in institutions and systems. That should come as no surprise given their horrid treatment at the cowardly hands of Evergreen students, staff and leadership. At the individual level they are right on target, and they also understand the dynamism of complex systems. Yet they make the error of suggesting that controlling for the single variable of sustainability will deliver us from evil. Nope.
I'm glad I read the book. I will refer back to it. I will also continue listening to the podcast. They are both excellent teachers at ground level.
