Robin Hanson: evaluation

Transcript context

…But isn’t there a disconnect here between how we’ve evolved and how technology has changed our society? We didn’t evolve for a world where, say, 74-year-olds would visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Could it not be that a lot of human behavior, it’s a kind of accidental interaction of very broad features of human character that evolved for very general purposes. But the actual, particular, detailed instantiations of what happens in the US of A are, in a sense, not really the result of signaling in any direct way at the margin. Generically, evolution created a set of behavioral responses where we look at some sort of cues in the environment, and we respond to those cues in different ways. Obviously, our evolved environment did not have the modern environment to detail specific cues. There is no evolved cue for the Minneapolis Museum of Art. [laughs] The question is, what cues are we using? What are we looking at in the environment that we are using as cues to make this sort of behavior? I actually think evolution did a pretty decent job of noticing basic functional things in the environment. Is there a potential mate? Is this expensive? Is this cheap? Is this difficult to do? We’re using those sorts of cues and mapping onto our evolved instincts in that way. I think art is roughly impressive things that are hard to do and that don’t seem to have much other function or purpose. Our evolutionary cues for that are pretty good. If you had to name a few of the human activities that have the least amount to do with signaling, but nonetheless are voluntary, what would they be?…

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