Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny

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Summary: Interdisciplinary Approach to World History
Review: Nonzero is another of the recent works that approaches meta-history using large amounts anthropology, sociology and science. The large scale view of history (meta-history on a Toynbee scale) has been somewhat abandoned by historians in the last two generations. The few schools that have adopted such approaches, such as World-Systems, seem to have an academic and political axe to grind winding up as intellectual cul-de-sacs rather than pathbreaking theories.

History in the large sense seems to have been increasingly taken over by evolutionary biologists and anthropologists instead of historians. Why is not obvious. Possibly the insular academic world of historians isn't open to inter-disciplinary approaches. Whatever the reason, historians who want to develop a history of the world in the big picture need to access the quickly developing theories and discoveries in other disciplines.

Wright joins a few others in taking this inter-disciplinary approach to get a sense of order in the direction our past has taken us. Wright uses systems of game theory to explain human behaviors on a large scale although he tends to discount some specific historical periods and civilizations (I wasn't exactly pleased at his thoughts on Roman civilizations.) He mines the rich amount of studies and writings on evolutionary biology, sociology and anthropology in his analysis of human political evolution.

In the end Wright succeeds in a fairly coherent and approachable theory of humanity's development. Others authors have taken Wright's interdisciplinary approach and can be recommended. These include Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's "Genes, Peoples and Languages".

This should be a call to historians interested in "Meta-history" to bridge the chasm between the social and hard sciences.

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Summary: The logic of creation
Review: I read this book immediately after Wright's "The Moral Animal" and it was a very good follow up expanding upon reciprical altruism (specifically zero sum and nonzero sum interactions). Part 1 was insightful and fascinating, Part 2 was somewhat of a repition of the moral animal, Part 3 I disagree with but also respect the rationale. It is indeed a "non-crazy question".
Wright's style keeps the reader focused and interested and he is quick to separate speculation from supported evidence (A must for any scientific venture). I highly recomend this book to anyone interested in Psychology, Sociology, evolution, cultural evolution, Genes or Memes.

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Summary: Applying Game Theory to Multiple Disciplines
Review: You may have heard of the prisoner's dilemma: Two criminals suspected of committing crime together are captured and isolated in different interrogation rooms. They are each given two choices: if you rat on your buddy and you get off with a year in prison OR if you keep quite and if we find you guilty you get life. If neither confesses they both go free but if one confesses one gets a year while the other gets life. If they both confess they both get a year. So what would you do? If you totally trust each other neither of you would confess and you would both be better off. Turns out that there are lots of things in life that are a lot like that. This book looks at how when complex systems interact they usually benefit each other.

My interest in this book originated in my research into a concept I call "The Conscious Web". The simple idea that as the Internet grows in complexity and we use it as a system to exchange information it will eventually take on a life of its own. It will gain from the information we feed it and build higher levels of vocabularies to exchange ideas. This book speaks volumes about the value of the exchange of ideas. How when you give something away you can often become richer. It draws examples from biology, history, politics, psychology, sociology and my favorite topic: technology. Anyone interested in "the unfolding superorganism" that our world is becoming should consider the book.

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Summary: Interesting Idea, Not Well Defended
Review: This book has been sitting on my desk for six months while I tried to develop a more positive feeling for it. The events of September 11th have made the argument of the inevitable progress of mankind seem even less compelling, so my reservations over the thesis of this book remain.

The application of game theory to human history is an appealing prospect and Wright's development of game theory and "nonzero sum" games is well done. Unfortunately, Wright's best examples on nonzero sum games are in the area of technology, particularly military technology, and this probably does not represent a meaningly demonstration of human destiny. Worse, Wright insists on defending every historical development as yet further proof of human progress. According to Wright the sack of Rome really wasn't so bad, and the burning of the library at Alexandria was no big deal since somebody else has thought all the ideas in the library since.

In fairness, Wright is not an historian and it may be too much to require a rigorous analysis of history, but one expects a more compelling defense of the application of nonzero sum game theory to the vast forces that shape human history.

In the end this is a "feel good" book for the casual reader. Sadly, the idea is an interesting one worthy of more rigorous examination that Wright gives it.

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Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Review: Wright is a pure delight: incisively intelligent and witty with a wonderful light touch (most of the time - in a couple of places he lets his passions run away with him). He makes a great case for throwing out the window some really annoyingly stupid ideas that keep floating around, such as the idea the hunter-gatherer society was the pinnacle of human societies and that it's all been downhill from there, or that agriculture is some wierd inexplicable phenomenon.

Most of all, this book is a message of great hope. His predictions near the end were uncannily accurate. Can't wait to see how it all plays out...

This is a guy I would love to have a conversation with.

Rating:
Summary: The Logic of Human History
Review: When Watson & Crick discovered the structure of DNA they claimed to have found the secret of life. In Nonzero, Wright nominates a new candidate for that distinction: what he refers to as "nonzero sumness." This ugly duckling of a term captures what Wright believes to be the principle that has driven life on earth from pre-organic molecules floating in the primordial soup through the marvelous complexity of the human brain. Along the way, this same mechanism has churned out the Code of Hamurabi, the United Nations, and the internet. Impressive. What's more, Wright argues that nonzero sumness, properly understood, is a giant neon arrow pointing toward the ultimate destiny of mankind.

The title of this book comes from game theory. If Wright accomplishes nothing else, he at least succeeds in presenting this formerly arcane subject in terms immediately graspable by any bright high school student. In a nutshell, game theory is the systematic study of decision making given a set of rules and opponents whose interests are more or less adverse. In a zero sum game the winner takes all; thus it pays to be competitive. In a nonzero sum game, the players end up better off, on average and over the long run, if they adopt a cooperative strategy.

Wright takes game theory and imbeds it in a Darwinian framework. He proposes a kind of meta-game wherein competing strategies vie for players in the real world. Because nonzero sum games yield a higher average payoff over the long run, they attract more players. They are more fit in Darwinian terms. Go-it-alone, win-at-all-costs strategies might yield a high immediate payoff, but they are disadvantaged in the long run.

Economists and political scientists have been using game theory for decades. When biologists discuss evolutionarily stable strategies they're using game theory. When evolutionary psychologists attempt to explain altruism (as Wright does in his book The Moral Animal), they invoke game theory. In Nonzero, Wright takes the next logical step and uses game theory to explain the whole of human history.

In arguing that cooperative strategies are destined to prevail in the long run, Wright's tone is necessarily optimistic. But Nonzero explores the darker side of human history as well. A key point of the book is that a game that is nonzero sum overall may nevertheless contain zero sum components. Imagine a market for widgets. If Al can produce widgets in his factory at a cost of $30, and Bob can make widgets from scratch at home for $60, then both Al and Bob will benefit if Bob buys widgets from Al at any price, P, where $30<P<$60. Such a transaction is clearly nonzero sum. Nevertheless, while Al and Bob are haggling over prices inside the nonzero sum range, a $1 gain to Al represents a corresponding $1 loss to Bob, and vice versa. This is the zero sum component. Al and Bob might haggle until they are red in the face, and each might go home, cursing the other's ancestry and anatomy, feeling as if he has been cheated. But if they consummate a trade at any price, P, defined above, then each is certainly better off. Wright applies this logic to the social contract, international trade and even war. "If two nearby societies are in contact for any length of time, they will either trade or fight. The first is non-zero sum social integration, and the second ultimately brings it."

Wright's Darwinian conception of game theory, and its application to history, invites speculation about the meaning of "progress." New technologies and new methods of social, political and industrial organization allow people to interact in new ways, and to realize previously unattainable cultural and economic dividends. But as the preceding paragraph shows, "History, even if its basic direction is good, can proceed at massive, wrenching human cost." In other words, newer, better, more nonzero sum strategies might carry unanticipated and unwanted zero sum baggage. Viewed in this light, "progress" translates into increased diversity, complexity and interdependence, but not necessarily improvement.

Now we come to the D-word in the book's subtitle. Wright wisely resists the temptation of detailed prophecy, but he is sure that the future will build on the past with respect to the trend towards greater diversity, complexity and interdependence. Here, in contrast to preceding chapters, Wright's originality fails him. He summarizes this admittedly non-so-new vision of the future in a catalog of seven "not-so-new features": 1) the declining relevance of distance; 2) the economy of ideas; 3) increasingly frictionless transactions; 4) liberation by microchip; 5) narrowcasting; 6) Jihad vs. McWorld; and 7) the twilight of sovereignty. Anyone who has not lived in a cave for the last thirty years will immediately recognize that these trends are already underway. Countless books and magazine articles have documented them, and indeed, Wright wastes little time substantiating them, devoting no more than a few paragraphs to each. Inevitably, Wright sees the culmination of these trends in some form of world government and a technology-based global brain.

While the not-so-new features are considered axiomatic in some circles, one nevertheless wishes that an author of Wright's intellect and perceptiveness had spent more time considering them. After all, as axiomatic as these trends are, they contain latent and patent tensions that beg resolution before the "next step" is taken. Furthermore, Wright's conclusions regarding world government and a global brain are presented rather uncritically. Writing at the cusp of the twenty-first century, Wright couldn't resist peering into the future. But as a work of prophecy, Nonzero is less than satisfactory. As an historical inquiry, however, Wright presents a promising new framework for the study of human interactions, and he does so in a convincing and entertaining way. One wishes he had subtitled his book The Logic of Human History and left it at that. With Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright achieves a qualified success, but a success nonetheless.

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Summary: "Nonzero": Riddled by a Problematic Thesis
Review: Any promise this book shows at the outset is suddenly disintegrated in Part III, where the thesis-a truly problematic one-is finally expounded. This thesis basically boils down to a hopeful sentiment that natural selection (and social selection) are processes imbued with purpose. The most outright demonstration of the book's problematic thrust appears when the author posits the teleological nature of natural selection-a ludicrous assumption, since teleology and the process of natural selection are, by definition, diametrically opposed concepts.

We can think of natural selection as being teleological, or goal-directed, only when we think about natural selection in a traditionally wrong way-the famous exemplary question being "Why do giraffes have such long necks?" The scientifically unsound answer imbues the process of natural selection with a goal: "Giraffes have long necks IN ORDER TO better reach the staple of their diet-leaves which grow on tall trees." This explanation implies that the goal was somehow present BEFORE the attainment of the goal: teleology. It also implies that natural selection possesses the same goal as a single giraffe. But that's not how natural selection works. No matter how much a giraffe with a short neck stretches its neck out, trying to reach those high branches, its non-mutated progeny will still have short necks because that is the characteristic encoded in its DNA. The scientific answer requires no teleology: "Giraffes have long necks because long-necked giraffes (created through mutations of the DNA strand) WERE ABLE to reach the food more quickly and readily and subsequently lived longer than the short-necked ones, who died before they were able to pass on their genes." If we liken natural selection to an information processor, as the author does, then in this scenario, attainment of the goal (mutated giraffes being born with long necks and the ability to reach high leaves) happens BEFORE natural selection is "fed back" any "knowledge" of the goal (even though ALL giraffes, in some sense, may have possessed the goal).

Further complicating matters, the author uses the terms "goal" (or "direction" in some cases) and "purpose" almost synonymously, when, in fact, the two terms are more like opposites. When I reach my hand out toward the apple on the table in front of me, I may possess a goal-that of eating. Does that mean I also possess a purpose? No, the apple (to me, at least, at that moment in time) possesses the purpose-to be eaten. What "purpose" do I possess? Well, to my employer I possess the purpose of doing a particular job. Do I possess any other purpose outside of fulfilling goals of other sentient beings? Heck if I can think of one.

So, even if it were proven that the process of selection were teleological (i.e., goal-directed), that wouldn't imply that it was purposeful. And, as we have seen, the concept of natural selection, when firmly grasped, leaves no room for teleology.

It may be the case that organisms and societies tend toward greater complexity and comprise greater numbers of "non-zero-sum" interactions among their constituents. It certainly seems to be the case. But whether this effect is caused by a process which somehow possesses this effect as a goal is not proven by the author. In a sense, the author has demonstrated, fairly well, the "what", but he has fallen way short of proving the "why". Considered in its entirety, this tome approaches, at its best and worst, optimistic pseudo-science.

For a much more scientific analysis of human behavior in light of the theory of natural selection, read "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker. For a more scientifically informed account of social evolution, read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond.

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Summary: A global look at societal and technological history
Review: Non Zero is a very unusual book. For one thing, it's actually two books in one. In the first half the author follows world history as the tandem evolution of technology and social organization. Other authors tend to view history as a long march forward interrupted by major backsliding in different areas of the world at different times. Wright, on the other hand, views the process as an increase in complexity in society in response to technology, as well as an increase in the latter in response to the former, in a continuous process viewed from a global perspective. Just as biological evolution has come at the expense of the "weak" and the "unfit," so too do technological changes come as a fitness competition. As technology changes, particularly information technology, so too does the society that uses it. Wright points out that much of what we consider new in the way of social reaction to technological advances actually isn't. He uses the rise of the printing press as an prime example of mass dissemination of information and points to the overwhelming changes that occurred after its introduction. He compares it with the internet's effect on modern day society. Wright also suggests that the global trends over time have tended to create a global culture with increased freedom and greater access to information. He seems to believe that the overall trends can allow one to predict, within limits, what the future is likely to be.

In the second half of the book the evolution of life is seen as an outcome of non-zero sum solutions--win-win for those of you in business and economics--to randomly arising problems faced first by nonliving molecules then by ever more complex living organisms. Wright actually suggests that the evolution of social organization and of technology might be viewed as extensions of the evolution of life itself and a situation which might be construed as integral to the process, almost inevitable. The author's discussion of the evolution of life and its direction and meaning are interesting in that he introduces a number of other, often earlier authors, many of whom are philosophers or of a philosophical bent. One may not agree with his observations, but his examination of the topics seems quite thorough given the space devoted to them.

Wright, who is a journalist with impressive credentials, is neither a historian nor an evolutionary biologist, but he still appears to have more than the casual observer's knowledge of both fields. If nothing else he is staggeringly well read on a wide variety of subjects. He also has an excellent, thoroughly readable writing style, and a wonderful sense of "the total picture."

From the unique perspective of the global history of social complexification and technological change, Wright makes even the advance of the Huns on Rome, the collapse of China before the Mongols, and the European Dark Ages seem merely the catalysts of change rather than as the major "set backs" they are seen by most other authors. Wright is no total Polyanna, however, for while the author sees the future in fairly optimistic terms, he notes that the over all advancement of both technology and human social organization may--in fact almost certainly will--come at the expense of the suffering of many. It has been so in the past and will be so in the future. As he writes, "When technologies change fundamentally, the economic, social, and political relationships premised on them must sooner or later change as well. The ensuing adjustments can be wrenching. Still, chaos is not the natural culmination of basic historical forces. What basic historical forces are doing is driving the system toward a new equilibrium, in which social structures will be compatible with technology. The big question is how chaotic the transition will be--a question that is for the human species to decide."

I suspect the author is quite right. Even now as the tragedy of the World Trade Towers seems a clarion call to arms for the technologically advanced world against the more "backward" terrorists, one can hardly but wonder "for whom the bell tolls." Wright's words also bring to mind a point made in the book Cosmos years ago by Carl Sagan. In that work a graph created by an earlier author suggested that the war deaths per population charted over time placed the end of all life at somewhere after the year 2000. One can only hope that Wright's more hopeful view will still find sentient beings to carry on the torch of civilization and technology!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, But Be Suspicious
Review: In this book Robert Wright has started with a very promising premise - the contention that game theory can adequately explain both cultural and biological evolution. Especially when persons, cultures, animals, or even genes find ways to cooperate and find a non-zero-sum mutual gain, as opposed to the zero-sum option in which one party wins at the expense of the other. Despite the frequent use of the annoying term "non-zero-sumness" Wright may be on to something here. Also, his underlying contention that all biological and social processes are based on the processing of information is very intruiging (this works in biology due to recent discoveries in the behavior of DNA).

Unfortunately, what Wright has done in this book is start with this thesis and then pile on information and evidence that only support his thesis, while ignoring or even disparaging evidence that suggests otherwise. His loose, conversational writing style, while mostly an asset, sometimes descends into sarcasm and arrogance toward different theories. His condemnation of those scientists who support "equilibrium" in sociology and biology is a case in point. In chapters 19 and 20 he spends an obsessive amount of time trying to debunk Stephen Jay Gould, who offers differing theories on evolution. And throughout the entire book, Wright keeps returning to a minor piece of work by the philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and shifts irritatingly from either faint praise to scholarly condemnation of this man's obscure work on the evolution of religious behavior. This arrogance towards competing theories looks like professional jealousy to me, rather than anything that could really be enlightening to the reader. These weaknesses, along with Wright's clear belief that he is right about everything, damage his otherwise intriguing theories about biological and cultural evolution, and the direction of the human race's future progress.

And like some of the other reviewers here on Amazon, I would instead recommend Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, & Steel" as a better example of this type of theory.

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Summary: A Move Beyond Scientific Dysfunction
Review: I found this book to be extremely well written. It is informative, inspiring, detailed, and captivating. What I really like about Robert Wright's approach is that he takes scientific propositions to a different level. Much that is, to me, ignorant about science in general, is that it takes a one dimensional (physical, concrete, objective, provable, etc.) view of anything that falls under its observations. Life is never one dimensional and science thus should accommodate the phenomenal, the unseen, the spiritual--if you will.

Robert Wright's approach is spiritual, in that he does not rule out the possibility of a grand design to life. A grand direction for humanity. A destiny that, all to often, science would, in its effort to make everything studied--conform to dogma, completely discard. You might find reviews about this book, from the scholarly, that trash his ideas, for whatever reason. I would bet that many intelligent readers disagree with the ideas in this book. I prefer Robert Wright's ideas about the direction of evolution because I feel he has the "big picture" viewpoint.

For a man of science to take the stances that he does in this text, I feel, is a very bold and courageous move. Even if you do not agree with the basic theme, you will receive an interesting overview of our history. The historic information alone, for me, was worth the price of admission. Many of you may be familiar with Robert Wright as the author of "The Moral Animal." I feel that "Non Zero" is a step up in scope and treatment from his earlier work. This book was easier and more enjoyable to read than "The Moral Animal" and far more intriguing. The Moral Animal was popular because science has a difficult time "letting go" of its heroes. I feel that it is time to move on and mature regarding scientific viewpoints and I feel that Robert Wright has done so with this book.

I recommend this book to readers who are interested in history and or the science of planetary evolution, as well as readers who read with a spiritual view of life sciences.