Our Toys Don’t Change Us
Why human behavior en masse is always predictable
Individual humans, unless we know them very well, are sometimes difficult to predict in terms of their next immediate actions. A few individuals are extremely atypical due to inherent personality, and have the capacity to deviate a little from group norms. But for the most part, everyone conforms to the norms of their group and even more importantly: everyone conforms to basic primate behavior patterns.
And that’s hardly surprising because despite the fact we are presently surrounded by the fruits of technology, we’re still a primate group species that depends on group membership for survival. Consequently, our brains have evolved hardwired patterns of behavior that on average were adaptive for the 99.9% of our evolutionary history in which we lived in small groups (no larger than 150 individuals) of hunter-gatherers on the African savannah and in the primordial forests of Eurasia.
We love to imagine that we’re conscious, that we can reason, and that we have free will. In reality, we know from extensive empirical evidence that we’re occasionally semi-conscious, our reasoning abilities are extremely restricted (and mostly focused around kin relationships) and free will is a logical impossibility. Fortunately for our self-image we ignore all the evidence and cling to our…
