Robert Wright on TED Talks

I missed this video of Robert Wright at the TED Talks when it first came up, so this may be old news to many of you. Still, I like a lot of what he has to say and thought it worth posting.

Here is the text that accompanies the video:

Author Robert Wright argues that history has an arrow: That humans have continued to evolve -- if not biologically, than culturally and technologically -- toward greater complexity and intelligence. He also explains the concept behind his book, "Nonzero": That life is a nonzero sum game, where there can be more than one winner, and that civilization evolved thanks to such endeavors, which reward cooperation, rather than competition. His guarded optimism is tinged with a deep worry over the growing prevalence of grass-roots hatred. His hope: that the intelligent pursuit of self-interest will actually be the world's salvation. Robert Wright is author of The Moral Animal and NonZero. He also hosts an excellent interview series called meaningoflife.tv.

You can view the video here.

I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions, but he definitely is an important voice. What Is Enlightenment? did an interview with him a while back that I enjoyed, but again, I didn't really with agree with all of his points. In general, however, he seems to be approaching an integral understanding of human evolution that has been sorely missing in the scientific community.

Tags: Robert Wright, TED Talks, evolution, integral theory, What Is Enlightenment?