Josh Farley: "The Past, Present, and Future of Human Cooperation"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 555 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2022
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode we meet with ecological economist and Professor in Community Development & Applied Economics and Public Administration, Josh Farley.
Farley explores the importance of human cooperation in a modern superstructure that incentivizes competition. What role will cooperation play in helping us solve our largest existential problems?
Farley explains the critical social dilemma humans face: How can we grapple with the paradox that individuals are better served to act selfishly, but cooperation among individuals makes everyone better off?
Additionally, Professor Farley helps us distinguish the difference between how a system works, and how we can understand and participate in changing a system.
For Show Notes and Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/07-josh-farley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.0 | That's me. |
| 0:07.8 | On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, |
| 0:14.3 | the environment, and our society. |
| 0:17.6 | Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the |
| 0:22.6 | bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can |
| 0:28.1 | do about it as a society and as individuals. |
| 0:31.1 | Today we're going to be talking with Josh Farley. |
| 0:35.6 | Josh is a professor of ecological economics. |
| 0:40.3 | He's the president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. |
| 0:46.2 | He teaches in the School of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of |
| 0:52.1 | Vermont. |
| 0:53.4 | He also happens to be my chair of my PhD committee 15 years ago, and he is one of my best friends. |
| 1:03.0 | We have followed parallel paths to agree that humanity is currently functioning as a mindless, energy hungry, superorganism |
| 1:13.8 | connecting finance, energy, ecology, human behavior. |
| 1:18.9 | And we talk a lot about these things from different lenses. |
| 1:22.9 | Today we're going to talk about human behavior and particularly about cooperation and the evolution |
| 1:30.2 | of cooperation and the fact that today our culture focuses on competition, but the cooperation |
| 1:37.7 | coordination aspects of who we are as evolved hominids is very deep within us. |
| 1:45.3 | So hope you enjoy this conversation with Josh Farley. |
| 2:05.8 | So maybe you could start off by you are an ecological economist. What, what was your path that brought you to that discipline and the way that you're thinking |
| 2:11.8 | on how all these things interconnect over time? |
... |
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