The premise is simple enough: We should think of people as if they were atoms or molecules following fairly simple rules and try to learn the patterns to which those rules lead.
Our actions as individuals feed into the social world around us and help create a reality that then acts back on us.
The most important lesson of modern physics is that it is often not the properties of the parts that matter most, but their organization, their pattern and form.
This is one of those thoughts that affects and confirms many of the thoughts you've had in your life. Why do you do better work in a specific environment? why some people bring the best of you? the book answers that this is due to patterns and organization. And based on my experience in the world, I agree with him.
First you have to understand the character of the social atom, then learn what happens when many such atoms interact.
Patterns reveal regularities that show how the seemingly complicated actually isn't so. The natural laws behind those patterns often then lead to the possibility of prediction.
Human beings are made of atoms and molecules. We are part of nature. In nature follows patterns that flow out natural laws, shouldn't we?
But humans are the most complex things that we know about in the universe.
Human science has to deal not only with individuals of near infinite complexity, but with many such individuals, all different from each other.
And to make things even more interesting; because free will gives us the ability to do unprecedented things, this alone is enough to rule out any predictions on the future of human history.
The cornerstone of received economic theory is the idea that human agents behave rationally.
But (1) sometimes we cannot be rational, (2) even when we can be rational, most of us, as a rule, aren't, and (3) is ok not be rational because we have other ways to make decisions.
the mind isn't an all purpose computer, its a specialized device for specific tasks.
the brain is a product of millions of years of evolution and bears, in its structure and function, the traces of all that history.
the adaptive atom.
Humans are not rational calculators but crafty gamblers.
we are adapter opportunist. the secret of our intelligence is our ability to follow simple steps and to adjust and learn.
the imitating atom.
the influence of imitation leads to regular patterns.
the social settings alters the perception of the world.
yet, imitation doesn't generate any new information, it only amplifies the consequences that a little bit of information can have, whether is real or not.
when people are free to do as they please they often imitate each other.
the cooperative atom.
our genes have their own interests, principally to reproduce copies of themselves in coming generations.
Eight hundred life spans can bridge more than 50,000 years. But of these 800 people, 650 spent their lives in caves or worse. Only the last 70 had any truly effective means of communicating with one another, only the last 6 ever saw a printed word, only the last 4 could measure time with any precision, only the last 2 used an electric motor, and the vast majority of the items that make up our material world were developed within the life span of the 800th person.
Our ancestors throughout virtually all of human history lived in small, isolated groups using the logic of reciprocal altruism.
teh way we are as individuals depends not so much on how our behavior helps us, as individuals, but on how it influences the collective behavior of the groups we are part of.
History is a long struggle between groups of greater or less cooperative skills, with the most skilled tending to win.
the internet in a nonequlibrium system because never settles into an unchanging state. the theory of nonequilibrium states that finding lawlike patterns in complex nonequilibrium systems genrally means taking a step back from the details, and focusing on the big picture.
prediction is the engine of science, we design the present, and observe the future so as to compare our theories with empirical reality.
the factor behind our dominace of this planet is our ability to cooperate and coordinate to do what none of us could ever acieve alone.
most important is our ability to manage interactions that support social cohesion and build the complex webs of relations that make our groups far more than the sum of their parts.
we live in a rich social world, and it is the richness that results of the combination of people and their ideas, the actions and reactions that matters most.
Its been an incredible learning journey reading thos book. And again, as it happened with other books before this one, I read it just when its impact is the strongest because of my recent involvement with social networks.
There is a lot to take away from the book, but a couple of thoughts are the ones I would like to remember;
Each atom and molecule have a specific composition, but the environment in which they "are",plays a significant role in their eventual "state of being".
and also, the notion that we are not rational beings, but we are adapting, imitating and cooparating beings. And that realy affects the way we must look at ourselves and our interactions. We must examine our decisions making process as it affects work, relationships and parenthood.
The beauty of any book is that you can apply what you took from its pages into real life and give it a purpose.
You can't ask for anything more than that. You can't wish for anything less.
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