Our Lives Matter - Our Lives Matter S1E13: The Three First Principles of Evolutionary Psychology

Our Lives Matter S1E13: The Three First Principles of Evolutionary Psychology

02/22/24 • 24 min

Our story has led us from philosophy to math to physics to chemistry to biology to the origin of our species and the evolution of our intelligence. The next step is evolutionary psychology. That means understanding how the evolution of our intelligence affects how we think and feel now. That starts with our looking at three underlying themes in everything people think, feel, and do. ACT I Scene 1 [110 bpm] Charles Darwin’s discovery of evolution brought together centuries of observations scientists had made of living things into the science of biology. That was with The Origin of Species,...

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Our Lives Matter S1E12: Africa 7 Million Years Ago

Seven million years ago our ancestors were chimpanzees living in a forest in Africa. Then a drought caused a food shortage, and some of them walked into the grassland looking for food. That change in their environment set the evolution of human intelligence in motion. ACT I Scene 1 [113 bpm] 7 million years ago, in southeastern Africa, there was a forest, where chimpanzees lived. They weren’t chimpanzees as we know them today. They were the ancestors of the chimpanzees of today. But I’m still going to call them chimpanzees. Scene 2 Chimpanzees, and all other primates, have...

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Our Lives Matter S1E14: The Five Mental Traits of Evolutionary Psychology

Intelligence, for any animal species, starts with brains doing five basic things. All of animal behavior is the results of the interaction of those five mental functions. Everything people think, feel, and do begins with the same five mental functions. The next step in understanding human psychology is to look at how our instincts for survival and reproduction, and our memories, our imaginations, and communication with other people affect our thoughts, feelings, and decisions. x ACT I Scene 1 [106 bpm] What does biology show us about psychology? At the level of molecular biology, genes are molecules that...