Nonzero (Robert Wright, 2000)

Nonzero has been on my to-read list for quite some time. In fact, it's been so long since I added it to the list that I can't even remember how it got on my radar. It turns out that a lot of the stuff I added back around 2011 and 2012 came from referrals from David Brin's blog, Contrary Brin. I haven't read the blog in quite some time, mainly because it seemed to be getting a little too crackpot in places and too verbose in general, though I generally think he makes a lot of sense (on a side note here, I'm saddened that Brin can write a torrent on his blog, but only deliver two novels in the 21st century).

Fast forward to 2015 and Nonzero has percolated its way of the list to the top of the queue. In this book, Robert Wright, author of The Moral Animal, explores the idea that both biological and cultural evolution advance toward some kind of purpose. That purpose is advanced through the notion of "nonzero-sumness", a game theory concept that we advance as a species through "win-win" outcomes. In other words, one entity's success need not be the result of another's failure. He is quick to distance himself from the old-school cultural evolutionists of the 19th century that used the notion to fuel racist and imperialist agendas, but he is clearly against the more recently popular notion that every culture is special in its own way and one society is not necessarily more advanced than another. Indeed, it's a bit of a tightrope-walk, but in his overview of human and biological history he demonstrates how both have "advanced" - indeed, improved, over time, through zero-sum "games". It's an interesting hypothesis, that I think many will initially disagree with, though it's hard to find fault with Wright's reasoning.

Maybe I'll need to get back to reading Contrary Brin to see if I can find some more book recommendations. It's not like I don't have enough to read as it is!