No Man is an Island
Book Review: Elliot Aronson, "The Social Animal", Tenth Edition, Worth Publishers, 2008. This book has been on my to-read list for so long that I don't remember where I first became acquainted with it -- but it was probably Sparring Mind's list of "must-read psychology books" (where it takes the number one position). Anyway, I thought it would be nice to contrast Max Tegmark's Life 3.0 with something more "mundane", like a book about everyday social interactions. The Social Animal is, for many intents and purposes, a textbook on social psychology. Despite being a more "mundane" topic than existential risk from AI or the end of liberal humanism , social psychology is by no means trivial -- it is connected to many of the facets of humanity that make us, well, human . Hence the title of the book, which also refers to a quote by Aristotle: "Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not a...