This book talks a lot about evolution of both societies and species. The evolution points towards nonzero gains of traits and patterns. The main premise is that nonzero gains are also inherently zero-sum, since the benefits must be split. The evolution occurs where there are nonzero gains to be made, and the path of evolution are determined by how those nonzero gains are split in the zero-sum fashion. He also says that this movement forward is self perpetuating, since the improved next generation will be able to take bigger advantages of the nonzero sum outcome, and there will be more intense competition since the pervious set of winners will make up the current set of opponents that must split the gains. This is close to one of the premises I would like to test, relating to business and women. I hypothesize that women will naturally tend towards the nonzero gains of a project and focus on that, while men will tend to more focus on the zero-sum splitting of credit for the outcome. I also hypothesize that men will gravitate to the projects that provide more zero sum gains, but higher returns for themselves; while women will tend towards the more nonzero gains, but less for themselves. The result of this hypothesis being true would be that women running the show would make everyone prosper more, but men running the show will lead towards a few businesses doing incredibly well at the downfall of others. This is just a hypothesis, and I can think of a few ways to start testing it, but that would be quite difficult.
This audiobook has some very interesting points about human sexuality and how the social situations of today and the last 10,000 years have changed it. The book points out that there are similarities between us and our closest ape cousins that demonstrate the tendency for multi-male multi-female relationships among members of close groups (less than 150). The movement to agriculture seems to be the defining moment in the change, making it more possible to accumulate wealth. With the accumulation of wealth came also the accumulation of power and control, making people dependent on the powerful person instead of purely co-dependent. There are some communities living in the world that still live by multi-male multi-female relations, but those people are still fully co-dependent and living in small communities. The current fast paced life, massive cities, and constant changing social circles make this small co-dependent structure not feasible. From the number of scandals that are on the news, and quantity of failed mariages that fails it is certain that we have not evolved beyond this (not to imply that we should be evolving in that direction). We are mostly just living in a society where control is driven by prudes who push a warped view of sexuality that they themselves do not always follow.
It's an Exciting World 