Steven Pinker on Robert Trivers (1943-2026)

 Pinker writes about how Trivers introduced game-theoretic ideas into evolutionary biology (with genes as the players, and selection into subsequent generations as the payoffs). It's a well written tribute.

The Many Roots of Our Suffering: Reflections on Robert Trivers (1943–2026)  by Steven Pinker 

"Trivers’s contributions belong in the special category of ideas that are obvious once they are explained, yet eluded great minds for ages; simple enough to be stated in a few words, yet with implications that have busied scientists for decades. In an astonishing creative burst from 1971 to 1975, Trivers wrote five seminal essays that invoked patterns of genetic overlap to explain each of the major human relationships: male with female, parent with child, sibling with sibling, partner with partner, and a person with himself or herself." 

Human evolution in the last 12,000 years, in PNAS

My loose impression is that, not so long ago, scholars of human evolution discounted recent changes in the human genome, pointing out that maybe the frequency of lactose intolerance had been altered by the domestication of cattle, goats, and sheep, but suggesting that recent changes (i.e. since the invention of agriculture) were rare. This may have been an anti-racism perspective, or it may be that new data have changed this view, but indeed it seems to have changed.

Gene changes in recent milennia offer a window on how human patterns of interaction, regarding food acquisition and preparation, and communal living, may even cause changes in human biology.  

Here's a special feature on the subject, at the PNAS:

Special Feature: The Past 12,000 Years of Behavior, Adaptation, and Evolution Shaped Who We Are Today

"The authors of this Special Feature focus on challenges pertaining to dietary and nutritional quality and adequacy, resource inequality, interpersonal conflict and warfare, climate change, population trends, demographic transitions, migration, mobility, infectious disease and the rise of novel pathogens, and the transformative circumstances of human biology over the last 12,000 years.

• INTRODUCTIONJANUARY 17, 2023

  The past 12,000 years of behavior, adaptation, population, and evolution shaped who we are today

  • Clark Spencer Larsen and
   

  "Based on the study of human remains from Holocene settings and the associated contexts of diet, behavior, and lifestyle, this set of Perspectives and Research Articles provides readers with new and emerging insights into the human condition and what has shaped human biology, health, and lifestyle over the course of the last 10 or so millennia. This record makes clear that human evolution and biological change, adaptation, exposure to long-standing and newly emerging infectious diseases, population demography, and warfare have continued in important ways over the course of the last 10 millennia, leading to the conditions associated with overpopulation, undernutrition, violence, and other circumstances we face globally today."
• PERSPECTIVEJANUARY 17, 2023

  Climate change, human health, and resilience in the Holocene

  • Gwen Robbins Schug,
   
  • Jane E. Buikstra,
   
  • [...]
  • Sonia R. Zakrzewski,
   
• PERSPECTIVEJANUARY 17, 2023

  Genomic perspectives on human dispersals during the Holocene

  • Mark Stoneking,
   
  • Leonardo Arias,
   
  • [...]
  • Jae Joseph Russell B. Rodriguez,
   
• PERSPECTIVEJANUARY 17, 2023

  Ancient pathogens provide a window into health and well-being

  • Cecil M. Lewis,
   
  • Mercy Y. Akinyi,
   
  • [...]
  • Anne C. Stone,
   
• RESEARCH ARTICLEJANUARY 17, 2023

  Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe

  • Linda Fibiger,
   
  • Torbjörn Ahlström,
   
  • [...]
  • Martin Smith,
   
• RESEARCH ARTICLEJANUARY 17, 2023

  Population trends and the transition to agriculture: Global processes as seen from North America

  • George R. Milner,
   
  • Jesper L. Boldsen,
   
• RESEARCH ARTICLEJANUARY 17, 2023

  Mobility and kinship in the world’s first village societies

  • Jessica Pearson,
   
  • Jane Evans,
   
  • [...]
  • Eva Fernández-Domínguez,
   
• RESEARCH ARTICLEJANUARY 17, 2023

  Long-term trends in human body size track regional variation in subsistence transitions and growth acceleration linked to dairying

  • Jay T. Stock,
   
  • Emma Pomeroy,
   
  • [...]
  • Jonathan C. K. Wells,

Evolutionary Models of Financial Markets in the PNAS

 Here's the relevant part (with links) of the PNAS Table of Contents for June 29, 2021; Vol. 118, No. 26 

Evolutionary Models of Financial Markets Special Feature

Introduction

Introduction to PNAS special issue on evolutionary models of financial markets

Simon A. Levin and Andrew W. Lo

Social Sciences — Economic Sciences

How market ecology explains market malfunction

Maarten P. Scholl, Anisoara Calinescu, and J. Doyne Farmer

Moonshots, investment booms, and selection bias in the transmission of cultural traits

David Hirshleifer and Joshua B. Plotkin

Social Sciences — Economic Sciences - Biological Sciences — Evolution

Evolution in pecunia

Rabah Amir, Igor V. Evstigneev, Thorsten Hens, Valeriya Potapova, and Klaus R. Schenk-Hoppé

The origin of cooperation

Nihal Koduri and Andrew W. Lo

Evolved attitudes to risk and the demand for equity

Arthur J. Robson and H. Allen Orr

Social Sciences — Economic Sciences - Physical Sciences — Statistics

High-frequency trading and networked markets

Federico Musciotto, Jyrki Piilo, and Rosario N. Mantegna

Perspectives

Social finance as cultural evolution, transmission bias, and market dynamics

Erol Akçay and David Hirshleifer

The landscape of innovation in bacteria, battleships, and beyond

Terence C. Burnham and Michael Travisano

Sunsetting as an adaptive strategy

Roberta Romano and Simon A. Levin