Steve Hargadon brings a unique perspective to evolutionary psychology — examining human behavior not just through academic theory, but through the practical lens of what AI training data reveals about our species. His writing explores coalitional psychology, the evolutionary roots of conspiracy thinking, the tension between our paleolithic instincts and modern society, and the deeper patterns of human self-expression that emerge when you analyze the written record at scale. This collection brings together his complete body of work on evolutionary psychology, offering insights that bridge the gap between academic research and lived human experience.
All Articles
13 articles, newest first
Understanding Humanity: What AI Training Data Reveals About Human Nature (with lots of help from Claude)
There is something incredible about large language models that I don't think we've fully reckoned with. I honestly think this may be the most important thinking I've ever done.
Visit dedicated site →Coalitional Psychology: A Feature, Not a Bug — And That's the Problem
James Madison didn't have the vocabulary of evolutionary psychology. But when he wrote in Federalist No. 10 that the causes of faction are "sown in the nature of man," he was making precisely the claim that evolutionary science has since confirmed: the tendency to organize into…
Visit dedicated site →Mimicking Authenticity Has Never Been So Easy
A college admissions expert recently wrote a piece for Business Insider telling parents their teenagers are taking too many AP classes. His advice: drop the scariest advanced class, free up time, and use that margin to do something meaningful in your community.
Visit dedicated site →What AI Might Be Teaching Us About Intelligence
Watch people talk. Not what they say, but the act itself. At a party, in a meeting, at school pickup, wherever. Consider what's actually being communicated. Most of the time, the answer is: very little of importance. And often: lots of nothing. I don't mean that unkindly.
Visit dedicated site →The Tide of Human Affairs: Why Some Narratives Endure
The Most Contested Story We Tell Of all the narratives a culture constructs to give meaning and order to human life, none may be more consequential than the story it tells about men and women.
Visit dedicated site →Why History Repeats: The Fourth Turning, the Evolved Mind, and Psychohistory
An Essay on Generational Cycles, Evolutionary Psychology, and the Predictability of Human Affairs The Pattern Without a Cause In 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe published The Fourth Turning, a book that proposed something both intuitive and audacious: that American history…
Visit dedicated site →The Cassandra Paradox: Evolutionary Psychology, Plato’s Cave, and the Cost of Seeing Clearly
An Essay on Awareness, Isolation, and the Noble Burden of Truth The Seeress and the Slave In the mythological traditions of ancient Greece, Cassandra was a princess of Troy who received from Apollo the gift of prophecy.
Visit dedicated site →The Unbalanced Scale: Empathy, Systems, and the Modern Western Dilemma
Introduction: A Tale of Two Brains At the heart of any enduring civilization lies a set of stories it tells itself—myths, traditions, and social contracts that organize human nature into a productive, cohesive whole.
Visit dedicated site →Conspiracy Reality
The Strange Case of Selective Skepticism We live in a curious intellectual moment. The same people who pride themselves on scientific thinking will dismiss pattern recognition about institutional behavior as "conspiracy theories" without examining the evidence.
Visit dedicated site →The Evolutionary Rewards of Complicity: Why We Go Along with Bad Things
The Universal Puzzle One of the most perplexing aspects of human behavior is how ordinary people consistently participate in systems that would seem to be objectively harmful.
Visit dedicated site →Thinking About Thinking in the Age of AI
The Inevitability of Algorithmic Capture The rise of Artificial Intelligence, especially Large Language Models (LLMs), will likely be the culmination of a long line of human manipulation and exploitation .
Visit dedicated site →Source Code of Humanity
How Understanding Cultural Evolution Reveals Why Artificial Intelligence Represents the Ultimate Exploitation Technology A Revolutionary Idea All human culture is an adaptation to, or an exploitation of, evolved human psychology.
Visit dedicated site →The Future of Therapy: How AI Could Transform Mental Health Care
In a world where technology is reshaping every facet of our lives, it was only a matter of time before artificial intelligence turned its attention to one of the most human experiences of all: therapy.
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