The high-stakes, very human nature of risk
Humankind won the giant evolutionary gamble — but our risk-taking may now be going too far
13 March 2025 - 05:00
Fifty-thousand years ago, humans were on the verge of extinction; there were just 20,000 of our early ancestors, compared with 100-million elephants. Elephants — well dispersed across continents, having big, complex brains and supportive social networks — had apparently won the evolutionary design competition.
The Gambling Animal, co-authored by polymath academics Glenn Harrison and Don Ross, attempts to answer the question, “What changed?”..
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