The Upside of Disaster

In the previous post, I talked about the tactics rational optimists use to deal with uncertainty: explore and exploit.

There are situations where an utter disaster and the resulting uncertainty can change the history for the better.

An amazing example is the story of human evolution from chimp-like apes. Here's a brief review of the story told by William von Hippel in “The Social Leap.”

These apes lived in the rainforests of eastern Africa, around 6 million years ago. They ruled the canopy.

But then disaster struck. Eastern Africa was tearing away from the rest of the continent, due to plate tectonics. The climate changed. The rainforests disappeared. These apes had to adjust to living in the savannah, at the mercy of great predators.

Humans reacted to this disaster by innovating and inventing. Human distinctions — from bipedalism, persistence hunting, to the use of language and tools and our social structure — ultimately are the results of that disaster. They learned to be great at throwing rocks at animals. They developed physiques to run long distances on foot. Then they changed the rules of the game by taming fire.

In von Hippel's telling, the rise of the humans up the food chain looks like this: upright walking --> superior throwing --> cooperative society --> division of labor --> tool making --> fire, etc.

But this all started due to a disaster. It could have turned out poorly for our species. But it cannot be denied that the disappearance of the rainforest from eastern Africa set the scene for human greatness to develop.