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Human Nature & Social Dynamics How people and groups actually behave: status, signalling, tribalism, conformity, reputation, cooperation, power, and moral intuition, so you can read a room clearly and act well in it.
44 cards · space to flip · 1–4 to grade · d to go deeper
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Reading list The works this deck draws on, in the order worth reading them. Cards point to a specific chapter or paper where one fits.
01 Book The Status Game · Will Storr The best single starting point: how almost every human activity is organised as a status game, and the three kinds of game (dominance, virtue, success) people play. 02 Book The Elephant in the Brain · Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson Hidden motives and signalling across conversation, charity, medicine, and education. Uncomfortable and clarifying. 03 Book The Righteous Mind · Jonathan Haidt Moral intuition before reasoning, the moral foundations, and why morality binds and blinds. Part 1 alone changes how you argue. 04 Book The Secret of Our Success · Joseph Henrich Why humans learn from the prestigious, how culture made us, and where the prestige and dominance distinction comes from. 05 Book The Evolution of Cooperation · Robert Axelrod The tit-for-tat tournaments and the shadow of the future, in plain prose. Still the clearest book on cooperation among self-interested parties. 06 Book The Power Paradox · Dacher Keltner How power is gained by serving the group and lost through the changes it causes in the holder. Short and practical. 07 Book Private Truths, Public Lies · Timur Kuran Preference falsification and why social change arrives suddenly. Denser than the others; the first four chapters carry the idea. 08 Book Behave · Robert Sapolsky The biology under all of this, from hormones to tribalism, for when you want the mechanisms. Long; the chapters on us versus them and on hierarchy are the ones for this deck. 