What constrains or enables the capacity of human beings to work in groups is not so much the technology, but rather the capacity of the human brain to have and monitor social interactions.
Nicholas A. ChristakisIt is well to look around at whom, and not just what, surrounds us. Population structure will change everything. Our health, wealth, and peace depend on it.
Nicholas A. ChristakisWe will create life from inanimate compounds, and we will find life in space. But the life that should more immediately interest us lies between these extremes, in the middle range we all inhabit between our genes and our stars.
Nicholas A. ChristakisRealizing the ways in which we humans may have been inadvertently changing our genes for millennia provides a way for us to begin to think about the inevitable genetic revolution in medicine that is going to allow us to advertently change our genes over centuries and even decades.
Nicholas A. ChristakisIf your friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45 percent higher. ... If your friend's friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25 percent higher. ... If your friend's friend's friend, someone you probably don't even know, is obese, your risk of obesity is 10 percent higher. It's only when you get to your friend's friend's friend's friends that there's no longer a relationship between that person's body size and your own body size.
Nicholas A. Christakis