A new study reveals that humans are at risk of falling into 14 evolutionary dead ends, dubbed ‘evolutionary traps’, ranging from climate change to artificial intelligence. This study focuses on the Anthropocene and highlights the need for global cooperation and active social change to avoid these traps.
Inconsistent AI is the least of your worries (yet).
For the first time, scientists have applied the concept of an evolutionary trap to human society as a whole. They found that humanity is at risk of falling into 14 evolutionary dead ends, ranging from global climate tipping points to misaligned artificial intelligence, chemical pollution and accelerating infectious diseases.
The Anthropocene Era: Successes and Challenges
Human evolution has been an extraordinary success story. But in the Anthropocene (considered a geological epoch shaped by us humans), we are seeing more and more cracks. multiple global crises; COVID-19 (new coronavirus infection) Pandemics, climate change, food insecurity, financial crises, and conflict are all starting to occur simultaneously, in what scientists call a polycrisis.

(a) System dynamics associated with three main groups: Anthropocene traps, global traps, technological traps, and technological traps.
Structural traps (including time traps and connection traps). The two reinforcing feedback loops are indicated by R, and interactions between the dynamics across groups of traps are indicated by colored superscripts (color of the causal node) and stippled arrows.
(b) Heatmap of interactions between the outcomes of the 14 proposed Anthropocene traps.
Credit: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
Human creativity and unexpected results
“Humans are incredibly creative. seed. We can innovate, adapt to many situations, and collaborate on an amazing scale. However, these features turned out to have unintended consequences. Simply put, humans are too successful and in some ways too smart for our future benefits,” said Peter Sogard Jorgensen, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University and the Royal Swedish Academy. To tell. Sciences’ Global Economic Dynamics and Biosphere Program and the Anthropocene Laboratory.

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen is the study’s lead author. He is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University, the World Economic Dynamics and Biosphere Program and the Anthropocene Laboratory at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Credit: Stockholm Resilience Center
Groundbreaking research on evolutionary traps
He is the lead author of a new ground-breaking study published today as part of a larger review in the journal. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. This assessment draws on insights from a wide range of different scientific disciplines across the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities to understand how the Anthropocene has evolved and how global sustainability will continue to evolve in the future. will be collected.
Identifying and understanding evolutionary traps
New research shows how humans can become stuck in “evolutionary traps” – dead ends that result from initially successful innovations. In their initial research work, they identified 14 of these, including agricultural simplification, economic growth that does not benefit humans or the environment, instability in global cooperation, climate tipping points, and artificial intelligence ( See table further below for traps (full list here).
Evolutionary traps in the animal kingdom and human society
“The evolutionary trap is a well-known concept in the animal world. Just as many insects are attracted to light, modern societies are attracted to light as an evolutionary reflex, and humans are creating new phenomena in harmful ways. ” explains Peter Sogard Jorgensen.
Simplification of agricultural systems is an example of such a trap. Reliance on a few highly productive crops, such as wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans, has led to a rapid increase in calories produced over the past century. But it also meant that food systems became highly vulnerable to environmental changes such as extreme weather and new diseases.
Trap severity and interconnectivity
Of the 14 evolutionary traps, 12 are in an evolved state, meaning that humans are falling into traps that are extremely difficult to escape from. Moreover, society continues to move in the wrong direction on 10 of these 14. Surprisingly, these evolutionary traps tend to reinforce each other. If society falls into one impasse, it is likely to fall into other impasses as well. Two impasses where little progress is currently being made are the autonomy of technology (AI and robotics) and the loss of social capital due to digitization.

Lan Wang Erlandsson is co-author and researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University and the Anthropocene Laboratory at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.Credit: Stockholm Resilience Center
The new assessment also examines why society has such a hard time breaking out of these traps.
Global challenges and the need for collaboration
“The evolutionary forces that produced the Anthropocene do not work well at the global level. In today’s global system, social and environmental problems grow far from the societies that can prevent them. And addressing them often requires global cooperation at a scale where many evolutionary forces do not work well together.” Ran Wang Erlandsson, an Anthropocene researcher at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said: Laboratory.
A call to action for humanity
This doesn’t mean humans are doomed to failure, the researchers argue. But we have to start actively transforming our society. So far, the Anthropocene has been largely an unconscious byproduct of other evolutionary processes.
“The time has come for humanity to recognize a new reality and collectively move to where we want to go as a species. We have the ability to do it, and we are already seeing signs of such a move. Our creativity and ability to innovate and collaborate equips us with the perfect tools to proactively design our future. We can emerge from the impasse and continue with business as usual. But for this to happen, we need to foster the capacity for collective human agency and design environments in which it can flourish,” explains Peter Sogard Jorgensen.
He continues: “A very simple thing that everyone can do is to become more involved with nature and society, learning about both the positive and negative impacts that our own local actions have on the world. There’s nothing better than being exposed.”
Reference: “Evolution of Polycrisis: The Anthropocene Trap That Challenges Global Sustainability” Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Raf EV Jansen, Daniel I. Avila Ortega, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Jonathan F. Donges, Henrik Österblom , Per Olsson, Magnus Nystrom, Steven J. Rade, Thomas Hahn, Karl Folke, Garry D. Peterson, Anne-Sophie Crepin, January 1, 2024. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0261