MISMATCHED

Stone Age Minds in an Extremistan World

Why Your Brain Is Struggling and What to Do About It

The Deal

For 200,000 years, there was a deal.

Your brain would be calibrated for a particular kind of environment. That environment would remain stable enough for the calibration to work. Generation after generation, the deal held.

The deal is broken.

The environment has changed faster than evolution can track. The mismatch between what your brain expects and what the world delivers is the hidden cause of most of what's going wrong—for individuals, for communities, for civilization.

This is not a metaphor. It is a precise description of our situation.

PART I: THE BROKEN DEAL

Chapter 1: The Long Stability
Chapter 2: The Great Acceleration
Chapter 3: Welcome to Extremistan
Chapter 4: The Environment IS the Exploitation
Chapter 5: The Concentration of Everything
Chapter 6: The Broader Crisis Context

PART II: THE MISMATCH INVENTORY

Chapter 7: The Exhausted Animal — Your Body
Chapter 8: The Unbelonging Self — Your Heart
Chapter 9: The Paralyzed Knower — Your Head
Chapter 10: The Lonely Combatant — Your Social Brain
Chapter 11: The Overwhelmed Agent — Your Sense of Scale
Chapter 12: The Unlocated Soul — Your Sense of Meaning
Chapter 13: The Compound Effect

PART III: THE GENUINE GIFTS

Chapter 14: Connection Across Distance
Chapter 15: Access to Knowledge and Capability
Chapter 16: The Information Revolution's Real Gifts
Chapter 17: AI Horizon—Genuine Promise
Chapter 18: The Both/And Reality

PART IV: THE EXPLOITATIVE LAYER

Chapter 19: The Attention Economy
Chapter 20: The Compound Exploit
Chapter 21: The Corruption Pathway (Kyle Vance)
Chapter 22: AI Changes Everything (Again)

PART V: THE CIVILIZATIONAL STAKES

Chapter 23: The Cooperation Paradox
Chapter 24: The Cascading Crises
Chapter 25: The Democratic Emergency

PART VI: THE PATH FORWARD

Chapter 26: What Won't Work (And Why)
Chapter 27: What Might Work
Chapter 28: The Question for You
Epilogue: A Note on Hope