About Lonnie Aarssen (CA)

The maxim “work hard, play hard”, which can be traced back to early 1872 has long been used to express an implied connection between dedicated effort and having fun. But is this correlation true? Biology Professor Lonnie Aarssen from Queen’s University in Canada did the research and was able to uncover a statistical link between these two motivations people like to display. During his talk entitled “Unpacking the ‘work hard-play hard’ animal”, Prof Aarssen will discuss how some of these deeply-integrated motivations are shaped by relentless Darwinian selection. He will explain how this biological evolution is a double-edged sword that on the one hand enables us to deal with the awareness of our own mortality, but on the other hand disables us in gaining a deeper understanding of the impact of humanity on our small planet. On our stage, Prof. Aarssen will unravel his answer to a final critical question: Can this negative aspect of our biological evolution be overcome?