Day: April 22, 2009

Social evolution and social influence: selfishness, deception, self-deception

Evolutionary Psychology: Social evolution and social influence: selfishness, deception, self-deception.

Reprinted with permission of the Author
University of California at Los Angeles

Social evolution and social influence: selfishness, deception, self-deception

(download PDF version of the paper)

I. TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Table of contents 2

II. Rationality, consciousness, sincerity 3

A. Unconsciousness and irrationality: the myth of rationality 3
B. Deception: the myth of sincerity 4
C. Hypotheses of this paper: an overview 5

III. Evolutionary theory 6

A. Ultimate reasons 6
B. The survival of the fittest 7
C. Inclusive fitness and altruism: the selfish gene 7
D. Validity of evolutionary theory for humans 10
E. The influence of group living 11
F. War and intergroup violence: group selection revisited 13
G. Learning and culture 15

IV. Deception and impression management 16
Read the entire scholarly paper

Problematic Human Rights: captured Somali pirates are usually released

Human Right are certainly a progress compared to middle age witch tortures and stalinistic despotic abuses.

But as all dogmas, maybe they should be questioned.  Setting pirates free after expensive capture, does that not encourage piracy and create human suffering? Potential victims of the next attack of the same pirates? Victims of other pirates who join the profession, because they see that their biggest risk is spending a day on a war ship, getting fed and then sent back home? Everyone in the world who pays higher cost for higher insurance premiums due to piracy?

More about Human Rights for Pirates