Evolutionary biology, self-deception and politics

[Cain]

Even though it involves Chomsky, this is a great interview.  Killer quote:

TRIVERS: We find repeatedly now—in wasps, in birds and in monkeys—that when organisms realize they're being deceived, they get pissed off. And they often attack the deceiver. Especially if the deceiver is over-representing him or herself. If you're under-representing and showing yourself as having less dominance than you really have, you're not attacked. And the ones that do attack you are precisely those whose dominance status you are attempting to expropriate or mimic.

[The Wizard Joseph]

That was VERY interesting.  I'm tempted to read it out loud into my audio recorder and post it here.  Not sure if that's considered acceptable behavior here or not, but what with the voice experiments mentioned in the article I think it could be fun.

Cain do you think that the deception mechanism is really that ingrained in humanity?  Could selflessness and reason be trained into people?  It's certainly part of nature, but is it possible that realization of the deceptive nature could allow human beings to overcome the sort of intellectual blindness those two are talking about?  It seems to me that human beings have the ability to overcome, sometimes at great cost, the reflexive parts of our nature and build a better set of behaviors.

[Kai]

Wow, that was great.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Even though it involves Chomsky, this is a great interview.  Killer quote:

TRIVERS: We find repeatedly now—in wasps, in birds and in monkeys—that when organisms realize they're being deceived, they get pissed off. And they often attack the deceiver. Especially if the deceiver is over-representing him or herself. If you're under-representing and showing yourself as having less dominance than you really have, you're not attacked. And the ones that do attack you are precisely those whose dominance status you are attempting to expropriate or mimic.

Holy shit, this explains EVERYTHING about the TGRR/n00b dynamic!