Political debate in the present is often a struggle over how to characterize events in terms of ancestral situation-types, because alternative framings trigger different evolved moral heuristics.#
Human nature is not inherently good or bad: it is, “inherently,” a collection of programs, which execute their functions. The real question is: Which programs reliably develop in the human mind, and how do they process information?#
Among hunter–gatherers, coalitional cooperation among nonkin most commonly occurs in two contexts: cooperative hunting and intergroup aggression (small-scale warfare). Most other labor is pursued in other ways.#
From the point of view of an individual involved in one project, others with diverging projects (and different views and values) appear to be free riders with respect to one’s favored enterprises.#
Sufficiently large collective actions decouple reward from effort, initiating a process of declining effort by some, which stimulates matching withdrawal by others. This free riding and the dwindling participation it engenders intensify punitive sentiments toward undercontributors, culminating in social systems organized around coercion and punishment (where rulers can deploy it) or culminating in dissolution (where they cannot).#