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By Root 672 0

to instill: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” The hard-to-fake tears, red face, and other bodily signs make shame a credible signal that we have learned our lesson and others can start to be nice to us again. Guilt may be even more important, since its unpleasantness, even in anticipation, is often enough to get us to resist the immediate payoff that comes from defecting once in an iterated PD. Those lucky enough to feel guilt when tempted to cheat are fitter than those who don’t. Why? Most hominins underestimate the chances of getting caught by others. It’s hardwired into us by Mother Nature because that was the fittest strategy before other people as smart as us came on the scene. Once we appeared, the chances of getting caught free-riding increased, but the temptation remained strong. It needed to be counterbalanced by something that would make honesty the best policy. Feelings of guilt fit the bill.

NICE NIHILISM IS ALL WE NEED

Some emotions enforce parts of core morality, and some enforce norms and actions we reject as not being part of core morality or even compatible with it. What do the parts of core morality that emotions enforce have in common with nonmoral or even immoral norms, like honor killing, that emotions also enforce? They are fitness enhancing in their respective local environments.

If we were selected for niceness, how come there are so many SOBs in the world, and still worse, serial killers, moral monsters, and Adolf Hitlers? Biology has the answer. Remember, perhaps the most profound of Darwin’s observations was that there is always some variation in most heritable traits in every generation. A distribution of variations—often a normal, bell-curve distribution—is the rule and not the exception. Traits like niceness and packages combining nice norms and emotions that motivate them are the result of the interaction of the long childhood and a large number of different genes that program development. Slight differences in some of them, often together with slight differences in environments, will produce a good deal of variation in every generation. In every generation, there are going to be a few people who are too nice and get walked on and a few people who are not nice at all—saints and sociopaths.

When we add in variations in social skills, intelligence, and other traits, it’s inevitable that a certain percentage of any population will turn out to be grifters, thieves, and other victimizers of us nice people. But we’ll also have some saints, martyrs, and Samaritans. And of course, in every generation of a population that is large enough, there will be extreme cases—serial murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer or Peter Sutcliffe and worse, charismatic monsters like Hitler and bureaucratic ones like Stalin.

What is the maximum proportion of egoistic free-riders that a society of nice guys can tolerate? Is it 10 percent or one-tenth of 1 percent ? It depends on the number of times we end up playing a PD or some other strategic interaction with a free-rider, and it depends on the stakes. When the number of free-riders gets to the point that to protect ourselves from them we stop cooperating with everyone, something has to give. Either society unravels, or we act together to reduce the number of free-riders. Until we reach that point, we nice people will have to tolerate a few sociopaths and psychopaths as inconveniences in our daily lives. What we nice people won’t tolerate is Hitlers, Stalins, Mao Zedongs, Pol Pots, and Osama bin Ladens, at least not forever. The trick is to detect them before it’s too late.

But wait. Where do we scientistic types get off condemning purdah and suttee, female genital mutilation and honor killing, the Hindu caste system, the Samurai Code of Bushido, the stoning of women who have committed adultery, or the cutting off of thieves’ right hands? Isn’t the high dudgeon we want to effect in the face of this sort of barbarism flatly inconsistent with nihilism—any kind, nice or not?

Not only do we condemn the blinkered morality of intolerant religions and narrow-minded cultures,