I. What Is Natural?

EP suggests that while much human behavior can be altered, we are not infinitely flexible: there is a deep structure, a mental skeleton, which gives shape to the mind. A better understanding of this structure will guide us in promoting positive behaviors and controlling negative behaviors, and greater human happiness should result.

A common fallacy, the naturalistic fallacy, is that if something is natural, it must be okay, or people who suggest that it is natural are also suggesting that it is okay. This is easy enough to refute--murder, rape, and robbery are all "natural" in the sense that they are viable strategies genetically coded into every human being, but they are obviously not moral, and there are invariably alternative cooperative strategies. To the degree that a strategy based on the initiation of force is natural, it must be countered and controlled.

EP theory predicts that problems will arise if the the human animal is adapted to an environment exceedingly different from its current one, though what constitutes "different" may be counter-intuitive. Many features of modern life, while on the surface not resembling anything in the ancestral environment (e.g. the game of cricket), reflect human beings changing the environment to better suit their natures, since it is a lot quicker than to wait a thousand generations for evolution to catch up.

II. Why Do People Do What They Do?

EP offers the best paradigm for explaining the motivations and behaviors of 99% of people 99% of the time. If you want to understand the crazies, like why someone ate his grandmother with ketchup rather than soy sauce, Freud's your man. EP explains the shape of the human psychological landscape, where other branches might explain some individual details. EP and game theory predict which strategies will be coded for in what frequencies, and will also suggest which strategies a person in a given environment will tend to pick.

III. How Should We Live?

In the game of life, under what circumstances do individuals tend to choose strategies in the "cooperate" category (e.g. obey rules, give to charity, play good samaritan, exhibit cardinal virtues)? In what circumstances do they choose "defect" (e.g. violent, parasitic, deceptive) strategies? Evolutionary psychology and game theory suggest that the ideal game environment will have certain characteristics, such as

• Stable environment
• Perceived infinite duration
• Simple rules, easy to understand and comply with, consistently enforced, with minimal loopholes for defectors to exploit
• Presence of reliable cooperators and credible retaliators
• Reputational record-keeping
• Option to choose partners (i.e. availability of 'evade' strategy or 'freedom of association') especially to avoid others with a high likelihood of defecting.
• Restricted access to force-based strategies, since the human animal will exploit their availability to achieve dominance. Force should be strictly limited to defense of property.

This solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma sounds a lot like modern Finland or Hong Kong. It does not much resemble Russia, Columbia or Nigeria.

Neither collectivist ants nor solitary orangutans, but somewhere in between, the human animal is more social than the other primates. All the necessary instincts are built in, if only we can fully understand our natures and live in harmony with them.