Ulam Lecture Abstract

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 • 7:30 PM • James A. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf

Samuel Bowles Professor, Santa Fe Institute and University of Siena

A Cooperative Species—How We Got to Be Both Nasty and Nice.

Humans are remarkably cooperative animals. We frequently engage in joint projects for the common benefit on a scale extending beyond the family to include total strangers. We do this even when contributions to the project are costly and yield little private benefit. Examples are upholding social norms even when a transgression would not be noticed, warfare, and actions to preserve the natural environment.

Lecture 2. Altruism, Parochialism, and War: Rambo meets Mother Teresa
Bowles uses computer simulations to generate artificial histories of humanity over tens of thousands of years, tracing alternative trajectories that could explain how we got to be both nasty and nice. The disquieting conclusion will be that war and hostility toward outsiders may have been midwives of our more admirable moral predispositions.