The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley

The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation Reviews

• 
  Ohr

  Solid in parts, sadly Ridley once again Allows his scientific reasoning and conclusions to be the servants of his a priori political beliefs
• 
  Nicky

  Hmmm, The Origins of Virtue is an interesting examination of the possible evolutionary causes of virtue, mostly defined here as altruism. It works quite well as a supplement that falls somewhere in between three of my current classes on Coursera: one with an anthropological bent, one largely genetic, and one about morality. It draws some of those themes together quite well, for me, and explains some of the studies -- and some of the pitfalls of the studies, and wishful thinking.
  
  It's also pretty well written: it's divided into both chapters and sections, which makes it easy to digest and keeps the argument focused.
  
  On the other hand, it's a little old now (1996), and Ridley's ideology is very obvious to the attentive reader, although camouflaged by his scientific tone. At least the last chapter unveils his ethical principles: anti-government, anti-socialism (including such familiar institutions to Brits as the NHS), pro-small collectives and curated communal living. To be fair, he does analyse some of the ways this falls down, but he mostly focuses on why government-run things doesn't work.
  
  I mean, I love the NHS unashamedly. I went from the diagnosis of gallstones to medication to having my gallbladder removed in the process of a couple of months, without paying for anything at the point of use, at a time when I couldn't support myself and was in agonising pain. Throughout my life I'll pay back into that system with my taxes, and I don't begrudge it at all, whatever Ridley's conclusions told him.
• 
  notgettingenough

  Bit tempted to put this one in science fiction.
• 
  B.J. Richardson

  This book sets out to demonstrate that "there was morality before the church, trade before the state, exchange before money, social contracts before Hobbes, welfare before the Rights of Man, culture before Babylon, society before Greece, self-interest before Adam Smith, and greed before capitalism." By the title, you would think this is a book about the origins of virtue, but really the primary focus is on only two virtues he focuses on are altruism and cooperation.
  
  When he is doing so, Matt Ridley is excellent. He pieces together the fields of biology, game theory, the animal kingdom, and some history and sociology to demonstrate why and how from a behavioral evolutionary standpoint, we act the way we do. I understand that such a large task there is no way to include all the facts, details and theories that are out there, but Ridley does tend to use a selective inclusion of facts that make his case seem much stronger than it really is. For example, he demonstrates how and why fashions and fads can come into being, but by his logic, there would be no reason for those fads to ever change. I wonder what Malcolm Gladwell would have to say to that. Things are a bit more complicated than Ridley would like.
  
  Another example that jumped right out at me because theology is my strong point was when he was talking about how early Judaism was an exclusive religion. He states that "The Ten Commandments apply to the Israelites but not to heathen people." He then gives an example of Joshua winning a battle in Ai and celebrating by making a stone copy of the Ten Commandments that include "Thou shalt not kill." Matt Ridley should have read to the end of the chapter before trying to paint Judaism as an affair exclusively of adult Hebrew men. In Joshua 8:35 it specifically says that all the women, children, and foreigners were included in this celebratory reading of the Law.
  
  A few different times, I caught subtle hints at racism or, at least, an air of Western superiority. One such example I noted was: "A South African crowd making a political demonstration and jogging in place is much closer to its evolutionary roots than a ballroom of Viennese waltzing the night away." No explanation or reason is given. It is simply assumed his readers will immediately, unquestioningly agree. The same idea also comes out when talking about cultures and people groups that have only recently come into contact with the West. It is assumed that they have not evolved or changed in any way for thousands, or tens of thousands of years and that we can understand from their 19th or 20th-century behavior how Homo Erectus must have acted.
  
  Anyways, I am still giving this book four stars because there is a lot of great information here and this would be a good introductory book on behavioral evolution. I would just strongly recommend that you read it with both eyes open.
• 
  Steven Peterson

  The book opens with a daring jail break. The story notes that the person escaping the grim Russian prison is, in fact, a member of the nobility, one of the Czar's favorites when the escapee was much younger. The person breaking out, of course, is Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist prince. However, it is not his philosophy so much as his work in natural history that drew Matt Ridley's attention.
  
  Kropotkin, on an exploration of Siberia, observed what he saw was cooperation among multitudinous animal species. He drew from that the conclusion that Huxley, who had described nature as "red in tooth and claw," was missing an important part of the evolution picture--the evolution of cooperation. And this leads to Ridley's thesis in this well written volume (page 5): "Society works not because we have consciously invented it, but because it is an ancient product of our evolved predispositions. It is literally in our nature." He goes on to note that (page 5): "This is a book about human nature, and in particular the surprisingly social nature of the human animal."
  
  The volume proceeds by reviewing theories and research on cooperation, evolution, and so on, a wide ranging review of the human condition and of our evolutionary impulses. He notes that our primate relatives set the stage for understanding the evolution of human cooperation. He notes the importance of a game, adopting game theory, developed by political scientist Robert Axelrod, in which humans will cooperate unless double crossed, at which point individuals will respond in negative kind. But, according to some theorists, as long as individuals are willing to cooperate with one another, they will get cooperation in return.
  
  His conclusion is intriguing (page 264): "If we are to recover social harmony and virtue, if we are to build back into society the virtues that made it work for us, it is vital that we reduce the power and scope of the state." He calls for (page 265) ". . .social and material exchange between equals for that is the raw material of trust, and trust is the basis for virtue."
  
  All in all, an intriguing and interesting volume. Not all, of course, will be convinced of the thesis. But it is a well written effort to integrate many different bodies of work to make his point.
  
• 
  Lacivard Mammadova

  Fəlsəfə və psixologiya janrlarında qeyd olunan bu kitabı rahatlıqla iqtisadiyyat bölməsinə də göndərmək olar. Heç vaxt bu janrları sevməmişəm, amma necə maraqlı alınıb. "İnsan davranışlarının təhlili, tarixi izah, bazara təsiri" şəklində keçən izah şəkli çox gözəl cızılıb. Kitabda müxtəlif əzbər bildiyimiz teoriyaların təkzibi də yer alıb və əsərin 2013-cü il istehsallı olduğu nəzərə alsaq, son dövrlərin yeniliklərinə olan izahlara ac qaldım. Ümumilikdə çox bəyəndim, 5 verməməyimin səbəbi sonu nə qədər maraqlı idisə, əvvəlinin bir o qədər maraqsız və cansıxıcı olmasındandır. O ilk səhifələri necə aşıb, bu gözəl kitabı kəşf edə bildiyimə özüm də təəccüblənirəm. İstəsəz, ilk bir-neçə mövzunu ötürün.
• 
  Jeremy Hadfield

  This book convinced me to be an ethical being. Also is true. Great work
• 
  Jake Chisausky

  An incredibly profound and lucid book from a wonderful author. Read it!
• 
  Erman

  Tıpkı
  Kızıl Kraliçe gibi insanı düşünmeye, sorgulamaya iten; hoşuna gitmese dahi uzak durduğu fikir veya görüşlere kişinin daha sağduyulu yeni bir bakış getirmesini teşvik eden çok iyi bir kitap. Ekonomi teorileriyle sıkça verkaça giriyor: Oyun teorisi etrafında şekillenen 'Mahkumun İkilemi' bölümü müthiş olmakla birlikte; son çeyrekteki 'ticaret', 'ekoloji' ve 'mülkiyetin' irdelendiği bölümler kitabı biyoloji ekseninden iktisat ve sosyolojiye hafifçe kaydırarak harika bir dengeye çıkarıyor. Yaygınca kabul edilenin aksine; ahlakın dinden, ticaretin devletten, refahın insan haklarından, toplumsal sözleşmelerin Hobbes'ten, toplumun Antik Yunan'dan, kişisel çıkarların Adam Smith'ten, açgözlülüğün de kapitalizmden önce var olduğu ileri sürülüyor. Elbette tüm bunları daha önce ifade eden metinler yazıldı ve dahice bir 'yenilikten' bahsedemeyiz, ancak bütün olarak çok keyifliydi. Yazarın taraflı anlatımı haklı bir eleştiri sayılabilir, fakat bunun ne sakıncası var ki!
• 
  Franta

  Interesting, well written.
• 
  Diana

  I enjoyed this book a lot. It explained game theory very well and discussed in detail the computer run experiments that concluded that the nicer versions of game theory (generous, pavlov, tit-for-tat, firm-but-fair) tended to be more successful than the nastier ones like prisoner's dilemma and that prisoner's dilemma could be quite cooperative if the players all knew each other and could trust that there would be no defections.
  
  I also liked how he launches from the concept of the selfish gene Dawkins so well illuminates in his book The Selfish Gene to show that humans act selfishly from the genes on up and when they act for the welfare of the group they are often either related (also shown in social insects like ants & bees) or really protecting themselves (the survival of the group means the survival of the individual).
  
  I also appreciated the discussion of the human tendency toward groupishness and conformity.
  
  However, at the very end of the book, it seems Ridley couldn't hold in his own personal political opinions about "big government" and the desire to get rid of government (which he thinks is too authoritarian) & relegate it to only defence to leave local groups to get on with the rest themselves. He is very much against the Leviathan. I might have given his ideas more of a chance if he had shown statistical proof that such a model works. Instead, he backs it up only with a notion of success being in the ability to trust one another and become invested in outcomes. I agree with this part, but I don't think he argued well enough that this necessarily translates into a great reduction in the reach and protection of the Leviathan.
• 
  Paul

  A fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of human nature, and how it has evolved biologically and culturally. It’s mostly a happy story – as a species we are cooperative, social, sharing, trading and we divide the labor so that we all have more. There’s a darker side too: we are fiercely and often irrationally (and violently) tribal. And underlying it all is the unpleasant (to many) truth that self-interest drives the whole thing – probably at the level of our genes, but certainly at the level of individual and family. The good news is that successful societies have evolved structures that channel the basic self-interest into cooperative, win-win outcomes, and generally without the direction of a sovereign or state. As Ridley shows, “…there was morality before the Church; trade before the state; exchange before money; social contracts before Hobbes; welfare before the rights of man; culture before Babylon; society before Greece; self-interest before Adam Smith; and greed before capitalism.” Indeed, most of the conclusions are the same as Smith’s – from The Theory of Moral Sentiments as well as Wealth of Nations – but with the benefit of an additional 250 years of history and science to support them. Ridley is a great pleasure to read. 
• 
  Scott

  This book extends the arguments about the genetic basis of behavior from the rest of the animal kingdom (familiar to readers of Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene") into human behavior, the appearance of cooperation and altruistic actions, and the unique nature of human society. The author, Matt Ridley, is good at engaging the reader, with many examples drawn not only from biology, but from diverse fields, including opera (the "Prisoner's Dilemma" chapter begins with the plot story for Puccini's "Tosca"). Ridley argues that human society is best when government and social structures tap into the genetic understanding of human behaviors to encourage the best from us. Perhaps not surprisingly from an author who wrote the science and technology column for the Economist, Ridley resolves that government is best when it is small - although I think this conclusion to be the weakest section of the book. There is much of interest to learn within these pages, and Ridley makes the experience enjoyable and worthwhile.
• 
  Mark Colenutt

  Matt Ridley was educated at Oxford and is a journalistic scientist, which means he is able to translate the more complicated scientific breakthroughs and understandings to the wider public in a clear and succinct manner.
  
  Almost anything he has written, including his Guardian articles, are worthy of a reader's time. This particuar publication is a brave attempt to explain why we are nice to each other. Is it from some altruistic human capacity or is it more a genetic survival technique? We are taught not to look a gifted horse in the mouth and yet that is the first thing a tribal nomad will do, well aware that if he is being given something then his friend will expect something in return.
  
  His hypotheses are tested against a plethora of animal studies from ants to dophins who all collaborate for different gains.
  
  For those who fell asleep during all those afternoon wildlife documentaries then this publication is a masterclass in animal behavourism with an array of surprising facts that few documentaries would dare publish. A must then, for those interested in evolutionary biology.
• 
  John Vibber

  This book poses a puzzle: Is virtue an instinctual property built into our selfish genes? And if so, how do we reconcile our tribal tendencies with the trust we extend to others? You might think such thorny questions best explained by anthropologists, but Matt Ridley the biologist/economist wouldn't agree.
  
  His thesis is based on several lines of research which weigh traditional and emerging beliefs about human nature. Traditionally he asks if we are noble savages constrained by society or distrustful savages constrained by government. In other words, are we the intellectual decedents of Rousseau or Hobbs? And if neither, what has modern science taught us about evolution and human goodness?
  
  I found this a somewhat technical read, but worth the effort. I like how Ridley addresses difficult questions. In the end, his perspective increased my optimism about human nature.
  
• 
  Dennis Littrell

  Lively, biased, and a whole lot of fun
  
  Matt Ridley nicely demonstrates here that there is no such thing as virtue and that altruism is an oxymoron. Instead it is all reciprocity and enlightened self-interest. This reminds me of when I was a sophomore in college. We used to argue passionately about three things: the nature of women, whether the Pope believed in God, and whether it was possible to act otherwise than in one's own self-interest. We concluded that women were an enigma wrapped in a mystery, etc.; that it wasn't clear whether the Pope believed in God or not; and that, barring mistakes, we always acted in our own self-interest. We further concluded that "altruism" was a word without real meaning, that the Pope was an amoral political animal, and that women were, regardless of their nature, very interesting. But we were sophomores. Matt Ridley is all grown up, and what interests him in this book is not so much the origin of virtue (although he does get heavily into that) but the restoration of the conservative agenda. Alas. He argues from biology (our nature) to what ought to be politically. This is doubly "alas" because Ridley preaches mightily against this very delusion, calling it a "reverse naturalistic fallacy" (p. 257).
  
  David Ricardo and Adam Smith are brought into the fray, Hobbes and Machiavelli. Ridley takes arguments from game theory and political science and the world of high finance to make his point that virtue as it is ordinarily understood does not exist. He goes on to call for less government and more local autonomy, a return to a dream state of "everything small and local" (p. 264). As he does, Ridley comes dangerously close to taking on all the trappings of a right wing radio talk show host, spouting the virtues of Newt Gingrich and Margaret Thatcher on his way to becoming something like a high-toned Rush Limbaugh.
  
  Alas, how sharp was his rapier and how telling his prose when Ridley stuck to revealing our social and sexual hypocrisy as he did so delightfully in The Red Queen (1993); but how obvious are his prejudices when he steps into the political arena. He actually argues that tried old irrelevancy of the embarrassed right wing, that even though Hitler was bad, very bad, he was better than Stalin. Thus on page 258 we have (referring to the doctrine of acquired characteristics embraced by the Soviet state): "Unlike the genetic determinism of Hitler, Stalin's environmental variety went on to infect other peoples."
  
  Ridley even argues that Hitler got his ideas from the communists. "Hitler was merely carrying out a genocidal policy against ‘inferior', incurable or reactionary tribes that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had advocated..." (p. 253). So caught up in his cause is Ridley that he begins to contradict himself and argue for the kind of idyllic fantasy world that he condemns in Rousseauians. Thus in his chapter entitled "The Power of Property" he waxes nostalgic for the "egalitarian" conservation systems of New Guinea fishermen and Maine lobster men before the interference of big government. On page 262 he talks about "The collapse of community spirit in the last few decades, and the erosion of civic virtue...caused" by "the dead hand of the Leviathan." But on the very next page he declares, "I hold to no foggy nostalgia that the past was any better. Most of the past was a time of authority, too..."
  
  Yes, Matt, it was. The authority of the gang lords, of the feudal lord, of a system of social, political and economic imprisonment so oppressive that the average person never got further than a few miles from the place of his birth and had little to no chance of rising above the economic and social station of his birth. It was "small and local" with a vengeance. The tyranny of the feudal lords in Europe and, e.g., the war lords in China is conveniently ignored in Ridley's political fantasy. He claims that we have it better today only because of superior technology (p. 263) forgetting that our system of representative democracy in Republican form is also an improvement over the absolutism of the tribe. The sad lesson here is, that even a man as adroitly talented and as intelligent as Matt Ridley becomes just another propagandist when he ventures into an area in which he is emotionally involved.
  
  Still there is a lot to enjoy in The Origins of Virtue. His discussion of the prisoner's dilemma is the best I've read, although his analysis of the "wolf's dilemma" (p. 55) is faulty. I won't go into it here, but "the tiny chance" that he refers to is overwhelmed by the fact that each player has only a five percent chance of "winning" by pushing his button since he has to beat 19 others to the punch. Consequently the best strategy is the obvious, don't push that button! (But check this out for yourself.) His discussion of how the division of labor has enriched our world is interesting; his analysis of how we detect cheaters and how that is an instinctive human talent is persuasive; and his delineation of the nature of gift giving and receiving and how it relates to our innate sense of reciprocity is valuable as it shines light on the nature of "virtue." In fact, his entire argument is eminently worth reading. His glorification of trade (with which I agree) and his put down of ecologists (with which I disagree) is tolerable. Most fun though--recalling the Matt Ridley of The Red Queen--is in all the sacred cows he slaughters along the way: the New World Indians (ouch!), Margaret Mead, the so-called "tragedy of the commons" theory, the Noble Savage, even poor Chief Seattle is revealed as a slave-owner whose public reputation is largely the product of a screenwriter's imagination (p. 214).
  
  --Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
  
• 
  Anthony

  This book should definitely be on your short list of books to read if you are at all interested in what makes us humans behave as we do. It is one among many recently published books on evolutionary psychology -- and it's one of the very best. What distinguishes Ridley's book from the pack is his explicit grappling with the question: What does the fact that human moral sentiments are crafted by natural selection imply about the appropriate political order?
  
  I definitely want and need to read it again.
• 
  Johnny

  Nature or nurture? It’s a question as old as philosophy, and it is an ongoing discussion in our current world. Matt Ridley tackles this question from the perspective of evolutionary biology (a subject on which he has authored several books) in The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. In answering the question, he doesn’t vary far from the “selfish gene” concept, but he uses illustrations from anthropology, biology, economics, history, and horticulture (among others) to express his point. But even more than retreating to the “selfish gene” idea, Ridley’s point is discovering where cooperation originates. Expressing an anti-Thomas Hobbes’ idea of Leviathan, Ridley asserts, “Covenants without swords work; swords without covenants don’t.” (p. 240) Indeed, though Ridley cites certain medieval and rustic covenants which governments messed up, he does seem to favor a social contract more like Thomas Scanlon’s What We Owe Each Other (though he doesn’t quote Scanlon directly).
  
  Now, of course, there is that genetic imperative of DNA survival, so it is not surprising that organisms cooperate in matters regarding the future of the organism. For example, Ridley notes that there is a slime mold comprised of circa 100 K different amoebic organisms. Generally, they function as separate entities until circumstances become too unpromising for the individual organism. That’s when they join together and form the slime mold. They come together in a growing and growing mound that eventually falls over of its own instability. When it falls over, it releases a section of the mass which functions as a slug and seeks more hospitable territory. Failing to find that, the slug increases density in the middle, creating a rising mound that eventually erupts into a ball of cells, rising on a slender strand that seems almost analogous to the concept of a space elevator. Eventually, the ball releases into about 80 K different spores in the immediate atmosphere so that they can be inadvertently picked up by insects and carried to more hospitable environs (p. 16). Certainly, that is “cooperation,” but it is not intentional cooperation.
  
  Moving slightly up the food chain, the value of reciprocity—even in less conscious beings can be illustrated in the way sticklebacks approach feeding grounds near their natural predators, pike. To gauge whether the pike is hungry or sated, the stickleback move forward in pairs in small segments. One of the pair takes the risk of venturing forward first. If the pike doesn’t move, they are safe to feed. If the pike does move, both sticklebacks retreat swiftly. Of course, the bolder fish is more likely to be devoured by the pike. But here’s the interesting thing, if one of the pair is gauging the pike with another who has switched off the role of scout with the other, both sticklebacks will be bolder. If the partner hasn’t demonstrated reciprocity in the past, the bolder fish doesn’t engage in nearly as much risk (p. 79). Even though we cannot assign conscious reciprocity to these fish, there seems to be an innate process of such that goes on.
  
  Another curious example from nature is the idea from the late Glyn Isaac that the cultural importance of food-sharing among humans is likely evolved from the tolerance of opportunistic food thieves in nature. After all, lions help themselves at a lion “feast,” even if they haven’t killed the prey. Chimpanzees share food, but there is a social pecking order where some must beg for it before it is given. For humans, especially in primitive tribes sharing, say, a giraffe carcass, there is a sense that the food must be offered to them after the successful hunter has enjoyed of it what the hunter and family want (p. 111).
  
  Ridley has a way of pointing out the hereditary selfishness of humanity in a number of clever ways.
  For example, he covers the selfishness of ambitious office politics and self-preservation with an account from the famous C. Northcote Parkinson (of “Parkinson’s Law” fame). Parkinson observed that a bureaucrat wants subordinates, not rivals. So, to accommodate that desire, bureaucracy keeps making new work requiring new bureaucrats such that the bureaucracy itself keeps expanding. Illustrative of this was that: “With delicious irony, Parkinson described the quintupling of the number of civil servants in Britain’s Colonial Office between 1935 and 1954, during which time the number and size of colonies to be administered shrank dramatically.” (p. 27)
  
  I found it refreshing that even though Ridley approaches such issues from a scientific view, he has little patience for non-scientific dogma found so often in academia today. He rants against anthropologists being so politically correct that they ignore evidence for universal sexual division of labor (pp. 92, 93) He has little patience with the efforts of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Jeremy Bentham, and most modern anthropologists to ignore the significance of trade among primitive peoples (pp. 109-202). It is also refreshing that even Ridley recognizes that a broad, simplistic application of the thesis of his book would likely be counterproductive. He fears that if we give in to those economists such as Hayek, Malthus, Smith, and Friedman who say self-interest (rather than reciprocity) is good, we may inadvertently promote greed. “In other words, the reason we must not say that people are nasty is because it is true.” (p. 260)
  
• 
  Evan Dossey

  Matt Ridley, a former journalist, continues to provide evolutionary-psychology and zoology grounded insights into human behavior. An old book, but good groundwork for more recently published material.
• 
  Artem

  Очень интересная книга со множеством фактов и примеров, собранных из разных источников. Есть над чем подумать, примерить на себя, свою жизнь и опыт. Многим придётся не по вкусу. Стоит законспнктировать и периодически возвращаться к ней.
• 
  Lisa

  Information overload. Got bits and pieces out of it and found the human examples more interesting but in the end I'm still not sure what I got out of it.
• 
  Abhishek

  Seems like Ridley has some political beliefs to peddle. Short book on such an interesting subject. Now I need to get myself other books that go deeper.
• 
  Country Aplomb

  Interesting science, simplistic politics