some thoughts on the main points

Interesting essay. You've put a lot of good thinking into your ideas. I feel as if some of it is based on a somewhat selective reading of animal and human data, and I tend to see some of what I interpreted as your good points a little differently. My apologies if I missed your point on any or all of these, I'll explain my thinking so you can see if I have anything to offer.

1. The assumption of psychological egoism

"Individuals of our species always chose the option that might bring them the maximum amount of happiness."

A very reasonable argument can be made for biological egoism; behavioral ecologists have effectively revolutionized the field that was once ethology by using tools based on gene-centricism. However, gene-centrisism doesn't equate to psychological egoism or hedonism. We don't always make the decision that leads to our own happiness, or even that we would guess leads to our own happiness, unless you construe happiness so broadly as to be meaningless. Behaviorists tell us correctly that we seek pleasure and avoid pain, but they miss the larger picture that the choices we make are multiply caused. In natural conditions, unlike a controlled experiment, there is rarely a simple choice between a painful choice and a pleasurable one. There is usually pain and pleasure associated with each choice, and then factors that skew which pains and which pleasures end up as more compelling.

2. The mismatch hypothesis

"[Happiness orientated] behavior of individuals ensure the specie’s survival under natural conditions. But if our species is not under natural conditions, happiness orientated behavior become less efficient at ensuring the specie’s survival. In this part of the essay, I will discuss the cause of such inefficiency."

That we are not living under the same conditions as our long history of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer existence is unmistakable. That we fully understand the conditions to which we adapted is questionable, but a matter that can be researched with cross-cultural data. That we are constitutionally unable to deal with rapid change in general is demonstrably false. As far as we can tell, the very biological nature of the human species is mostly defined by our adaptation to different environments. So one question becomes whether with certain accelerating cultural changes we will continue to offset mismatch or not. From my perspective, the kinds of changes we see in modern life don't rule out our ability to continue to offset. I don't think mismatch is likely to be the primary cause of our extinction, although it likely means we are constrained to some extent in the ways we adapt to change.

3. Optimization and ecology

"Excess production results in products not used to fulfill basic needs in long run. One of the human race’s drastic diversions from the nature is excess production."

The mismatch hypothesis results from seeing behavior as the result of adaptation to one environment and then living in another. The assumption that putting us in a modern environment causes us to behave "unnaturally" is a reasonable suspicion, but far from well demonstrated vs. the alternatives. One alternative is the one promoted by behavioral ecologists, who see it is being a process of optimizing benefit in whatever environment we find ourselves in. Another possibility is that culture programs us to do what we do, and takes on a life of its own because of our propensity to imitate and learn from each other. Yet another possibility is that our biological adaptation and our cultural adaptation influence each other reciprocally. If we only see our seemingly odd or apparently excessive behavior in terms of mismatch, I think we miss a lot of what is going on.

4. Confrontation results from mismatch

Hard to tell how much confrontation is mismatch-related, but there was probably an awful lot of confrontation in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness, long before there were modern resource patterns to contend with. Read Ghiglieri's "Dark Side of Man" for a reasonable take on the continuity of animal and human violence. Of course the kinds of things we are confrontational about have changed...

kind regards,

Todd

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