Entrevista com Robert Trivers

Entrevista com Robert Trivers, o biólogo evolucionário que descobriu que velhacaria está relacionada a problemas de saúde: If you take a relationship between a man and a woman, the man can be carrying on an affair on the side and it can produce a child. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not tell his wife that that cute little boy that he loved so much was actually his own, by the maid. Maria discovered it when the child was 12 years old. So you can get a reproductive benefit by deception as long as you’re not detected. Self-deception, by contrast, has been a long problem in human thought. You find it in religion. Minds like Marx and Freud have each claimed to have a theory of self-deception, none of which have stood up. Adam Smith, the economist, wrote a whole book called “Self Deception.” George Orwell obviously had deep insight into certain kinds of self-deception, but nobody has had anything approaching a coherent scientific theory as to why on earth we would lie to ourselves. Working on parent-offspring conflict, I suddenly had this flash of insight: “Ah! If self-deception improves your ability to deceive others, then you would have a strong selective force to get it into your consciousness.”