Evolutionary psychology - 2 interpretations

In the past 48 hours, I read two things which referenced evolutionary psychology. The first was the interview with Jay Hanson, in which he had this to say:

Q: [...] You felt the political process was warping you?

A: Several things change in yourself when you get into politics. One of them is, you become part of the political tribe. You start seeing other politicians as not such bad guys or as good guys — they're just like you. And you start compromising with them. That’s reciprocal altruism [[interviewer's note:] genetic propensity to cooperate provisionally with others]. When you get across from somebody, you automatically start liking them. You can’t stop it. The only kind of person who could stop that would be a psychopath or a sociopath. Those are the only kind of people who could be good elected officials! They wouldn’t care about anybody around them. They'd be like computers, which is what you'd want. You'd need psychopaths as elected leaders; otherwise you are just going to get compromise and corruption. Because that’s what people naturally do.

Q: That's what happens in any group right? Like with cops there's a "blue wall" and so forth.

A: Yes. It is automatic, that's what people do. That's how they get along with each other. So there's that, then there's also the fact that you can't tell people the truth. When you want to get elected you have a constituency. You start making speeches to them — I made a lot of speeches — and they start asking you questions. And you begin to give evasive answers, or change the subject, because you can't tell them the truth.

The bottom line for Jay?

Q: Is there anything we haven't covered that you like our readers to know about?

A: American politics. Our Founding Fathers created a plutocracy, with all the trappings of democracy. And it was smart, it was a stroke of utter brilliance, and given the circumstances, the best possible political system. People who argue that democracy is a good political system simply haven't tried it.

What is the bottom line for the interviewer? Keep in mind that the interviewer buys Jay's nonsense hook, line, and sinker:

The discussion that follows ranges wide and digs deep — Jay Hanson is not really a suitable menu item for beginners. Some knowledge and background reading in genetics, economics, physics, evolutionary psychology, fundamentals of the hydrocarbon energy regime, and the political and military history of Europe and North America is assumed on the reader’s part.

and

For all his preoccupation with this grim and analytically eye-glazing subject matter, Jay has attracted his large Internet following in part due to his humorously mercurial, combative, edgy, and generally witty style (in cyberspace, as the Matrix series subliminally reminds us, Style Is All). Unlike the stodgy ruminations of the original Malthus, or the dull, dead hand of contemporary writers on ecology, economics, and population, Jay can make you laugh through your tears. Jay Hanson “Does Doom” better than anybody, masterfully shaping the discussion with a Faustian literary Èlan that helps the medicine go down. See the end notes of this interview for a list of links to Jay’s essays.

So he buys Jay's ultimate scenario, which is

Beginning with tireless investigations and reading in “soft” fields such as philosophy, psychology, and sociology (most of which Hanson now views as unscientific) and extending to the history and practice of economics as an academic discipline, up to his present interest in genetics and evolutionary psychology, Hanson has concluded that human beings are biological robots — programmed for irrationality (i.e. not fitting the economists’ ideal Bayesian models) and possessing not so much as a snowball's chance in Hell of controlling or escaping their own self-conjured Doom.

Jay, of course, is best known for his devotion to Malthusian (y'know, Malthus before he recanted) doom and gloom scenarios that assume that men cannot adapt and to Hubbert's Peak as the ultimate dogma. The interviewer even intuits the problem that leads him to make the following intellectual backtrack:

The key trigger event Jay has identified for precipitating the collapse of the Globalized Hypermart, and its political and social culture, is the looming certainty of Peak Oil. This idea traces back to the brilliant and prescient 20th century energy analyst M. King Hubbert, who was able to set out accurately the year of USA domestic oil production peak (implying rapid onset of decline thereafter) decades before it actually occurred. When Hubbert's attitudes and methodology are applied to the world oil scene, many analysts come up with a World peak either right now (2003/4), or a years from now, perhaps 2010 - but not much beyond.

Yeah, that's right: "setting out accurately" means 2003, 2004, 2010, or maybe beyond, but not much. In fact, Jay's original postings had the peak before 2000.

So, apparently what Jay and The Only Man On Earth Able To Keep Up With The Other Smartest Man On Earth glean from evolutionary psychology is that men can't adapt. Well, they can't adapt except to each other, but that's a bad thing because it means compromise and corruption, which is also known as democracy, which leads to (or is a cover for) plutocracy. We can only guess as to what they consider to be a feasible counteroffer to democracy. Can I have Centrally Planned State for $500?

Will Wilkinson's exploration of evolutionary psychology is the kind of even-handed and honest application I like to read. He wonders whether freedom and capitalism are the natural states of man as discovered through the science of evolutionary psychology. He answers that they are not - hardly what you would expect if you read reviews of Cato publications from the extreme left or right. Instead, Wilkinson, whose blog is also worth reading, finds that capitalism seems to run counter to what evolutionary psychologists would expect. And that is why the American Experiment is even more fragile and more interesting than we sometimes acknowledge.