Why does nature allow us to lie to ourselves? Humans are consistently and bafflingly overconfident. We consider ourselves more skilled, more in control, and less vulnerable to danger than we really are. You might expect evolution to have weeded out the brawl-starters and the X-Gamers from the gene pool and left our species with a firmer grasp of our own abilities. Yet our arrogance persists.
In a new paper published in Nature, two political scientists say they've figured out the reason. There's no mystery, they say; it's simple math.
The researchers created an evolutionary model in which individuals compete for resources. Every individual has an inherent capability, or strength, that simply represents how likely he or she is to win in a conflict. If an individual seizes a resource, the individual gains fitness. If two individuals try to claim the same resource, they will both pay a cost for fighting, ...
