We are predisposed to cooperate with each other, because living in groups gave us substantial long-term survival advantage. But we are also born cheaters, because cheating in the right circumstances gave us a short-term survival advantage.
As these two conflicting tendencies tugged for our souls, we simultaneously evolved punishment behaviors—a way to dampen cheating by increasing the short-term costs to the cheater.
But our punishment instincts are infected with the same conflict—our brains have been built to punish cheaters, but that punishment urge is intrinsically restrained, in no small part because we all know that we, too, are cheaters.
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