The Origins of Virtue

Zoologist Matt Ridley, a former American editor of the Economist, asks how humans came to live in cooperative societies when natural selection rewards self-interest. Writing from a sociobiological viewpoint, he treats society as a version of the prisoner's dilemma and reviews computer models of how cooperation could arise, above all tit-for-tat, the program devised by Anatol Rapoport in which players cooperate only with those who cooperate back. He compares human trust with the instincts of naked mole rats, ants and baboons, and examines tribal loyalty, group prejudice, trade and government regulation. Ridley argues that society works best in groups of around 150 people and ends by making the case for a smaller, more local state. It appeared in 1996.

In a podcast interview, Naval Ravikant named it among the evolution and science books he very highly recommends.