Evolutionary Psychology with Steven Pinker2: Week 4, Post 2-

I also enjoyed the concept they spoke of called reciprocal altruism, which
describes basically the whole idea of; I'll do you a good deed for free right
now, so long as you do this same deed when I'm in need, which is basically what
friendship comes down to. In the instance of 2 people of any type of
relationship, there is a constant surveying being done by every human being. 
The point is to see if there is a give and take aspect to the relationship, 
which shows a person’s true intentions. This was a tool probably used by humans
to weed out untrustworthy allies. This is the idea that "reciprocal altruism"
is an evolutionary adaptation that has evolved in human interaction over
thousands maybe millions of years. This is very interesting to me because there
is a sort of universal logic in the sense that there has to be a give and a
take, not just one or the other because then there would be no fairness.
Steven Pinker believes that this just might be a reason why we are so smart in
the sense that we had to keep track of what people owed us, what we owed them, 
to make sure were not exploited, and to cultivate relationships that will have a
rather open reciprocity over a long period of time, versus a rather shorter
period of time. He thinks that this concept is probably what differentiates
humans from animals in that benefiting someone who isn't your blood relative is
pretty rare and that it may not be a coincidence that we have such complex
relationships and complex societies. All in all, knowing what we know about
Evolutionary Psychology and with more knowledge on the way, humans should be
able to utilize this information in their daily life by understanding the
dynamic of human nature.