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Notes -
Might the emphasis that certain cultures place on family and clan commitment inadvertently cause selfish / sociopathic genes to flourish? If you have children with varying levels of sociopathy, then the most sociopathic of kin would benefit from the activity of the least sociopathic of kin, as they are both morally incentivized to benefit the family or clan as a whole, but the sociopathic one is a free-rider. If instead you have a culture without family or clan commitment, and instead relative free association, then the most-empathic / least-sociopathic progeny can form mutually beneficial “societies-in-miniature” with those from other families and clans, provided they have some method of weeding out free-riders and the hidden sociopathic. I think we could imagine such a shift happening when religious communities colonized North America. If this phenomenon is legitimate then it would weed out the sociopathic across generations.
The problem with genes that increase sociopathy is that if you've got one, your relatives more likely has it too. If you have a gene that causes you to steal resources from your sibling in a significantly negative-sum way, then that gene will on average reduce your own fitness too.
In any case this would only apply if children with more resources go on to have more children than those with less resources. That was probably true back when America was colonized, but not so much today.
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