The capacity of humans to deceive each other is well documented by history and personal experience. Less well known, however, is the capacity of most living things to deceive each other - species deceiving other species, members of their own species and themselves. We are, it seems, not that different from parasites, insects and bacteria in this regard.

Dr. Robert Trivers talks about the evolutionary basis of deception in this address from Pop!Tech 2005. The first half of this talk focusses on the biological examples of deception in the natural world, with explanations for the evolutionary advantages of deception and self-deception.

Later in the talk, Dr. Trivers supplies easily recognizable examples of common human self-deception. He then delves into an overtly political criticism of human deception and self-deception, with an emphasis on current events.

This talk was from the What Do We Know session at Pop!Tech. The other speaker in this session was Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The question and answer period for these talks is included in this program.