[rarec]

Are various ethics irrational? Quite probably. Being more specific on which ethics you mean might give more to chew on.

Humans are notoriously great at pattern matching, and seeing things that aren't there simply based on a prior mental model. Stereotypes of all kinds are a result of this.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Ethics are a competing patchwork of conflicting drives.

Evolution tends to select for short-term survival over long-term viability. It's absolutely a mistake to believe the two are aligned.

The reality is that humans are (probably) the first Earth species to be capable of abstract non-physical modelling of the future. But we have a huge amount of behavioural baggage which guarantees that we tend to ignore long-term warning signals in pursuit of short-term gains motivated by evolutionary heuristics.

The heuristics work fine until they don't. Species discover this the hard way all the time.

It would be nice to think we're not one of those species, but the jury is still out on that.

[rhodri]

we're certainly capable of creating the most complex models – what's interesting about this very human tendency is that the models begin to take on a reality of their own, replacing our actual observations.

we can see this most clearly in our politicians' insistence on their particular model of the economy as their priority, rather than the actual concerns of the citizens they are responsible to.

[aswanson]

Do you think our political biases themselves come from evolutionary survival schemas? e.g. right vs left, etc.

[__jal]

If that were so, "left" and "right" would reflect similar inclinations across polities and evolutionarily-short time periods.

They don't.

Or at least, I'd be highly amused to see someone attempt to square the Trump platform with Burkean thought, and that's a relatively smallish difference, both evolutionarily and intellectually speaking, compared to others.