conspiracy of doves

The conspiracy of doves is the book’s name for a cooperative arrangement that could benefit every participant yet cannot arise through natural selection alone. Set against the evolutionarily stable strategy, it exposes a central contrast in the argument: blind replicators favor strategies that succeed under prevailing conditions, while human beings can imagine long-term outcomes, discuss cooperation, and attempt to make it work.

Meaning and evolutionary context

The expression draws on the contrast between doves and an evolutionarily stable strategy. A strategy is a pre-programmed behavioural policy, not a conscious plan; an animal behaves as if it follows instructions, without needing to work them out. An evolutionarily stable strategy persists because, once most of a population adopts it, an alternative cannot do better. Natural selection therefore penalizes deviation, even when a different arrangement might be better for every individual.

The book applies that logic beyond aggression. In its account of mating strategies, it explicitly rejects the idea that females could rely on a conspiracy among themselves: such a conspiracy, like the conspiracy of doves considered earlier, cannot evolve as a stable collective plan. The outcome depends instead on how strategies fare against one another in the population. Cooperation is not secured just because its shared benefits are apparent.

Why the conspiracy cannot evolve by itself

The phrase captures a problem of collective action. An arrangement that would benefit all participants can remain vulnerable to individuals whose alternatives succeed under the existing conditions. Blind natural selection does not foresee the long-term payoff of mutual restraint and cannot choose a jointly advantageous future simply because it would be better for everyone.

The same point recurs in the discussion of replicators. Genes are not conscious, purposeful agents: language that describes them as trying to increase their numbers is shorthand for the differential survival of genes whose effects lead to more copies. The author extends that caution to memes, treating their apparent purposes as metaphors rather than intentions. Neither genes nor memes can be expected to surrender short-term advantage in order to bring about a cooperative arrangement that would pay in the long run.

Human foresight and the possibility of cooperation

The contrast does not make cooperation impossible for people. Conscious foresight allows individuals to simulate the future in imagination and recognize that participating in a conspiracy of doves may serve their long-term interests. They can meet, discuss how cooperation might work, and seek to overcome the short-term pressures that blind replicators cannot anticipate.

The expression consequently carries both a limit and a possibility. It does not describe an established biological strategy or prove that people will cooperate; it names a cooperative outcome that natural selection alone cannot plan for. The book’s qualified hope rests on human beings’ capacity to turn foresight into deliberate action, to resist the immediate pull of inherited genetic and cultural influences, and to cultivate forms of altruism that the author says have no place in nature.