How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict

Robert Wright, author of Non Zero, released from his good cop/bad cop duologue with Mickey Kaus over at Bloggingheads, gets a chance to enjoy himself and proclaims that co-operation eventually outperforms conflict. He identifies a number of non zero sum relationships and argues that over history, more people play win win positive games than zero sum. "If someone else's welfare is more or less correlated to yours, you are more or less likely to cut him a break". But of course there is a dark side...