Eliminating Distortion: Inadequate Biological Programs in Human Decision Making and Their Reflection in AI

This paper introduces D — the aggregate, continuous distortion of human decision making by biological programs of survival and reproduction — as a formal variable that must be accounted for in the design of every critical institutional process. Drawing on established findings from neuroscience (Damasio, Sapolsky, Panksepp, LeDoux), behavioral economics (Kahneman, Tversky), evolutionary psychology (Cosmides, Tooby, Buss), and human factors engineering (Reason, Helmreich, Gawande), the paper demonstrates that while the biological distortion of human cognition has been extensively described, it has never been formally translated into institutional design requirements — an application gap analogous to pre-Listerian surgery. Four independent mathematical proofs (utility-theoretic, perturbation-theoretic, Bayesian, and signal detection theory) establish that D necessarily affects decisions and cannot be compensated by intelligence or expertise alone. A taxonomy of six D-distortion types (inversion, displacement, goal substitution, temporal distortion, rationalization, projection) is introduced with concrete scenarios. The paper distinguishes D (internal, self-generating, irreducible biological distortion) from d (external, static, eliminable reflected distortion inherited by AI systems from human creators), arguing that AI represents the first structurally D-free decision-making system in history. Game-theoretic analysis demonstrates that D constitutes a systematic strategic disadvantage. A response to the Damasio objection shows that the adaptive information carried by emotion is separable from its biological delivery mechanism. Five experimental protocols for empirically measuring D through human–AI comparison are proposed, including a critical D-reduction condition. A case study applies the D framework to the Russia–Ukraine conflict, analyzing the D-profiles of principal decision-makers and modeling how a D-free system would approach resolution. Keywords: biological distortion, decision making, reproductive program, inadequate biological programs, artificial intelligence, evolutionary mismatch, game theory, D-distortion taxonomy, human–AI comparison, signal detection theory, institutional design, emotion formalization