It is disturbing to realize that all humans alive today are the direct descendants of the most successful committers of murder, enslavement, rape and genocide, and all historical injustice is just the documented tail end of success and failure in primate evolutionary competition.
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Replying to @Plinz
That is not entirely true. Social skills are important, the ability to form bonds with other people, gather and motivate supporters and friends. The most ruthless dictator is weak when alone, even among other primates. Gorillas gang up on stronger silverbacks who have no friends.
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Replying to @pavel23
That is not a contraction. Our main evolutionary adaptations were prosocial, so we could form large cohesive groups. However, most hominids that ever lived don't have any living descendants, and that was in no small part the result of the activities of our ancestors.
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Replying to @Plinz
That is true. However, in game theory the dovish individual has a better chance of survival (and procreation) than the hawkish one in a population consisting mainly of hawks. Our society seems quite dovish to me, though. "Let the others fight it out" can be a successful strategy.
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Replying to @pavel23
How so? In a society of defectors, the cooperators don't stand much of a chance. They become only stronger when they efficiently eliminate the defectors within their subgroup of cooperators. In a society of hawks, the doves can do very well, but in the role of domesticated cattle
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Replying to @Plinz
We evolved for a nomadic life in a tribe or clan where fighting between individuals was frequent and the murder rate high. 70-90% died before they turned 20. Fighting costs a lot of energy, and even if you won, injuries could make you die from infection, predators or the next guy
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And the hawkish individual is one that can't walk away or run from a fight and stays in a fight as long as it can, increasing both the chance of winning and serious injury.
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In order to reduce expensive fighting within groups, evolution established building a hierarchy where, although your position in it is established by fighting, most of the time you don't have to fight because you know who is above and below you and who would probably lose or win.
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Yes, competing groups experience pressure to evolve mechanisms to mitigate internal friction and non cooperation, and to implement regulation that offsets individual incentives to make individual Nash equilibria compatible with maximizing total reward. Hierarchy is part of that.
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