I feel like the part about altruism doesn’t match my observations very well. First, on a theoretical level, it seems like exploration is nearly costless here. It merely consists of retaining some flexibility, and does not inhibit exploitation in any practical sense, so I’m not sure there’s any strong advantage for stopping it (although there might also not have been much of an advantage in retaining it before modern times either). More concretely, it seems like we have empirical evidence to measure this hypothesis by, as many people in the modern world switch “tribes” because of moving long distances, switching jobs, or significantly altering their social standing.
From what I’ve seen, when such switches occur, many of the people who were in the old circle of altruism are promptly forgotten (with the exception of those with whom reputation has been built up particularly highly), and a new circle forms to encompass the relevant people in the new community. There is, admittedly, a different case when a person moves to a different culture. Then, it seems that while the circle of altruism might partially shift, persons from the original culture are still favored strongly by the person (even if she did not know them before).
(The non-altruism parts seem likely enough, though. At the risk of really badly abusing evpsych, we might theorize that people sometimes moved to nearby tribes, which had similar cultures, but almost never to distant tribes, which did not.)
I feel like the part about altruism doesn’t match my observations very well. First, on a theoretical level, it seems like exploration is nearly costless here. It merely consists of retaining some flexibility, and does not inhibit exploitation in any practical sense, so I’m not sure there’s any strong advantage for stopping it (although there might also not have been much of an advantage in retaining it before modern times either). More concretely, it seems like we have empirical evidence to measure this hypothesis by, as many people in the modern world switch “tribes” because of moving long distances, switching jobs, or significantly altering their social standing.
From what I’ve seen, when such switches occur, many of the people who were in the old circle of altruism are promptly forgotten (with the exception of those with whom reputation has been built up particularly highly), and a new circle forms to encompass the relevant people in the new community. There is, admittedly, a different case when a person moves to a different culture. Then, it seems that while the circle of altruism might partially shift, persons from the original culture are still favored strongly by the person (even if she did not know them before).
(The non-altruism parts seem likely enough, though. At the risk of really badly abusing evpsych, we might theorize that people sometimes moved to nearby tribes, which had similar cultures, but almost never to distant tribes, which did not.)