Yes! I think this has something to do with my puzzle in two coordination styles. An evolutionary arms race for social coordination could result in a variety of outcomes, including
Deciding social conflicts by who is taller; if the storter person doesn’t submit, everyone knows this is wrong and supports the taller person. People then evolve heights, rather than smarts. This is like what happens in animal status hierarchies based on ritualized fighting.
Alliance-based social dynamics, in which stable coalitions develop, based on family ties and other factors. This may be more favorable for the development of intelligence, but does not explain many of the features of intelligence which you mention.
Human social dynamics includes aspects of both of these, but also includes a large place for rules, reasons, argument, words, symbols… This makes sense in terms of the side-taking hypothesis which I discuss in that post.
However, the puzzle I brought up was: if individuals are supposedly always selfishly trying to bend the rules to their own benefit, then why do we see the sort of friendly coordination where everyone really just seems to be doing their best for the system as a whole?
Your answer: humans evolved to bend the rules, but also to detect those who bend them and punish such behavior. We inherited genes disproportionately from people who survived to have children in this regime. This suggests a bias toward traits for effective rule-bending, but also for compulsive rule-following.
Yes! I think this has something to do with my puzzle in two coordination styles. An evolutionary arms race for social coordination could result in a variety of outcomes, including
Deciding social conflicts by who is taller; if the storter person doesn’t submit, everyone knows this is wrong and supports the taller person. People then evolve heights, rather than smarts. This is like what happens in animal status hierarchies based on ritualized fighting.
Alliance-based social dynamics, in which stable coalitions develop, based on family ties and other factors. This may be more favorable for the development of intelligence, but does not explain many of the features of intelligence which you mention.
Human social dynamics includes aspects of both of these, but also includes a large place for rules, reasons, argument, words, symbols… This makes sense in terms of the side-taking hypothesis which I discuss in that post.
However, the puzzle I brought up was: if individuals are supposedly always selfishly trying to bend the rules to their own benefit, then why do we see the sort of friendly coordination where everyone really just seems to be doing their best for the system as a whole?
Your answer: humans evolved to bend the rules, but also to detect those who bend them and punish such behavior. We inherited genes disproportionately from people who survived to have children in this regime. This suggests a bias toward traits for effective rule-bending, but also for compulsive rule-following.