Millions of years ago, the world was pretty much zero sum. Animals weren’t great at planning, such as going back for reinforcements or waiting months to take revenge, so fights were brief affairs determined mostly by physical prowess, which wasn’t too hard to predict ahead of time. It was relatively easy to tell when you can get away with bullying a weaker animal for food, instead of hunting for your own.
When humans come along, with tools and plans, there is suddenly much less common knowledge when you get into a fight. What allies does this other human have to call upon? What weapons have they trained in? If they’re running away, are they just weaker, or are they leading you into a trap? If you actually can win the fight, you should take it, but the variance has shot up due to the unknowns so you need a higher expected chance of winning if you don’t want an unlucky roll to end your life. If you enter fights when you instictively feel you can win, then you will evolve to lower this instictual confidence.
Agree that other players having tools, social connections, and intelligence in general all make it much harder to judge when you have the advantage. But I don’t see how this answers the question of “why create underdog bias instead of just increasing the threshold required to attack?”
Strong disagree on the ancient world being zero-sum. A lion eating an antelope harms the antelope far more than it helps the lion. Thog murdering Mog to steal Mog’s meal harms Mog far more than it helps Thog. I think very little in nature is zero-sum.
Millions of years ago, the world was pretty much zero sum. Animals weren’t great at planning, such as going back for reinforcements or waiting months to take revenge, so fights were brief affairs determined mostly by physical prowess, which wasn’t too hard to predict ahead of time. It was relatively easy to tell when you can get away with bullying a weaker animal for food, instead of hunting for your own.
When humans come along, with tools and plans, there is suddenly much less common knowledge when you get into a fight. What allies does this other human have to call upon? What weapons have they trained in? If they’re running away, are they just weaker, or are they leading you into a trap? If you actually can win the fight, you should take it, but the variance has shot up due to the unknowns so you need a higher expected chance of winning if you don’t want an unlucky roll to end your life. If you enter fights when you instictively feel you can win, then you will evolve to lower this instictual confidence.
Agree that other players having tools, social connections, and intelligence in general all make it much harder to judge when you have the advantage. But I don’t see how this answers the question of “why create underdog bias instead of just increasing the threshold required to attack?”
Strong disagree on the ancient world being zero-sum. A lion eating an antelope harms the antelope far more than it helps the lion. Thog murdering Mog to steal Mog’s meal harms Mog far more than it helps Thog. I think very little in nature is zero-sum.