I don’t generally like evolutionary psychology explanations for things, for a variety of reasons, but as long as we’re listing them, the obvious one to me seems likely to be crab mentality. Living in a tribe, you would rather nobody have too much power, so people can gain support if it looks like the other guy has a ton of power until everyone has around equal power. See also Balance of power, and evolutionary explanations for egalitarianism.
I think this is the right response to the piece, but begs a more explicit challenge of the conclusion that underdog bias is maladaptive (@Garrett Baker offers both pre-modern tribal life and modern international relations as spheres in which this behavior is sensible).
One ought to be careful of the “anti-bias bias” leading one to accept evolutionary explanations for biases but then makes up reasons why they’re maladaptive to fit the (speculative) narrative that the world can be perfected by increasing the prevalence of objectively true beliefs.
I don’t generally like evolutionary psychology explanations for things, for a variety of reasons, but as long as we’re listing them, the obvious one to me seems likely to be crab mentality. Living in a tribe, you would rather nobody have too much power, so people can gain support if it looks like the other guy has a ton of power until everyone has around equal power. See also Balance of power, and evolutionary explanations for egalitarianism.
I think this is the right response to the piece, but begs a more explicit challenge of the conclusion that underdog bias is maladaptive (@Garrett Baker offers both pre-modern tribal life and modern international relations as spheres in which this behavior is sensible).
One ought to be careful of the “anti-bias bias” leading one to accept evolutionary explanations for biases but then makes up reasons why they’re maladaptive to fit the (speculative) narrative that the world can be perfected by increasing the prevalence of objectively true beliefs.