There are similar problems with getting Tit-for-Tat strategies to accumulate in repeated ecological Prisoner’s Dilemma tests. If there isn’t a subgroup population of sufficient size, it never comes to dominate the population.
Sometimes particles tunnel out of very deep potential wells, is all I can say.
lt’s separate cultural and genetic dynamics here. on the fine scale level between group genetic variance is simply often weak tea to within group variance, and as eliezer implies ‘cheater’ strategies are pretty good. in meta-population dynamics when one group exterminates another is it usually total genocide? my reading of the ethnography suggests that usually men kill men and boys. they keep women who are fertile. this means that between group competition results in genetic assimilation of losers via their female lineages. but, it often implies cultural annihilation. the descendants of the sabine women carried their genes, but not their culture (or at least proportionately less of their culture, and no identity as sabines).
how is this relevant to religion? i think it suggests that the case of cultural group selection for religion is viable, but genetic group selection is less so (that is, selection for religiosity on a biological level because of its functional benefits). the conversion of african tribe after tribe to christianity or islam en masse isn’t one of genetic replacement by muslims or christians, it is one of flips of group identity.
There are similar problems with getting Tit-for-Tat strategies to accumulate in repeated ecological Prisoner’s Dilemma tests. If there isn’t a subgroup population of sufficient size, it never comes to dominate the population.
Sometimes particles tunnel out of very deep potential wells, is all I can say.
lt’s separate cultural and genetic dynamics here. on the fine scale level between group genetic variance is simply often weak tea to within group variance, and as eliezer implies ‘cheater’ strategies are pretty good. in meta-population dynamics when one group exterminates another is it usually total genocide? my reading of the ethnography suggests that usually men kill men and boys. they keep women who are fertile. this means that between group competition results in genetic assimilation of losers via their female lineages. but, it often implies cultural annihilation. the descendants of the sabine women carried their genes, but not their culture (or at least proportionately less of their culture, and no identity as sabines).
how is this relevant to religion? i think it suggests that the case of cultural group selection for religion is viable, but genetic group selection is less so (that is, selection for religiosity on a biological level because of its functional benefits). the conversion of african tribe after tribe to christianity or islam en masse isn’t one of genetic replacement by muslims or christians, it is one of flips of group identity.