A schelling point is an arbitrary default choice converged upon without communication when agreement is needed more than correctness. A territorial border between animals is an extremely non-arbitrary result of often very thorough tests of relative strength and communications of will. Animal borders are opposite to schelling points.
Borders between human territories are pretty arbitrary, we don’t really have the kind of bounded conflict that can produce a relative strength estimate any more (some of us used to), and most of us engage in antinductive commitment races by propagandising mythic histories about the legitimacy of our land claims (I don’t believe in that shit though, personally). The present order truly seems to be satisfied with schelling points for borders, it doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as we can agree, and never disagree, and whatever we agree about is the true border.
But animal borders aren’t arbitrary, they’re constantly renegotiated. The negotiations may be partly tacit, but there’s nothing whimsical or symbolic about the outcomes. The animals know where the resources are, they know how much they want them, they know their neighbors, they know how often the neighbors come to check their border so they can estimate the amount of pressure they face, and they know the risks of getting into a fight with their neighbor, so they’re able to make really pretty rational calculations to decide where the borders are.
If that’s the case, then isn’t it an astonishing coincidence that the negotiated boundary just so happens to coincide with the fence?
Some experiments that would more clearly test the use of Schelling points:
If instead of a fence we have an even more trivial boundary marker, like a line of 4-inch-wide curb stones, do the animals still use that as their boundary? (Prediction: Yes)
If the boundary marker is surreptitiously moved slightly to one side, do the animals respect the new location, or do they continue using the old location? (Prediction: New location, until the deviation from the original line becomes significant, at which point the disfavored party will breach it.)
If the boundary marker is removed entirely, do the animals start fighting again? (Prediction: Yes)
Not a coincidence, there are practical reasons borders end up on thresholds. A sort of quantization that happens in the relative strength calculation. Two models:
Simple model: You could say the true border can be defined in terms of the amount of time or effort it takes to get there from the cat’s houses. It takes a certain amount of time and effort to get over a fence, so if the true border is (from tuxedo’s house) between distance tud + yd and tud + yd + fd, then the border in practice will end up being exactly on the fence, because you can’t put a border halfway up the fence, or the situation would look the same if you did.
A more accurate model: The border is measured in terms of how hard it is to defend a space from being used by the other side. I’d guess that cats become vulnerable to attack when they mount a fence (same as humans crossing a river), either coming or going, so extending your territory beyond the fence is difficult. If your strength is higher than the amount of strength it takes to defend everything before the threshold, but lower than the amount it takes to cross the threshold and then defend some on the other side, then the border will be exactly on the threshold.
I’m pretty sure I’d predict no for 1. Cats don’t seem to care about that stuff.
For 2, I’m not sure, if there were a hole in the fence, I’d expect confrontations to happen there because that’s a chokepoint where a cat could get through safely if the other one wasn’t standing on the other side, and maybe the chokepoint is a vulnerability threshold, too. Chokepoints are thresholds for projectile combat (because when you come through the defender sees you immediately but you don’t spot them until they start shooting), cats may be partly characterizable as stealth projectiles.
Also worth noting is that, eg, dogs, they engage in “boundary aggression” at things like fences, but experiments show that they’re doing it for the love of the game. If you remove the fence, hostilities cease. Cats may have some of this going on as well. They may on some level enjoy yelling and acting tough while being in no risk of having to actually fight.
3: Yeah, but because it makes the relative strength calculation harder. A fence is a blessed device that allows cats to get a good look at each other without engaging. I wish humans had something like that. (A hole in a fence may also be a good device for this)
Also with eg dog territory, the boundary markers aren’t arbitrary—presumably the reason dogs piss on trees & lampposts, which are not physical thresholds, is (a) they provide some protection for the scent against being removed eg by rain; (b) they are (hence) standard locations for rival dogs to check for scent, rather than having to sniff vast areas of ground; ie they are (evolved) Schelling points for potential boundary markers.
(Walls are different as they are both potential boundary markers and physical thresholds.)
Do we know whether wolves really treat scent marks as boundary markers.
Some confusing things about wolf territoriality is they frequently honestly signal their locations through howling while trying (and imo failing?) to obfuscate their number in the way that they howl.
Most of the time people say “Schelling point” they mean this. Maybe it would be better to call it a Schelling fence, but even that post claims that it is a Schelling point. I suspect that you can reframe it to make it true Schelling point, such as the participants coordinating to approximate the real game by a smaller tractable game, but I’m not sure.
It seems to me, it is advantageous for the animals to fight for the territory up to a certain degree, where plus-munis delta territory does not justify more fighting, so they sort of agree on some point, be it a clear small fence in this case, or, what I would imagine happens in nature, a somewhat broad imaginary line. So both of your points stand.
A schelling point is an arbitrary default choice converged upon without communication when agreement is needed more than correctness. A territorial border between animals is an extremely non-arbitrary result of often very thorough tests of relative strength and communications of will. Animal borders are opposite to schelling points.
Borders between human territories are pretty arbitrary, we don’t really have the kind of bounded conflict that can produce a relative strength estimate any more (some of us used to), and most of us engage in antinductive commitment races by propagandising mythic histories about the legitimacy of our land claims (I don’t believe in that shit though, personally). The present order truly seems to be satisfied with schelling points for borders, it doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as we can agree, and never disagree, and whatever we agree about is the true border.
But animal borders aren’t arbitrary, they’re constantly renegotiated. The negotiations may be partly tacit, but there’s nothing whimsical or symbolic about the outcomes. The animals know where the resources are, they know how much they want them, they know their neighbors, they know how often the neighbors come to check their border so they can estimate the amount of pressure they face, and they know the risks of getting into a fight with their neighbor, so they’re able to make really pretty rational calculations to decide where the borders are.
If that’s the case, then isn’t it an astonishing coincidence that the negotiated boundary just so happens to coincide with the fence?
Some experiments that would more clearly test the use of Schelling points:
If instead of a fence we have an even more trivial boundary marker, like a line of 4-inch-wide curb stones, do the animals still use that as their boundary? (Prediction: Yes)
If the boundary marker is surreptitiously moved slightly to one side, do the animals respect the new location, or do they continue using the old location? (Prediction: New location, until the deviation from the original line becomes significant, at which point the disfavored party will breach it.)
If the boundary marker is removed entirely, do the animals start fighting again? (Prediction: Yes)
Not a coincidence, there are practical reasons borders end up on thresholds. A sort of quantization that happens in the relative strength calculation. Two models:
Simple model: You could say the true border can be defined in terms of the amount of time or effort it takes to get there from the cat’s houses. It takes a certain amount of time and effort to get over a fence, so if the true border is (from tuxedo’s house) between distance tud + yd and tud + yd + fd, then the border in practice will end up being exactly on the fence, because you can’t put a border halfway up the fence, or the situation would look the same if you did.
A more accurate model: The border is measured in terms of how hard it is to defend a space from being used by the other side. I’d guess that cats become vulnerable to attack when they mount a fence (same as humans crossing a river), either coming or going, so extending your territory beyond the fence is difficult. If your strength is higher than the amount of strength it takes to defend everything before the threshold, but lower than the amount it takes to cross the threshold and then defend some on the other side, then the border will be exactly on the threshold.
I’m pretty sure I’d predict no for 1. Cats don’t seem to care about that stuff.
For 2, I’m not sure, if there were a hole in the fence, I’d expect confrontations to happen there because that’s a chokepoint where a cat could get through safely if the other one wasn’t standing on the other side, and maybe the chokepoint is a vulnerability threshold, too. Chokepoints are thresholds for projectile combat (because when you come through the defender sees you immediately but you don’t spot them until they start shooting), cats may be partly characterizable as stealth projectiles.
Also worth noting is that, eg, dogs, they engage in “boundary aggression” at things like fences, but experiments show that they’re doing it for the love of the game. If you remove the fence, hostilities cease. Cats may have some of this going on as well. They may on some level enjoy yelling and acting tough while being in no risk of having to actually fight.
3: Yeah, but because it makes the relative strength calculation harder. A fence is a blessed device that allows cats to get a good look at each other without engaging. I wish humans had something like that. (A hole in a fence may also be a good device for this)
Also with eg dog territory, the boundary markers aren’t arbitrary—presumably the reason dogs piss on trees & lampposts, which are not physical thresholds, is (a) they provide some protection for the scent against being removed eg by rain; (b) they are (hence) standard locations for rival dogs to check for scent, rather than having to sniff vast areas of ground; ie they are (evolved) Schelling points for potential boundary markers.
(Walls are different as they are both potential boundary markers and physical thresholds.)
Do we know whether wolves really treat scent marks as boundary markers.
Some confusing things about wolf territoriality is they frequently honestly signal their locations through howling while trying (and imo failing?) to obfuscate their number in the way that they howl.
I don’t know; I had assumed so but maybe not
Most of the time people say “Schelling point” they mean this. Maybe it would be better to call it a Schelling fence, but even that post claims that it is a Schelling point. I suspect that you can reframe it to make it true Schelling point, such as the participants coordinating to approximate the real game by a smaller tractable game, but I’m not sure.
It seems to me, it is advantageous for the animals to fight for the territory up to a certain degree, where plus-munis delta territory does not justify more fighting, so they sort of agree on some point, be it a clear small fence in this case, or, what I would imagine happens in nature, a somewhat broad imaginary line.
So both of your points stand.