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Jens Heycke's avatar

Overall, this is an excellent and intriguing post. However, I don't entirely agree with the following:

"But chimpanzees don’t coordinate to systematically engage in the mass murder of their fellow species, the way humans do."

See Jane Goodall's description of the systematic genocide committed by the chimpanzees of Gombe. She was both surprised and horrified by this event, because she had previously believed precisely what you said here.

I am currently working on a game-theoretic model of group conflict and genocide, leveraging work by Robert Axelrod and Anatol Rapaport. The sad reality is there are scenarios where it makes sense (from a strictly game-theoretic and natural selection perspective) for one lineage to completely eradicate another one. This doesn't even require higher intelligence, or even sentience--simple computer programs can simulate it.

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ConnGator's avatar

I think you could expand on this to encompass a theory of America. Our history could be viewed as a history of who is in the ingroup and who is in the outgroup.

The Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, and Borderers who founded the country all viewed each other as the outgroup to some degree, but mostly coalesced by the 1870s. German immigrants spoke funny, but their Lutheranism was close enough to Presbyterianism to fit in.

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The Irish and Italian were of course very outgroup at the beginning. ("No Irish Allowed" signs were common.) As they slowly integrated, it was the Chinese and Latinos turn, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Of course, African Americans and Native Americans were the ultimate outgroups up until the 1970s.

In the 21st century, we have take a political turn, with Republicans and Democrats increasing viewing the other as the outgroup, which has resulted in our extreme polarization.

Our goal as Americans should be to try very hard to return to the politics of the, say, 1950s, when the other party was ok, just not as good as our party. This would go a long way to healing America.

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