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.
"Over the course of several years, the Kasakela chimpanzees systematically attacked and killed members of the Kahama group. The violence was brutal and deliberate, with groups of Kasakela males ambushing isolated Kahama individuals, beating them to death, and sometimes even cannibalizing them.
Goodall documented these events in detail, noting the strategic nature of the attacks. The Kasakela males worked together to eliminate the Kahama members one by one, until the Kahama group was completely annihilated. This series of events is significant because it was the first time that scientists observed such organized and lethal aggression among chimpanzees in the wild, behaviors previously thought to be uniquely human.
The Gombe Chimpanzee War challenged previous assumptions about the peaceful nature of chimpanzees and forced scientists to reconsider their understanding of primate behavior. Goodall’s observations revealed that chimpanzees, like humans, are capable of intense violence and that such behavior may have deep evolutionary roots."
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.
.
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.
And for the coastal elite, hillbillies and flyover country people are still outgroup. In fact, in much of the elite landscape, anyone outside of about a dozen colleges is outgroup.
Thanks for the link. Strong article that gets into the nitty gritty. Seems like a nebulous large scale in-group-out-group dynamic is now in place that can override all other societal in-group relationships a person can participate in, leaving them completely afloat.
Very enjoyable review, thanks! This struck me as particularly interesting “ However, indiscriminate cooperators would have been exploited and outcompeted by those who carefully cooperated only with their team.” I’m wondering if the “indiscriminate cooperators” were eliminated from the gene pool somehow? If it makes any difference I personally know of quite a few people who could fall into this category, sadly they have been more likely than not to experience exploitation.
“Ever since the Enlightenment, as religion gradually fell by the wayside, people have been trying to ground their moral compasses in another prestigious entity—science. Sadly, this hasn’t really worked.” An important observation. May I observe: The teaching of Jesus was precisely to expand people’s understanding of their ingroup. Everyone is supposed to be included. A tall order to be sure. But an important social corrective to our instincts.
“I once heard a psychologist describe a psychopath as a person who treats their ingroup the same way that normal people treat their outgroup.” Indeed. The psychopath has an ingroup of one: himself.
I come from a family where I am a double "Goyim" - one side were Jewish, the other side Mormon. In each religion the "others" are considered "goyim" and largely not entitled to the same consideration as members of the "mother faith."
When I was a kid we visited my saintly grandmother in Utah (whose own father had multiple wives). She was one of the kindest people I ever met. I was struck by the charity and generosity she showed to"hobos" (what the 'homeless' were called 60 years ago). It was only in later years I realized that for many Mormons this kindness extended to those who shared their faith, but not to apostates.
I am sure this characteristic is not limited to the LDS church but likely many identifiable groups, particularly those that have suffered considerable persecution (as did the Mormons).
Did Richard Wrangham cite any paleo archaeological data.
The stories of egalitarian hunter-gatherers seem to contradict what we know about North American plains tribes. Warriors were intensely competitive, much like members of modern sports teams.
I wonder if coalitional proactive aggression is a better description of male tendencies than of female tendencies. Women seem to be more willing to be cruel to someone within their group. As Joyce Benenson points out, men cooperate as warriors more readily than women.
Female relational aggression is a vicious form of coalitional proactive aggression. Women cooperate very well when it comes to ostracizing a woman who doesn't submit to the group. I'd bet there is even more coalitional proactive aggression among women than among men.
But female aggression differs in that it happens within a group, whereas males tend to be less jealous within a group but more aggressive toward outsiders.
This article was so fascinating. I wonder how much this ingroup/outgroup dynamic plays into the way Jews are demonized by so much of the allegedly "civilized" world.
For millennia, Jews have simply refused to convert or conform no matter what society they found themselves in. They have always maintained their distinct culture, regardless of the constant threat of ethnic cleansing and displacement.
And unlike so many other ethnic minorities, the Jews have survived and even prevailed.
No wonder the world's tyrannical "ingroups" hate them so much.
Since 10/7, I have watched tiny little Israel bravely stand up against every global institution and insist upon their right to defend themselves and maintain their sovereignty.
This has driven the power brokers insane!
So many protests and sanctions and blood libels and temper tantrums and still, the Jews stand strong and continue to do what's necessary to protect their nation and their people.
For the past 10 months, Israel has given the West a Master Class in the power of Moral Courage.
I found this other Substack piece a bit weird... the author, George M. Perry, is a sportswriter and the piece centers around the history of Nellie Bowles, an American journalist. In 2021, Bowles along with Bari Weiss, her married partner, launched Common Sense on Substack. The publication changed its name to The Free Press in 2022. The Free Press is the top-earning Substack. Weiss and Bowles got a bit red-pilled over the left-drift of journalism that started attacking free speech. Bowles wrote a sort of memoir "Morning After the Revolution" where she criticizes the far-left/radical progressive takeover of institutions in the US, including the governments of many major cities and media outlets. In this book, and in other writing, both Bowels and Weiss frequently lament their history participating in cancel culture... the primary aggression of this far-left/radical mob that dominates the modern mainstream press, media and college campuses... as well as much of government.
Mr. Perry's piece talks about the PTSD pain of the victims of cancel culture.
Reading this Substack from Rob caused me to link everything together in support of my own non-scientific, but profoundly observationally obvious (to me anyway) theory that we are in the middle of an era of chaos caused by gender role disruption that goes against evolutionary mechanics. In other words, in Western society that feels like everything is falling apart, I think a primary reason is that we are experiencing a once-in-human-history accelerated transformation from a male-dominated to female-dominated society… and this is at odds with our evolutionary psychology.
Just consider:
"Reactive aggression is an impulsive response to a threat. It is an immediate reaction that is a consequence of anger, fear, or both. It is displayed far more among men than women. And is linked with high levels of testosterone."
The “Execution Hypothesis” and then “In the course of evolution, human communities selected against reactive aggression.” “If a man repeatedly irritated his companions in the group with aggressive and selfish behavior, then gradually, a whispered consensus emerged against him. A conspiracy formed among the other men, and the aggressor was killed.”
So, we tend to deal with people that cannot control their direct aggression, who tend to be young males.
But what about those that demonstrate proactive aggression?
Females are more likely to demonstrate proactive aggression. Females are more social and more group-centric.
This gets back to the cancel culture phenom. It started with the #MeToo movement. Social media put it on steroids. Twitter Mobs would destroy the reputation and lives of anyone considered an outsider to the tribe of far-left/radical progressives that had always been led and promoted by the 3rd wave feminist movement that was rooted in the education system.
It seems to me that if we are to accept the hockey-stick trend of promoting females to positions of dominance, then we also need a hockey-stick trend adjustment for identifying and rooting out those demonstrating proactive aggression.
The problem is that we are ape idiots that still think we need to hold the door open for the educated female behind us… a female that is committed to frankly killing many of us for her own selfish benefits.
a wonderful review but using selective citations can express one's biases.....
"Interestingly, there is also research indicating resting heart rate is a predictor of aggression.
For instance, a meta-analysis found that low heart rate was associated with greater levels of delinquency, aggression, and violence in children and adolescents.
Other research has found that men, on average, have lower resting heart rates than women."
this is not well thought out or explicated well. your "editor" (internal or external) would have improved your piece by removing it.
you are asking your readers to make a logical fallacy based on a meta-analysis of possibly dubious reliability without knowing the magnitude of effect (greater levels of delinquency means 20% more ?, 200% more ? , 2,000% greater ?) and assuming children and adolescents are equivalent to "men compared to women" for an association between heart rate and a person's inherent ability to be proactively aggressive ?
so what bias led you to include this thought factoid in your review ?
do keep reading, thinking and writing ! and talking and videocasting. whatever pays your bills in a way you are ok with.
(although this boomer prefers your writing over your talking head regurgitation on podcasts and such).
Overall, I like the article. After I finished reading it, but I still wonder about the way the monkeys versus human deal with the memories of the pain inflicted by another individual or a group. Nowadays, many humans, individuals or ethnic groups are refreshing the memories of forms of aggression in order to exploit them for emotional and even monetary compensations.
On the other hand, I experienced first hand, in the Eastern Block the "in-group" systemic aggression, up to the lethal form, inflicted by the Socialist teachings coming from the Soviet Stalin-ism. It was pretty much like the documentary I watched, years ago, about the monkeys in Jamaica dismembering one of their own.
In conclusion, the books are still educational in nature, but the reality is much more diverse in ugliness, mostly when a population is "advanced." If we add the AI to the equation, it is a high probability that we may get sky-high misery.
The best and so far most true book about how kind AND cruel are humans, tho chimp coop aggression has occasionally been demonstrated. It might be that coop aggression against the out group is a prerequisite for anti-bully coop aggression against an in-group bully.
In the US today, elite Dems have long been treating Reps as an evil out group.
Our elite organizations, especially government and education orgs, need Diversity and Inclusion—of different political parties.
In order to get tax exemptions, edu orgs must have at least 30% Reps, and 30% Dems, as Trustees & professors. Both parties need to be part of the In-group in edu orgs with the Harvard ins vs the Yale outs vs the Stanford outs.
And sacred acceptance of Free Speech—disagree on what they say, defend their right to say it.
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.
"Over the course of several years, the Kasakela chimpanzees systematically attacked and killed members of the Kahama group. The violence was brutal and deliberate, with groups of Kasakela males ambushing isolated Kahama individuals, beating them to death, and sometimes even cannibalizing them.
Goodall documented these events in detail, noting the strategic nature of the attacks. The Kasakela males worked together to eliminate the Kahama members one by one, until the Kahama group was completely annihilated. This series of events is significant because it was the first time that scientists observed such organized and lethal aggression among chimpanzees in the wild, behaviors previously thought to be uniquely human.
The Gombe Chimpanzee War challenged previous assumptions about the peaceful nature of chimpanzees and forced scientists to reconsider their understanding of primate behavior. Goodall’s observations revealed that chimpanzees, like humans, are capable of intense violence and that such behavior may have deep evolutionary roots."
Maybe coop aggression against an out group is a prerequisite for coop aggression against an in group bully.
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.
.
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.
And for the coastal elite, hillbillies and flyover country people are still outgroup. In fact, in much of the elite landscape, anyone outside of about a dozen colleges is outgroup.
Coincidentally this was posted today:
“Social exclusion represents not only a social trauma but also, when viewed through an evolutionary lens, a potential physical threat.”
NO MORNING AFTER FOR VICTIMS OF CANCELLATION
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/no-morning-after-for-victims-of-cancellation?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=225618&post_id=147560494&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=16gkv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Thanks for the link. Strong article that gets into the nitty gritty. Seems like a nebulous large scale in-group-out-group dynamic is now in place that can override all other societal in-group relationships a person can participate in, leaving them completely afloat.
Just made the same connection. Interesting.
Very enjoyable review, thanks! This struck me as particularly interesting “ However, indiscriminate cooperators would have been exploited and outcompeted by those who carefully cooperated only with their team.” I’m wondering if the “indiscriminate cooperators” were eliminated from the gene pool somehow? If it makes any difference I personally know of quite a few people who could fall into this category, sadly they have been more likely than not to experience exploitation.
“Ever since the Enlightenment, as religion gradually fell by the wayside, people have been trying to ground their moral compasses in another prestigious entity—science. Sadly, this hasn’t really worked.” An important observation. May I observe: The teaching of Jesus was precisely to expand people’s understanding of their ingroup. Everyone is supposed to be included. A tall order to be sure. But an important social corrective to our instincts.
“I once heard a psychologist describe a psychopath as a person who treats their ingroup the same way that normal people treat their outgroup.” Indeed. The psychopath has an ingroup of one: himself.
Really interesting.
I come from a family where I am a double "Goyim" - one side were Jewish, the other side Mormon. In each religion the "others" are considered "goyim" and largely not entitled to the same consideration as members of the "mother faith."
When I was a kid we visited my saintly grandmother in Utah (whose own father had multiple wives). She was one of the kindest people I ever met. I was struck by the charity and generosity she showed to"hobos" (what the 'homeless' were called 60 years ago). It was only in later years I realized that for many Mormons this kindness extended to those who shared their faith, but not to apostates.
I am sure this characteristic is not limited to the LDS church but likely many identifiable groups, particularly those that have suffered considerable persecution (as did the Mormons).
Did Richard Wrangham cite any paleo archaeological data.
The stories of egalitarian hunter-gatherers seem to contradict what we know about North American plains tribes. Warriors were intensely competitive, much like members of modern sports teams.
I wonder if coalitional proactive aggression is a better description of male tendencies than of female tendencies. Women seem to be more willing to be cruel to someone within their group. As Joyce Benenson points out, men cooperate as warriors more readily than women.
Female relational aggression is a vicious form of coalitional proactive aggression. Women cooperate very well when it comes to ostracizing a woman who doesn't submit to the group. I'd bet there is even more coalitional proactive aggression among women than among men.
But female aggression differs in that it happens within a group, whereas males tend to be less jealous within a group but more aggressive toward outsiders.
This article was so fascinating. I wonder how much this ingroup/outgroup dynamic plays into the way Jews are demonized by so much of the allegedly "civilized" world.
For millennia, Jews have simply refused to convert or conform no matter what society they found themselves in. They have always maintained their distinct culture, regardless of the constant threat of ethnic cleansing and displacement.
And unlike so many other ethnic minorities, the Jews have survived and even prevailed.
No wonder the world's tyrannical "ingroups" hate them so much.
Since 10/7, I have watched tiny little Israel bravely stand up against every global institution and insist upon their right to defend themselves and maintain their sovereignty.
This has driven the power brokers insane!
So many protests and sanctions and blood libels and temper tantrums and still, the Jews stand strong and continue to do what's necessary to protect their nation and their people.
For the past 10 months, Israel has given the West a Master Class in the power of Moral Courage.
We have so much to learn from them.
Stay strong, Israel! Haters gonna hate!
This was a very interesting read for me after just reading this https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/no-morning-after-for-victims-of-cancellation.
I found this other Substack piece a bit weird... the author, George M. Perry, is a sportswriter and the piece centers around the history of Nellie Bowles, an American journalist. In 2021, Bowles along with Bari Weiss, her married partner, launched Common Sense on Substack. The publication changed its name to The Free Press in 2022. The Free Press is the top-earning Substack. Weiss and Bowles got a bit red-pilled over the left-drift of journalism that started attacking free speech. Bowles wrote a sort of memoir "Morning After the Revolution" where she criticizes the far-left/radical progressive takeover of institutions in the US, including the governments of many major cities and media outlets. In this book, and in other writing, both Bowels and Weiss frequently lament their history participating in cancel culture... the primary aggression of this far-left/radical mob that dominates the modern mainstream press, media and college campuses... as well as much of government.
Mr. Perry's piece talks about the PTSD pain of the victims of cancel culture.
Reading this Substack from Rob caused me to link everything together in support of my own non-scientific, but profoundly observationally obvious (to me anyway) theory that we are in the middle of an era of chaos caused by gender role disruption that goes against evolutionary mechanics. In other words, in Western society that feels like everything is falling apart, I think a primary reason is that we are experiencing a once-in-human-history accelerated transformation from a male-dominated to female-dominated society… and this is at odds with our evolutionary psychology.
Just consider:
"Reactive aggression is an impulsive response to a threat. It is an immediate reaction that is a consequence of anger, fear, or both. It is displayed far more among men than women. And is linked with high levels of testosterone."
The “Execution Hypothesis” and then “In the course of evolution, human communities selected against reactive aggression.” “If a man repeatedly irritated his companions in the group with aggressive and selfish behavior, then gradually, a whispered consensus emerged against him. A conspiracy formed among the other men, and the aggressor was killed.”
So, we tend to deal with people that cannot control their direct aggression, who tend to be young males.
But what about those that demonstrate proactive aggression?
Females are more likely to demonstrate proactive aggression. Females are more social and more group-centric.
This gets back to the cancel culture phenom. It started with the #MeToo movement. Social media put it on steroids. Twitter Mobs would destroy the reputation and lives of anyone considered an outsider to the tribe of far-left/radical progressives that had always been led and promoted by the 3rd wave feminist movement that was rooted in the education system.
It seems to me that if we are to accept the hockey-stick trend of promoting females to positions of dominance, then we also need a hockey-stick trend adjustment for identifying and rooting out those demonstrating proactive aggression.
The problem is that we are ape idiots that still think we need to hold the door open for the educated female behind us… a female that is committed to frankly killing many of us for her own selfish benefits.
Ha ha, I love it. I'm always looking for intellectual foundation for my developing misogyny, and you supplied it .
I am full on supportive of equality. I think it is misogynist to not punch a female in defense as you would a male with both trying to hit you first.
You and Robert just need to get laid.
Ha! Married to my college sweetheart for 43 years. I will tell her you suggested another evening of marital blisss!
Be nice to your wife!
a wonderful review but using selective citations can express one's biases.....
"Interestingly, there is also research indicating resting heart rate is a predictor of aggression.
For instance, a meta-analysis found that low heart rate was associated with greater levels of delinquency, aggression, and violence in children and adolescents.
Other research has found that men, on average, have lower resting heart rates than women."
this is not well thought out or explicated well. your "editor" (internal or external) would have improved your piece by removing it.
you are asking your readers to make a logical fallacy based on a meta-analysis of possibly dubious reliability without knowing the magnitude of effect (greater levels of delinquency means 20% more ?, 200% more ? , 2,000% greater ?) and assuming children and adolescents are equivalent to "men compared to women" for an association between heart rate and a person's inherent ability to be proactively aggressive ?
so what bias led you to include this thought factoid in your review ?
do keep reading, thinking and writing ! and talking and videocasting. whatever pays your bills in a way you are ok with.
(although this boomer prefers your writing over your talking head regurgitation on podcasts and such).
Overall, I like the article. After I finished reading it, but I still wonder about the way the monkeys versus human deal with the memories of the pain inflicted by another individual or a group. Nowadays, many humans, individuals or ethnic groups are refreshing the memories of forms of aggression in order to exploit them for emotional and even monetary compensations.
On the other hand, I experienced first hand, in the Eastern Block the "in-group" systemic aggression, up to the lethal form, inflicted by the Socialist teachings coming from the Soviet Stalin-ism. It was pretty much like the documentary I watched, years ago, about the monkeys in Jamaica dismembering one of their own.
In conclusion, the books are still educational in nature, but the reality is much more diverse in ugliness, mostly when a population is "advanced." If we add the AI to the equation, it is a high probability that we may get sky-high misery.
The best and so far most true book about how kind AND cruel are humans, tho chimp coop aggression has occasionally been demonstrated. It might be that coop aggression against the out group is a prerequisite for anti-bully coop aggression against an in-group bully.
In the US today, elite Dems have long been treating Reps as an evil out group.
Our elite organizations, especially government and education orgs, need Diversity and Inclusion—of different political parties.
In order to get tax exemptions, edu orgs must have at least 30% Reps, and 30% Dems, as Trustees & professors. Both parties need to be part of the In-group in edu orgs with the Harvard ins vs the Yale outs vs the Stanford outs.
And sacred acceptance of Free Speech—disagree on what they say, defend their right to say it.
A very nice review. I see a future there.
Fascinating —a great read thank you!