Comment by londons_explore
6 hours ago
It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas:
1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent.
2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc.
Combine the two ideas, and you get war.
It's definitely not obvious, given that many, many gregarious species may certainly have inter-group clashes and skirmishes at territory boundaries but no full-scale war. Animals in general avoid violence between conspecifics, for the obvious reason that it's rarely worth the risk of being hurt unless you're very sure you're going to win. Dying for your group is something you almost never see outside eusocial species. Never mind dying in your prime reproductive age!
dying in your prime reproductive age!
I guess dying because you think you’re going to impress’s a mate and stay alive is quite common.
On the contrary, that's very uniquely and peculiarly human stupidity, possibly caused by the fact that our brains take so long to fully mature. In other species, competing for mates (just like territory) is typically highly ritualized exactly because getting seriously hurt is the opposite of adaptive.
>I guess dying because you think you’re going to impress’s a mate and stay alive is quite common.
based on my memory of readings in the matter I don't think so, most animal species "impress a mate" is either
1. do mating ritual better than others
2. actually directly compete with rival who has mate to win mate.
In the second more rare scenario the actually directly compete with rival tends to be very ritualized, and thus when you lose you don't actually get significantly hurt.
In the ritualized combat for mates some species have evolved to points in which accidents become a major problem, for example Stags locking antlers in combat for does.
Obviously this is a scenario where you want to impress and stay alive but it doesn't work out, but it is relatively rare in the species that has evolved antlers to the point where it happens, and it is rare for species to have similar problems, generally the one who loses these competitions does not die, they just assume a lower status.
So all that said the human tactic of Bob, hold my beer while I impress Cindy by riding this croc, is a pretty rare tactic for getting a mate.
Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally.
Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium.
Primates fighting each other is not.
Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage.
We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.
Or put another way - the 'self' can gain advantage with murder, but the group and species probably will pay for it long term.
I wonder if there are just things that species really have to learn over and over, particularly things like 'active deconfliction' etc..
You're confusing interpersonal murder with tribal conflict.
Personal murder is tightly controlled now. But this is a fairly recent development. In many periods it was tolerated under various forms, including slavery, blood feud, honour killings, and state-sanctioned murder as punishment, or political process.
It's only in the last few centuries that it's been prohibited, and the prohibition in practice is still partial in many countries. (See also, gun control.)
Tribal murder has been the norm for most of recorded history. There are very, very few periods in very, very few cultures where there was no tribal/factional murder in living memory, and far more where it was an expected occurrence.
And technology has always been close by. Throughout history, most tech has either been invented for military ends or significantly developed and refined for them.
You are juxtaposing murder with killing. Every culture has a strong taboo against unlawful killing, i.e., murder. What counts as murder has changed, but the taboo against murder itself has not.
How can it be that groups pay for it long term when many of the successful apex predators exhibit interspecies murder and territorialism.
Just to use your own example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapogo_lion_coalition
> We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.
There are plenty of people who advocate for war and consider it good, and plenty of disagreements over war.
People are usually in agreement that war / killing is bad when other people do it but will find all sorts of ways to justify themselves doing it when it is to their advantage. This isn't really contradictory, from an evolutionary perspective.
Plenty disagreements everywhere. Under (usually fake) ideas of not enough resources for everyone, so the strongest must survive.
Nazi planned to exterminate several whole ethnicities. If you think it was (or is) unversally accepted as "Bad" -- think again. Most developed countries had Nazi parties, including US and Canada. Some sympathize today. Several Middle East governments publicly claim that murders/rapes/kidnappings of people from another particular country is just and honorable, and will be rewarded in heavens.
Ancient Spartans (reportedly) killed their own weak children. In order to become a citizen every Spartan must have killed a man (non-citizen). It was considered good and just (by citizens).
In many cultures tribal warfare was paramount, even before states (and some remote tribes practice it even today). It was considered good and just.
And we honor our veterans, and for a good reason. (Without them, we would be captured/killed by other veterans, and honor them anyway). Modern civilizational culture is a thin patina on top of our primal behavior.
Sanctioned killing to defend or strengthen the tribe is generally not equated with murder.
In addition to the standard cross-cultural sample, I find the Seshat database useful for checking universals. https://seshat-db.com/sc/scvars/
No disagreement across cultures? That’s downright funny, there isn’t even agreement over what counts as murder. Do you think a jihadi sawing off a head thinks they’re a murderer?
Cultures aren’t universal, and neither is your particular religious tradition.
I would caution against the use of "murder" so loosely. Lions don't murder their prey. They kill their prey. Murder occurs when one entity with personhood intentional kills another entity with personhood, where personhood is rooted in the ability to comprehend reality (intellect) and the ability to make free choices among comprehended alternatives (free choice). "Murder" thus has a moral dimension that mere killing does not. Personhood is the seat of moral agency; without personhood, murder simply cannot take place, only killing, and it is a category error to ascribe moral goodness or evil to an act committed by a non-person. A spider eating another spider of the same species isn't murder; it may very well be the nature of that species to function that way.
(Entailed also by personhood is social nature. So, murdering another person is bad, because it is opposed to the very nature and thus good of the murderer. It's why killing in self-defense and the death penalty for murder are themselves mere killing, but not murder. Justice is served against the injustice of the gravely antisocial.)
From a game theoretic perspective w.r.t. just resources, murder does not generally pay especially given the social nature of a species given how antithetical it is to the social, but even if it does in some constrained sense, there is a greater intangible loss for those with personhood. Speak to almost anyone who has murdered someone. They will tell you that it changes them drastically, and not in a good way.
Murder is a crime, homicide is the act. A lion doesn’t murder because it isn’t capable of breaking human law, but it can sure commit a homicide.
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It might also depend on mating dynamics. If females mostly prefer to all mate within the top few percent of males in a community, there might not be much to lose if some of the lower status males of them take their chances going on a war party to conquer/steal some females.
This is one theory for crime. You could think of crime as a high variance high risk strategy to improve mating status. You might then expect most criminals to be young men, and for the straight crime rate to be higher than the gay crime rate. And indeed both of these are true.
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I think that’s too narrow. You can also advance your genes by helping your sisters or other close relatives have offspring.
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>We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.
We argue over it all the time by disagreeing on what counts as "murder." Taking lives in war? Not murder. Taking civilian lives in war? Well the enemy often uses civilians as cover, what else can one do? The state takes someone's life? Not murder, just the cost of civil society. Abortion? Murder, obviously. Bombing an abortion clinic? Not murder, because killing killers in God's name is justified.
So what even is "murder?" It isn't simply the taking of a human life. It isn't even the taking of an innocent human life. It isn't even the taking of a human life with premeditation. Murder is an arbitrary line societies draw between the killing they find useful and the killing they don't. It's a legal and moral fiction.
I mean, the United States practically murdered an entire continent of civilizations and cultures and the only people who even care are the descendants of the few Natives we missed. How have we paid for that long term? We're a goddamn global hegemon and nuclear superpower that threatens to annihilate civilizations just for shits and giggles. Murder seems to be working out pretty well for us.
> When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent.
If anything, I'd say plants do it more. Everything in the garden is trying to kill everything else.
orangutans deal with similar and are notorious for being peaceful
> When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take
I don't think it's that straightforward. War is usually extremely wasteful for all involved, even the victor. Plus it puts the whole group at risk, if it spirals out of control.
Yeah, mycorrhizal fungi, the gut microbiome, lichen, pet dogs, etc. Nature is completely brimming with examples of cooperation. It seems to me that more often than not, teaming up with organisms around you will unlock the ability to use more resources you would otherwise have access to. I would guess that this strategy is much more generative than attacking your neighbors and thereby risk your own security
We could hardly eat a fraction of what we eat today if we hadn't teamed up with microbes.