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Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

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Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#191

Post by konschubert »

londons_explore wrote: post #38
OgsyedIE wrote: post #32

The primatologist Richard Wrangam once advanced the theory that tribe vs. tribe conspecific homicides - what he called coalitionary killing - are an evolved trait that was selected for in primates by some kind of pro-homicide selection pressures in the ancestral environment (where homicide reliably grants an advantage to the expected relative gene frequency of the perpetrator's genes). I haven't kept up with biology…

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.

Important to remember that we as humans no longer compete for resources.

We have more than enough resources to go around for 10 billion people.

The limiting factor is in intelligence and dexterity. In other words, we get richer when we are more.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#192

Post by komali2 »

deepsun wrote: post #84
bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disagreem…

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/kidnap…

> 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.

This is too cynical a take. "Tribal" warfare (what, Africa, North America?) seems to not be anything compared to civilizational war machines. Evidence shows it instead is two groups shooting arrows at eachother or engaging in non-bladed physical combat - think the PRC vs India in the mountains - with maybe one death. Sort of a mutually accepted way to "blow off steam."

Given that these kinds of battles exist throughout history, alongside catastrophic civilizational ethnocides, we can't assume one or the other is our "core primal behavior." Seems we have a tendency to both, depending on circumstance.

What is universally true though, preceding our capability to organize into warbands, is the fact that our evolutionary advantage is derived from our social nature. We rule the planet because we're so social we're the only species that invented language so as to communicate very complex topics. So in terms of "natural order" for humans, and adaptive behavior, it clearly is cooperation.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#193

Post by brabel »

icameron wrote: post #167
deepsun wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/kidnap…

I was thinking about your last point about why we honor veterans. In the US it’s not really the case that without them we’d be captured or killed. All our conflicts in the last several generations have been us invading or fighting in foreign lands against forces that were not attacking us. All our modern military personnel are willfully employed and well compensated and given lifetime benefits for that.

The US engages in preventive wars, generally. For example, the wars in Korea and Vietnam were ultimately fought to prevent the USSR from becoming more dominant than the USA and ultimately to prevent it from becoming so strong that in an eventual direct confrontation they would be able to cause a lot of destruction in the US. Iran is similar: they seem to want to prevent Iran from getting nukes which could then be used to destroy Israel, which the US considers its protectorate. But this is a super slippery slope. It’s essentially the same excuse Russia used in Georgia and now Ukraine: they are near neighbors geographically and culturally that must be stopped from joining the enemy alliance in order to prevent the enemy from attacking Russia in turn, which would be much easier should those countries be part of NATO. But where do you stop? Should Cuba be allowed to join Russia military alliance? Should Mexico be allowed to join BRICS? According to US foreign policy, the answer is always no, because of “national security”.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#195

Post by never_inline »

bluegatty wrote: post #64
londons_explore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 disagreem…

> Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures.

Numbers 31.17-18

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#197

Post by [deleted] »

dml2135 wrote: post #71
bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disagreem…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#198

Post by [deleted] »

toivo wrote: post #170
bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disagreem…

Among the Yanomami (per Napoleon Chagnon), killing outsiders was not “murder,” it raised status. Men who killed had more wives. Violence was cyclical and regulated, not collapse. Humans are not universally anti-killing, mainly in-group. That pressure kept population density low and groups mobile. Less surplus, less accumulation, weaker incentives for technological scaling. Over ~10,000+ years this maintained a relati…

[deleted]

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#199

Post by frakrx »

bluegatty wrote: post #64
londons_explore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 disagreem…

This is simply not true, in time of severe distress and survival pressure humans are clearly capable of mass killings. It happened so many times throughout history. For example a famine forces a human group to take over rivals resources or when defending own group against agressive rivals.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#200

Post by Thiez »

rapidaneurism wrote: post #186
Sharlin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't think of it as individuals, but as individual genes. A group of 10 with the same genes, that can eliminate a group of 10 with different genes by losing one individual (because they were fighting to the death, while their opponents did not) is 9 copies up. An alternative view is that in groups with alphas that father most offspring, and status is based on the individual's ability to risk death. Genes in an indiv…

The extreme version of this would be insects like ants and certain types of bees, where the vast majority of individuals are biologically incapable of reproduction, and serve the one or few queens that are capable.
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