Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by cindyllm » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #261

Sharlin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of every species gets pretty insane over mates. Evolution is about spreading your genes, not about prolonging your life. Obviously the latter is often useful to achieve the former, but not always. There are even numerous examples, such as black widows and bees, where death is even a part of procreation. And I think the exceptions are often found to not really be exceptions. For instance chimps were once seen and…

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

#272

Post by bawolff » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #250

bawolff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doesn't that distinction kind of prove the point? Essentially killing people is fine when society approves and not fine when society doesn't implies that there is no built in norm against killing, its just society's "rules".

Read carefully. Neither me nor bluegatty claimed humans were inherently biased against killing . We claimed that humans were inherently biased against murder - and the universal taboo proves our point.

So your claim is that there is a universal taboo against things that there is a universal taboo against? If your definition of murder is taboo killing, it is very curcular to claim there is a universal taboo against it since by definition it is only murder if there is a taboo. Thus the claim kind of proves the opposite - if you have to limit it to murder then it shows there is no built in bias, as the definition of murder varies from society to society and essentially means killing in a way the society doesn't approve off. There is no possible way for there not to be a bias against murder since if a society is ok with it is ceases to be murder.

> Read carefully

I did, perhaps read my post carefully.

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

#273

Post by ownlife » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

larodi wrote: post #169

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 Very strong statement given the massive killing of kettle and poultry per second. Also given all the wars including those currently raging - I think is rather untrue. Besides the killing a lion does is not over resources, it’s the resource itself.

Kettle? Cattle?

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

#274

Post by inglor_cz » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

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…

In practice, social groups (from tribes to big nations) tend to treat murder very differently from killing in war.

Sufficiently long term, everyone is dead, and I am not sure if we can tell those long-term effects that you foretell from random chance.

The Roman Empire is very dead, but so is the Carthaginian one. Nevertheless, a lot survives from the Roman Empire: basics of law, their alphabet, descendant languages and a certain fame. Quite a lot for famously war-like people.

In comparison, the Carthaginians are gone completely, only fans of history know anything about them. And they are gone because they lost a series of wars all too decisively.

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

#275

Post by delichon » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #243

delichon wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In evolution the winners are the ones who survive to reproduce, and that includes 100% of our ancestors.

The cultural ramifications of choosing one word over another are significant though. "Winner" is a loaded term. > In evolution the survivors reproduced, and that includes 100% of our ancestors.

The context is game theory. Games have winners and losers.

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

#276

Post by delichon » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 10:56 PM UTC

throwaway27448 wrote: post #247

delichon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be easier to think of evolution as the force, and game theory strongly influencing the fitness test. Those who play the games of mating and predator/prey more optimally reproduce more. We descend from billions of generations of the winners.

> and game theory strongly influencing the fitness test Does it? I don't think reproduction is very influenced by game theory.

Biologist John Maynard Smith disagreed. Here he is talking about evolutionary game theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKegQW_lsGI

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

#277

Post by hunterpayne » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 11:53 PM UTC

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…

You have to be in a very secure situation to think this way. You also ignore that a war can prevent more problems down the line though often it doesn't. When applying game theory to these situations, depending on how you rig the utility function, you can get any chosen strategy as optimal. So it is more about how you value outcomes and if you are estimating their probabilities correctly as to what is the right decision. By your logic, imprisoning or executing a serial killer isn't OK (let's say in this situation we know they are guilty).

Finally you are completely ignoring competition for resources in your analysis. What makes you think more monkeys has positive utility to individual monkeys? You hope that's true, but until you can speak to them, its going to be hard to know.

These are complex decision and you are acting as if there is always one "correct" answer to every situation. Heck, the trolley problem was conceived of to explain to people like you why your thinking is just plain wrong in some situations.

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

#278

Post by hunterpayne » Sun, Apr 12, 2026, 12:07 AM UTC

bluegatty wrote: post #208

frakrx wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course it's true, and that there are 'acute moments of distress' doesn't disprove the claim. 'Murder' is nearly a universally negative social concept. There zero cultures wherein arbitrary killing is considered acceptable

Lookup the definition of murder because its subtly different from the definition of the word kill. You keep substituting those two words as if they are synonyms and they are not.

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

#279

Post by hunterpayne » Sun, Apr 12, 2026, 12:15 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #274

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…

In practice, social groups (from tribes to big nations) tend to treat murder very differently from killing in war. Sufficiently long term, everyone is dead, and I am not sure if we can tell those long-term effects that you foretell from random chance. The Roman Empire is very dead, but so is the Carthaginian one. Nevertheless, a lot survives from the Roman Empire: basics of law, their alphabet, descendant languages a…

Plenty of people know who Hannibal Barca was. But sure, they probably don't know anything else about Carthage.

Fun fact, the main lesson from that war on the Carthaginian side was that you never let the merchants control the state in a time of war. There was a point where Hannibal was one siege away from erasing Rome from the history books and the leaders in Carthage called him back because sieges are expensive. This decision cost those leaders everything. Most of western history ever since swung on this lone bad decision. Its one of the few true inflection points in history.

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

#280

Post by bjourne » Sun, Apr 12, 2026, 12:37 AM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #262

bjourne wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read carefully. Neither me nor bluegatty claimed humans were inherently biased against killing . We claimed that humans were inherently biased against murder - and the universal taboo proves our point.

To be fair, it doesn't really seem worth mentioning to say humans are inherently biased against murder , which we then agree is a killing against that society's norms. Because the definitions of "murder" vary so hugely, you're essentially just saying "there is a taboo against breaking the arbitrary rules of your social group."

No. What we are saying is that murder is a universal taboo. That the "arbitrary rules" of every social group on earth regulate killing demonstrates exactly that. It is precisely these rules that demonstrate universality. Some societies regulate what you can eat - halal/kosher. Most don't. Thus, there is no universal taboo against "unlawful eating".