I agree with all of that. Maybe we are splitting hairs between 'evolution' as a selection process (and we are singling out humans to discuss), and the environme

I agree with all of that. Maybe we are splitting hairs between 'evolution' as a selection process (and we are singling out humans to discuss), and the environment as a total system that is in constant flux and development with evolution as the rule. And in this large system, there is a lot of chaos, but each part does follow evolution to adapt to the chaos. Thus everything is evolution, regardless of if it was emergent or artifacts. We exist because we got here by evolving along with everything else in our environment. Sure some things aligned in our favor and it looks emergent. But the base system had to exist for something to emerge from. So for humans specifically, we can see that group behavior can lead to individual success, groups with more success (more calories) because of some group behavior would survive, and whatever brain architecture lead to that behavior would be the surviving trait. Yes, there is a lot of theories, or models that overfit what was are trying to talk about, like status. But there are human behaviors, and we can study them, even if our early attempts have some faults. And, with all of what you said, and I said. It is true that there are so many variables that we have evolved/adapted for (including behaviors), that in the modern world we have shifted all of the inputs so that our evolved brain is basically thrown into a blender and it all looks like chaos. And now we are trying to develop models based on the outputs of chaos. I just happen to be hopeful we will be able to tease it out. The human animal has behaviors and traits just like flocking birds, we can study flocking, we can study humans forming groups. Chimps, Lion Prides, all very stable group dynamics that follow the same pattern over and over. Humans are just another animal to study. And it seems like human primates do pay a lot of attention to status. I think we are just arguing over the sliding scale of 1%-99% what is random. For beer. That is curious case. Animals all the way back to the fruit fly have mechanisms for processing alcohol. Even animals very far away on the evolutionary tree can get drunk. So that ability has been around, I think it has something to do with using calories. There are calories in alcohol, so this had an advantage, and getting drunk is the artifact. Things like Nicotine, cocaine, heroin, trigger things in the brain that are totally random, not evolved FOR. If anything we should evolve the ability to defend against the detrimental effects. Maybe that would happen if we didn't have technology to save people and they died out.