> My pet hypothesis for years is that this must be the result of an evolutionary arms race within the species. Frans de Waal studied primates and defended just

> My pet hypothesis for years is that this must be the result of an evolutionary arms race within the species. Frans de Waal studied primates and defended just this hypothesis. He wrote a bunch of books, so you may be interested in reading at least some of them. BTW, my pet hypothesis is the social roots of our intelligence is the reason why people mostly hopelessly dumb. They kinda go on intuition and it works in normal social situations, but when it comes to politics or science the intuition fails them. One needs to train their mind to stick to logic and rationality, without taking sides which seem the most beneficial for them. But training is hard and training can easily be overcome by the intuition, which is the natural way for brain to work. You need to keep your brain working against its nature to not lose your intelligence in situations which are not hierarchy games.