7 ms·

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.

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.

Sharlin 6mo ago
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!
- ozim 6mo ago
  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.
  - bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
    >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.
    - bawolff 6mo ago
      In fairness, i dont think dying to impress a girl is particularly common among humans either.
      - bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
        that's true, but among humans the "impressing a girl" pattern seems to be more open ended as to how you will do it, and thus you end up with croc-riding accidents at times.
      - bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
        I was just thinking, perhaps all the fiction that has this as a plot point chooses it because of the man bites dog nature of the incident.
      - esseph 6mo ago
        I really did some extremely dumb things in my twenties that I'm extremely lucky didn't kill me.
        bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
        I once tried to rappel off the side of an apartment building using a garden hose I stole from the building so I could get into my apartment that I was locked out of because my roommate had gone away for the weekend, this was not to impress a girl, it was to get changed to go to the club to meet a girl. I'm also afraid of heights. Luckily the apartment manager came driving up at the right time, probably saving my life.
      - redsocksfan45 6mo ago
        [dead]
  - Sharlin 6mo ago
    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.
    - vasco 6mo ago
      Maybe google "Terminal Investment"
    - Eridanus2 6mo ago
      I feel that rituals of this nature work because they are backed implicitly by the threat of violence, which must be actualized from time to time in order for the ritual to hold force. Just like in human cultures.
    - watwut 6mo ago
      Humans dying to impress a mate are super rare in reality. And even among humans dying to impress ... it is more likely to happen in male only groups where men try to impress and dominate other men.
      - XorNot 6mo ago
        There's an alternate hypothesis about that which is that a lot of adolescent level risky behavior may actually be a way to weed out psychopaths. The argument is essentially: how come daring people to do something gross or embarrassing is so common? There's a weird social dynamic in being the one who goes through with it, and it frequently promotes group cohesion. So maybe the point of it isn't the act or social dominance, but to get people to display normal emotional responses - safe people will be embarrassed, or hesitant or display social support queues or disgust if they have normal emotional processing. The psychopaths? They'll struggle - particularly at that age where the opportunity to learn to blend hasn't had time to develop. Basically a group of guys egging each other on to do the riskier dive into the pool or something aren't trying to impress a mate, they're actually filtering for people who don't emotionally react correctly to whatever the dare is.
- rapidaneurism 6mo ago
  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 individual of low status are already 'dead' so manufacturing instincts and hormonal responses that increase violence does not have a downside.
  - Thiez 6mo ago
    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.
- Jensson 6mo ago
  > Animals in general avoid violence between conspecifics That seems to mostly just be true for oppressed species that doesn't already dominate. For example Orcas attack each other when they get into each other territory, as do ants. Humans dominate most land animals today so they probably lost most of that since humans already kill enough that killing each other is no longer a benefit for them.
bluegatty 6mo ago
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..
- mothballed 6mo ago
  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.
  - actionfromafar 6mo ago
    I think that’s too narrow. You can also advance your genes by helping your sisters or other close relatives have offspring.
    - mothballed 6mo ago
      Sure but you can advance your genes even more by taking a woman for yourself. And if there are already enough other males to ensure the survival of the females and children then it might be worth some of the males going to war to get some females. At some point the marginal utility of warring is better for both the individual and the group than the marginal utility of yet another non-reproducing male hanging around "helping" out their kin while eating the resources.
  - missedthecue 6mo ago
    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.
the_af 6mo ago
> 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.
- culi 6mo ago
  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.
dontlikeyoueith 6mo ago
> 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.
- adsweedler 6mo ago
  Sometimes they do it in their own species, but much more commonly they do it across species. Eucalyptus will kill all but eucalyptus. Redwood trees will form networks and help each other; even an albino redwood tree (no chlorophyll https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/white-wonders/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/white-wond...) can survive. A plant that killed all offshoots of itself would not survive. But plants much more often make perfect genetic copies than animals do, so the selfish gene can explain this behavior
JohnMakin 6mo ago
orangutans deal with similar and are notorious for being peaceful
- londons_explore 6mo ago
  orangutans murder eachother too sometimes. Their hand grip is enough to crush another's skull, and occasionally they do so.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
voidhorse 6mo ago
[flagged]
hetman 6mo ago
Except in this instance the conflict erupted after the population size was reduced due to disease so it's not entirely clear this was caused by the scarcity of resources. Nor is it clear what selective advantage mutually destructive wars would have assuming plenty of resources. The researchers posit group relational dynamics being the primary factor.
- adsweedler 6mo ago
  Scarcity of resources … what if maybe the disease made less “resources” available to these chimpanzees?
konschubert 6mo ago
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.
- Thiez 6mo ago
  We very much do compete for resources. People die of famine, thirst, exposure, and other lack-of-resources-related causes every day. That we could theoretically feed everyone doesn't matter when people compete for more than their fair share.
  - konschubert 6mo ago
    These are distribution problems. Usually intentional. There is enough food to feed everybody.
- prerok 6mo ago
  Emm, what? You are aware of all the wars going on right now?
  - konschubert 6mo ago
    Yes and? They are not about natural resources.
    - Thiez 6mo ago
      Literally about land, oil, rare earth minerals…
      - konschubert 6mo ago
        You can claim that and it's a comfortable thing to believe but that does not make it true. If you want to convince somebody who actually seeks truth, you have to make an argument how any country who has started a war recently has had a net economic profit.
jvanderbot 6mo ago
There's a simple energy argument for both predation and war. It is energetically cheaper to take than to build. If you can take with low risk, there is no (energetic) reason to not do so. Collaboration is the exception. That collaboration is everywhere in many forms is a testament to the power of natural selection.
sjducb 6mo ago
Normally there are more than 2 actors, which changes the reward structure. X spends resources to kill Y. This benefits X because X doesn’t have to compete with Y anymore. However Z also gets the benefits because they don’t have to compete with Y either. In addition Z hasn’t spent any resources to eliminate Y so Z wins. The stable equilibrium is 100% strategy Z. Most animals will use violence in self defence, or when fighting over a specific resource. They don’t kill to remove competition. Chimps and humans are an exception to this. Likely it’s because the coalitional nature of human and chimp violence reduces the cost of inflicting the violence to near zero, and the costs are spread across the group, so it’s worth doing.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]

Sharlin 6mo ago

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!

ozim 6mo ago
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.
- bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
  >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.
  - bawolff 6mo ago
    In fairness, i dont think dying to impress a girl is particularly common among humans either.
    - bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
      that's true, but among humans the "impressing a girl" pattern seems to be more open ended as to how you will do it, and thus you end up with croc-riding accidents at times.
    - bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
      I was just thinking, perhaps all the fiction that has this as a plot point chooses it because of the man bites dog nature of the incident.
    - esseph 6mo ago
      I really did some extremely dumb things in my twenties that I'm extremely lucky didn't kill me.
      - bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
        I once tried to rappel off the side of an apartment building using a garden hose I stole from the building so I could get into my apartment that I was locked out of because my roommate had gone away for the weekend, this was not to impress a girl, it was to get changed to go to the club to meet a girl. I'm also afraid of heights. Luckily the apartment manager came driving up at the right time, probably saving my life.
    - redsocksfan45 6mo ago
      [dead]
- Sharlin 6mo ago
  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.
  - vasco 6mo ago
    Maybe google "Terminal Investment"
  - Eridanus2 6mo ago
    I feel that rituals of this nature work because they are backed implicitly by the threat of violence, which must be actualized from time to time in order for the ritual to hold force. Just like in human cultures.
  - watwut 6mo ago
    Humans dying to impress a mate are super rare in reality. And even among humans dying to impress ... it is more likely to happen in male only groups where men try to impress and dominate other men.
    - XorNot 6mo ago
      There's an alternate hypothesis about that which is that a lot of adolescent level risky behavior may actually be a way to weed out psychopaths. The argument is essentially: how come daring people to do something gross or embarrassing is so common? There's a weird social dynamic in being the one who goes through with it, and it frequently promotes group cohesion. So maybe the point of it isn't the act or social dominance, but to get people to display normal emotional responses - safe people will be embarrassed, or hesitant or display social support queues or disgust if they have normal emotional processing. The psychopaths? They'll struggle - particularly at that age where the opportunity to learn to blend hasn't had time to develop. Basically a group of guys egging each other on to do the riskier dive into the pool or something aren't trying to impress a mate, they're actually filtering for people who don't emotionally react correctly to whatever the dare is.
rapidaneurism 6mo ago
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 individual of low status are already 'dead' so manufacturing instincts and hormonal responses that increase violence does not have a downside.
- Thiez 6mo ago
  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.
Jensson 6mo ago
> Animals in general avoid violence between conspecifics That seems to mostly just be true for oppressed species that doesn't already dominate. For example Orcas attack each other when they get into each other territory, as do ants. Humans dominate most land animals today so they probably lost most of that since humans already kill enough that killing each other is no longer a benefit for them.

bluegatty 6mo ago

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..

mothballed 6mo ago
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.
- actionfromafar 6mo ago
  I think that’s too narrow. You can also advance your genes by helping your sisters or other close relatives have offspring.
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    Sure but you can advance your genes even more by taking a woman for yourself. And if there are already enough other males to ensure the survival of the females and children then it might be worth some of the males going to war to get some females. At some point the marginal utility of warring is better for both the individual and the group than the marginal utility of yet another non-reproducing male hanging around "helping" out their kin while eating the resources.
- missedthecue 6mo ago
  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.

the_af 6mo ago

> 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.

culi 6mo ago
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.

dontlikeyoueith 6mo ago

> 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.

adsweedler 6mo ago
Sometimes they do it in their own species, but much more commonly they do it across species. Eucalyptus will kill all but eucalyptus. Redwood trees will form networks and help each other; even an albino redwood tree (no chlorophyll https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/white-wonders/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/white-wond...) can survive. A plant that killed all offshoots of itself would not survive. But plants much more often make perfect genetic copies than animals do, so the selfish gene can explain this behavior

JohnMakin 6mo ago

orangutans deal with similar and are notorious for being peaceful

londons_explore 6mo ago
orangutans murder eachother too sometimes. Their hand grip is enough to crush another's skull, and occasionally they do so.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]

voidhorse 6mo ago

[flagged]

hetman 6mo ago

Except in this instance the conflict erupted after the population size was reduced due to disease so it's not entirely clear this was caused by the scarcity of resources. Nor is it clear what selective advantage mutually destructive wars would have assuming plenty of resources. The researchers posit group relational dynamics being the primary factor.

adsweedler 6mo ago
Scarcity of resources … what if maybe the disease made less “resources” available to these chimpanzees?

konschubert 6mo ago

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.

Thiez 6mo ago
We very much do compete for resources. People die of famine, thirst, exposure, and other lack-of-resources-related causes every day. That we could theoretically feed everyone doesn't matter when people compete for more than their fair share.
- konschubert 6mo ago
  These are distribution problems. Usually intentional. There is enough food to feed everybody.
prerok 6mo ago
Emm, what? You are aware of all the wars going on right now?
- konschubert 6mo ago
  Yes and? They are not about natural resources.
  - Thiez 6mo ago
    Literally about land, oil, rare earth minerals…
    - konschubert 6mo ago
      You can claim that and it's a comfortable thing to believe but that does not make it true. If you want to convince somebody who actually seeks truth, you have to make an argument how any country who has started a war recently has had a net economic profit.

jvanderbot 6mo ago

There's a simple energy argument for both predation and war. It is energetically cheaper to take than to build. If you can take with low risk, there is no (energetic) reason to not do so. Collaboration is the exception. That collaboration is everywhere in many forms is a testament to the power of natural selection.

sjducb 6mo ago

Normally there are more than 2 actors, which changes the reward structure. X spends resources to kill Y. This benefits X because X doesn’t have to compete with Y anymore. However Z also gets the benefits because they don’t have to compete with Y either. In addition Z hasn’t spent any resources to eliminate Y so Z wins. The stable equilibrium is 100% strategy Z. Most animals will use violence in self defence, or when fighting over a specific resource. They don’t kill to remove competition. Chimps and humans are an exception to this. Likely it’s because the coalitional nature of human and chimp violence reduces the cost of inflicting the violence to near zero, and the costs are spread across the group, so it’s worth doing.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]