The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War - Aspects of Group Selection

[Agrippa]

The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War

Jung-Kyoo Choi1 and Samuel Bowles2*
Altruism—benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself—and parochialism—hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group—are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two—which we term "parochial altruism"—is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because altruistic or parochial behavior reduces one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by eschewing these behaviors. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to success in these conflicts. Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War -- Choi and Bowles 318 (5850): 636 -- Science


See also Dienekes comments:

Via Yann, I am alerted to a new Science report on the evolution of parochial altruism. The authors describe how hypothetical genes for parochialism (P) and altruism (A) could have co-evolved. Parochial altruists (PA) risk death in combat with other groups. How could the PA combination evolve?


The authors suggest that PA fighters do risk death, but in conflicts between groups, it is the groups with more PAs that have a higher chance of winning. Thus, while parochial altruists are selected against (because they risk their lives for their group), they are also selected for (because they kill off more members of less-PA groups in violent conflicts). Moreover, the losing side's numbers are replenished by conquerors' genes (thus becoming more PA).


The authors contend that archeologically-derived estimates of group warfare are consistent with their scenario for the evolution parochial altruism. One would think that other, more recent, historical examples could also be used, e.g., between city-state warfare in classical Greece.


The paper's innovation is that a seemingly "irrational" behavior from selfish genes' point of view could nonetheless evolve. The genes that cause their bearers to die in patriotic battles may die, but their competing alleles on the losing side may suffer more.

Dienekes\' Anthropology Blog: How humans became warlike altruists

Finally they talk about the effects of group selection again and yes, they are right on track. But the title "how humans became..." is wrong, since I guess it was rather an increase of respective genes with a diverging element being always present - in certain groups and individuals.

The highest level groups were formed by high positive individual and group selection, which resulted in racially progressive forms both physically and psychologically, whereas one sided adaptation without positive selective effects of group selection and individual high level competition led to degenerations and one sided adaptations.

Compare with:
On "Progressiveness" - Active and Passive Adaptation

Racially progressive tendencies in Homo sapiens

Long Bones Growth Variations and Brachycephalisation

Even if a certain biological level was reached, without constant pressures by natural selection or human measurements through Eugenic policies the good shape can be lost again, which leads us to Eugenic ideas:
My argumentation in favour of an Eugenic policy

Humans reached a certain level of biological as well as cultural development because their ancestors had to deal with high level challenges which excluded negative forms from the genpool or at least reduced their numbers. Since Medieval Times we now have an almost strictly contraselective regime, especially since modern and post-2nd World War times even more so, which makes the case more urgent.

However, its much appreciated that there is some talk again about how certain physical and psychic traits of humans in general or certain groups and individuals in particular came up and spread or were diminuished. War and conflicts, group actions and challenges of collectives are a too often neglected field of human evolution of greatest importance.

The absence of group selection and punishment of anti-group oriented, corrupted behaviour allows the return of asocial and detrimental elements both from inside as well as from outside the group. So culture and the way of life of a group is importance not just for the current state of a people, but also the biological evolution of the respective group.

Some higher level progressive variants already reached a level above primitive collective orientation and touched higher Idealism and collective rationality, but were, unfortunately, stopped by their own success in newly formed unities of bigger size and with a higher degree of variation with a lower degree of positive selection.
This is the human and especially European tragedy we face and have to avert.