Interesting, but the point on “Democracy” seems a bit an applause light to me. We all like democracy so a community needs democracy, right ?
Well, if you look at communities, you’ll see that “leader worship” is actually as least as efficient to build a strong community than democracy. I’m not saying it’s the best option all things considered, but if in the purpose of crafting a community, having a strong, quasi-dictatorial leader that everyone respects tends to be a very efficient way. The “penguin” is a clear example of that : Linus, the “benevolent dictator for life” is a strong factor of the community cohesion. Democratic models can also work (to stay in the same domain, that’s how Debian works, and it works very well) but they aren’t the most likely path to success.
There probably are evolutionary psychology reasons behind the “strong leader” pattern, rooting into families (were the patriarch or the matriarch is the natural “strong leader”) and tribes (which usually aren’t very democratic), the two most primitive communities, but I won’t enter the details because evopsy isn’t my primary field.
The ev-psych reason for the “strong leader” pattern is fitness variance in the competition between men. The leader (dominant male) would be able to impregnate a substantial proportion of the women in the tribe, while the least dominant males wouldn’t reproduce at all. So males are much more competitive because the prize for winning is very high (potentially hundreds of children), while the cost of losing is very low (for women, the fitness variance is smaller because of the limit on the number of pregnancies in theire lifetimes).
So it’s a prisoner’s dilemma where the defector has a huge advantage. If everyone is democratic about sharing their women and one person decides he wants to take them all, he wins and his genes spread.
There are also ev-psych reasons why dictators tend to be corrupted: when you have power, you want to use it to give the advantage to YOUR offspring (or your group maybe?). So even if you have noble intentions at first, there will be a tendency to hoard resources for yourself or others you consider as part of your group.
Yes, but that explains why people (especially male) want to be strong leaders (alpha male), not why people follow strong leaders. For people to follow strong leaders, they need to have an evolutionary advantage in doing so (hope of being the next leader, the leader granting some privileges to his most faithful followers, or something else, I don’t know).
(1) I can become the leader. (2) I can follow a strong leader. (3) I can establish a leaderless coordinated group. (4) I can follow a weak leader. (5) I can be part of an uncoordinated group. (6) I can be part of no group.
Do you see other alternatives?
I’ve sorted those in my suggested order of preference (in survival/reproductive terms) in the primate ancestral environment, assuming I can succeed at them. I’m not highly confident in that order, but I’m pretty sure #1 is at the top. #3 might be better than #2, I’m not really sure. Ditto #5 and #6. My reasoning is that isolated individuals will tend to lose out to individuals in groups, individuals in uncoordinated groups will tend to lose out to individuals in coordinated ones, and individuals in groups led by weak leaders will tend to lose out to individuals in groups led by strong leaders.
Given that most primates in a group will fail at #1 (pretty much definitionally), it doesn’t seem mysterious that we evolved to adopt #2 given a chance. Nor is it mysterious that the mechanisms we evolved to identify strong leaders then get shanghaied by various sorts of fake strong-leadership signaling mechanisms.
There may be an outstanding question here of why #3 never caught on… I’m not sure. This may simply be a historical contingency… our ancestors never happened to develop the mutations that made it feasible. Or it may be that it just doesn’t work well as a strategy. (Certainly it doesn’t work well among humans, but that doesn’t really tell us much of anything in this context.)
Interesting, but the point on “Democracy” seems a bit an applause light to me. We all like democracy so a community needs democracy, right ?
Well, if you look at communities, you’ll see that “leader worship” is actually as least as efficient to build a strong community than democracy. I’m not saying it’s the best option all things considered, but if in the purpose of crafting a community, having a strong, quasi-dictatorial leader that everyone respects tends to be a very efficient way. The “penguin” is a clear example of that : Linus, the “benevolent dictator for life” is a strong factor of the community cohesion. Democratic models can also work (to stay in the same domain, that’s how Debian works, and it works very well) but they aren’t the most likely path to success.
There probably are evolutionary psychology reasons behind the “strong leader” pattern, rooting into families (were the patriarch or the matriarch is the natural “strong leader”) and tribes (which usually aren’t very democratic), the two most primitive communities, but I won’t enter the details because evopsy isn’t my primary field.
What happens when the dictator for life departs (for whatever reason)? .
Best hope they’ve found (or built) a better dictator to replace them...
The ev-psych reason for the “strong leader” pattern is fitness variance in the competition between men. The leader (dominant male) would be able to impregnate a substantial proportion of the women in the tribe, while the least dominant males wouldn’t reproduce at all. So males are much more competitive because the prize for winning is very high (potentially hundreds of children), while the cost of losing is very low (for women, the fitness variance is smaller because of the limit on the number of pregnancies in theire lifetimes).
So it’s a prisoner’s dilemma where the defector has a huge advantage. If everyone is democratic about sharing their women and one person decides he wants to take them all, he wins and his genes spread.
There are also ev-psych reasons why dictators tend to be corrupted: when you have power, you want to use it to give the advantage to YOUR offspring (or your group maybe?). So even if you have noble intentions at first, there will be a tendency to hoard resources for yourself or others you consider as part of your group.
Yes, but that explains why people (especially male) want to be strong leaders (alpha male), not why people follow strong leaders. For people to follow strong leaders, they need to have an evolutionary advantage in doing so (hope of being the next leader, the leader granting some privileges to his most faithful followers, or something else, I don’t know).
Well, let’s look at the choices.
(1) I can become the leader.
(2) I can follow a strong leader.
(3) I can establish a leaderless coordinated group.
(4) I can follow a weak leader.
(5) I can be part of an uncoordinated group.
(6) I can be part of no group.
Do you see other alternatives?
I’ve sorted those in my suggested order of preference (in survival/reproductive terms) in the primate ancestral environment, assuming I can succeed at them. I’m not highly confident in that order, but I’m pretty sure #1 is at the top. #3 might be better than #2, I’m not really sure. Ditto #5 and #6. My reasoning is that isolated individuals will tend to lose out to individuals in groups, individuals in uncoordinated groups will tend to lose out to individuals in coordinated ones, and individuals in groups led by weak leaders will tend to lose out to individuals in groups led by strong leaders.
Given that most primates in a group will fail at #1 (pretty much definitionally), it doesn’t seem mysterious that we evolved to adopt #2 given a chance. Nor is it mysterious that the mechanisms we evolved to identify strong leaders then get shanghaied by various sorts of fake strong-leadership signaling mechanisms.
There may be an outstanding question here of why #3 never caught on… I’m not sure. This may simply be a historical contingency… our ancestors never happened to develop the mutations that made it feasible. Or it may be that it just doesn’t work well as a strategy. (Certainly it doesn’t work well among humans, but that doesn’t really tell us much of anything in this context.)