(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.)
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.)