I don’t think it’s that simple. Competence isn’t always used to get food. There are a lot of different skills and kinds of competence, and a lot of them might get you singled out.
It’s often the smartest kids in the class that become the target of bullies.
Also intelligence often tends to question the social norm, and that’s a recipe for getting singled out.
I should also note there’s a difference between competence rewarded, and incompetence punished. I suspect the second happens a lot more than the first.
One important difference is that “punish the outlier” is compatible with punishing notable incompetence and not compatible with rewarding the particularly competent. But this is pretty theoretical—there’s at least some evidence that primitive societies _DO_ honor as role models those who are expert (as long as they’re expert at conventional things).
I don’t think it’s that simple. Competence isn’t always used to get food. There are a lot of different skills and kinds of competence, and a lot of them might get you singled out.
It’s often the smartest kids in the class that become the target of bullies.
Also intelligence often tends to question the social norm, and that’s a recipe for getting singled out.
I should also note there’s a difference between competence rewarded, and incompetence punished. I suspect the second happens a lot more than the first.
One important difference is that “punish the outlier” is compatible with punishing notable incompetence and not compatible with rewarding the particularly competent. But this is pretty theoretical—there’s at least some evidence that primitive societies _DO_ honor as role models those who are expert (as long as they’re expert at conventional things).