You only want to be clearly located within the social space insofar as there’s more than one political coalition
I think I’m disagreeing about how much information you need to convey to locate yourself in location space. You don’t want to stand out from the others in the dance. That doesn’t mean the dance itself isn’t extremely distinctive. There’s a huge difference between a rave, square dancing, line dancing, being a Las Vegas showgirl, being one of the ensemble cast in a Broadway show.
Your entire model here is about zero-sum games, and being able to survive coalition politics. Insofar as there isn’t more than one political coalition, the entire model seems less relevant. (But, there are almost always multiple coalitions so that doesn’t seem to be a problem)
Second, even if you’re just a small group in the wilderness and there are no other humans, if you want to preserve tight social bonds I suspect it’s still important to have a distinctive culture.
Insofar as there isn’t more than one political coalition, the entire model seems less relevant. (But, there are almost always multiple coalitions so that doesn’t seem to be a problem)
This varies a lot depending on structural factors. The survivor game can show up within a largely homogenous group, and within that group one doesn’t want to be distinctive.
In intergroup conflict, from one group’s perspective, you want outsiders to all seem distinctive, and that has to involve making yourselves distinguishable from them. But from the inside that feels like your group just looks kinda normal, and everyone else is “ethnic” or “exotic” or “has an accent” or “uses jargon” or “has weird rules” or some other stereotype.
I think you want the ingroup to seem “normal”, but I think there is selection pressure on groups for their “normal” seeming beliefs to require costly signals. (Or, in general, group cohesion is stronger when group membership requires costly signals. One such type of signal is What Group Members Believe. If your social games depend on that particular input, your beliefs are going to be weird enough to distinguish the ingroup from the outgroup)
I think I’m disagreeing about how much information you need to convey to locate yourself in location space. You don’t want to stand out from the others in the dance. That doesn’t mean the dance itself isn’t extremely distinctive. There’s a huge difference between a rave, square dancing, line dancing, being a Las Vegas showgirl, being one of the ensemble cast in a Broadway show.
Your entire model here is about zero-sum games, and being able to survive coalition politics. Insofar as there isn’t more than one political coalition, the entire model seems less relevant. (But, there are almost always multiple coalitions so that doesn’t seem to be a problem)
Second, even if you’re just a small group in the wilderness and there are no other humans, if you want to preserve tight social bonds I suspect it’s still important to have a distinctive culture.
This varies a lot depending on structural factors. The survivor game can show up within a largely homogenous group, and within that group one doesn’t want to be distinctive.
In intergroup conflict, from one group’s perspective, you want outsiders to all seem distinctive, and that has to involve making yourselves distinguishable from them. But from the inside that feels like your group just looks kinda normal, and everyone else is “ethnic” or “exotic” or “has an accent” or “uses jargon” or “has weird rules” or some other stereotype.
I think you want the ingroup to seem “normal”, but I think there is selection pressure on groups for their “normal” seeming beliefs to require costly signals. (Or, in general, group cohesion is stronger when group membership requires costly signals. One such type of signal is What Group Members Believe. If your social games depend on that particular input, your beliefs are going to be weird enough to distinguish the ingroup from the outgroup)
(A lot of my thinking is downstream of this post by Scott from awhile back)