CARTA: Violence in Human Evolution - Richard Wrangham: Parallel Evolution of Humanity and Savagery

(Visit: www.uctv.tv/) Human male violence is paradoxical. On the one hand, within social groups there is a strong tendency for avoidance of direct conflicts such that confrontations between angry individuals or groups normally end without serious harm. On the other hand, our species has a consistent history of intense deliberate violence, ranging from planned homicides and low-level and long-lasting warfare among nomadic hunter-gatherers to massive intermittent conflicts among states. Richard Wrangham (Harvard Univ) shows that the combination of aggression styles is better understood as being due to two neurobiologically distinct patterns that have been subject to contrasting selective regimes. He concludes that the combination of these two styles of aggression makes humans well adapted for both war and avoidance of war. Recorded on 05/16/2014. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 28354]

[@johns4775]

Perhaps Wrangham had the answer for the down regulation of reactive violence back in 2014--coalitions of males exacting capital punishment on excessively violent males---but was not ready at the time to make an argument for it. The Goodness Paradox does that.

[@marcusmoonstein242]

Men react to incentives. If the probability of success is high and the risk low, then men will act violently (as with inter-group violence). If the probability of success is low and the risk is high, then men will avoid violent action (as in intra-group violence). The real question is why these specific incentives exist in the first place. Evolutionary psychology may suggest two reasons. Firstly, that men in your in-group are much more likely to be relatives as compared to men from other groups. Evolution would then push us to avoid killing male relatives in our own in-group. Secondly, killing men of your own group means that you have less fighters on your side when you need to fight other groups. Evolution would then push us to avoid killing unrelated in-group men even when we have disagreements with them.

[@justgivemethetruth]

You live in a farmyard with your daughter? Is it really true that the most frequent circumstance for murder is bar fights?

[@scotty]

Good

[@davidimpastato460]

yes