[extropy-chat] italian football victory

[Martin Striz]

On 7/11/06, steven mckenzie <goldgrif at yahoo.com> wrote:
> may I ask, do you feel that possibly people who follow
> such psychology give up "rational thinking" and follow
> the herd due to laziness or fear?

Probably fear more than laziness.  I could propose an evolutionary
explanation for such behavior:

When a population of humans is facing an external threat, heirarchical
organization is more likely to lead to an effective solution to the
problem.  So people make dominance-submission realationships a more
salient aspect of their psychology.  One or a few people take command,
and the rest follow.  Debating endlessly as peers could lead to
stagnation so that the threat is not addressed sufficiently.

We see this on a less profound level whenever a classroom is divided
up into groups and given an assignment.  One or two people take the
lead.  Suppose you told the class that a hungry bear was walking down
the hallway outside.  I bet they would quickly organize to save
themselves, with one or a few people taking command.

But that's a just-so story.

Martin