[extropy-chat] italian football victory

[Keith Henson]

At 05:25 PM 7/11/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>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.

If you are going to propose an EP explanation, you should set it in a 
hunter gatherer environment.

And since we still have some of those around you can see if your 
explanation makes sense.