[ExI] Armchair Evolutionary Psychology: Larks vs Night Owls

[Kaj Sotala]

On 3/14/08, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
>  One person put forward the theory that we might have evolved these
>  differences in the past so that there would always be someone awake in
>  a tribe. But that's got two problems; one, there still seems to be a
>  significant gap in the night (very few people are awake between 3 and
>  4), and two, it assumes group selection, which is pretty much always a
>  poor idea.

You don't necessarily need to assume group selection for that
explanation, though you have to formulate it a bit differently.
Instead of the purpose being to defend against outside threats, there
might be an advantage in being awake at a different time than the
others, when there's less competition. Though I can't, from the top of
my head, come up with anything that you'd be competing for that you
could achieve when the others were sleeping (I momentarily thought
about hunting, but I've understood that the spoils of hunting were
mostly shared anyway. Maybe after agriculture was developed and things
got less egalitarian). I'm also not sure about whether or not there
really are *that* few people who are awake around 3 and 4... I know
many people who would be, if society didn't force them to avoid it.
(Me often included.)

Then again, it's also possible that there's no particular explanation
and it's just coincidence. Be careful about looking for evolutionary
explanations for everything, for not everything has one. :-)


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