[ExI] Human Warfare is learned behaviour - not evolutionary

[Keith Henson]

BillK <pharos at gmail.com>

> Humans aren?t inherently selfish ? we?re actually hardwired to work together
August 20, 2020

Author  Steve Taylor
Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University

Sloppy thinking, conflating cooperation with wars.

Humans are animals. Animals always live at the ecological limit of
their environment. Humans are also top predators. The only way top
predator numbers are ultimately limited is by killing each other.
(Consider lions.)

The idea that stone-age peoples did not engage in warfare is wishful
thinking. Overpopulation for humans is not new.

However, it is modified by the fact that they did not fight all the
time. Fighting is dangerous, and would simply be bred out of the race
if it were not better for genes (under some circumstances) than not
fighting.

Humans, unlike chimps, fight only when the consequences of not
fighting are worse. So we have evolved to detect when it is worth
fighting. “War mode” is turned on by falling income per capita and
turned off by rising income per capita.

Keith