In slime molds, evolution selects 'loners' who refrain from collective behavior
phys.org
phys.org
On the other hand if everyone in the village sees tigers behind every bush and stays put within the safe confines of village walls, no one in the village learns how to tame or hunt the tiger.
A Tiger here being a placeholder for any threat/unknown the group faces, requiring talents as yet not known to the group.
If you do find a village that has managed to Not fall victim to both those scenarios think about what it tells you about the distribution of curious/non-curious within the village.
I'm aware that it's accepted Neandertals might've been as capable in many areas of survival, however I'm not aware that it's been accepted they had more advanced brains. Got a source?
I remember hearing somewhere, one source I remember [1], that despite their intelligence, they tended to rove in smaller tribes partly perhaps due to less inter-communication skills, which may've led to a disadvantage in warfare.
Or perhaps, my own thoughts, the 'loner genes', for lack of a better term, iterated more throughout the Neaderthal ancestry which led to smaller tribes. Another guess, maybe forested Eurasia, which may act as natural barriers compared to more open African plains caused a selection for smaller groups or gave way to human genetics that naturally selected for smaller groups. Of course, take it all with a grain of salt.
1. https://www.history.com/news/neanderthals-likely-lived-in-sm...
(Still lots of fun to think about. If I were to hazard a guess, it would be something along the lines of greater neoteny in h. Sapiens sapiens. For an analogy, compare dogs and wolves. Wolves have larger brains, but dogs have a greater ability to read social cues.)
A disadvantage in one situation can be a blessing in another situation. A savant who has Aspergers, someone who has OCD during a Covid-19 epidemic, etc...
> Creative people make for lousy project planners and directors.
That warranted the downvotes I think.
- do psychopaths prey on and drag down society in most circumstances until there's an "evolutionary bottleneck" and they're the only ones with the will-to-power and ability to bring a "remnant" portion of humanity through dire circumstances that would otherwise lead that portion perishing? ... are they the failsafe?
- is psychopathy an emergent always-negative phenomenon that arises randomly once in a while as a result of random couplings among a pool of people on whom not-quite-psychopathic-behavior-derived-from-genetic-traits confers survival benefits and perhaps overall good to society?
- or are psychopaths on overall good for society? do they always confer benefit even though we perceive them negatively?
- other alternatives?
[edit: punctuation]
could just be a consequence of the model they chose, but interesting to think about nonetheless. I'd be very grateful if someone could remember the name of the paper!
Isn't the point that being a 'loner' is beneficial to the individual (slimemold), regardless of society?
Loners and outcasts are a subset of a diversity.
Think the average expression of gene X is 100? Well, it is, with 90% of the population expressing the gene at 111 and 10% not expressing it at all.
Unlike computers, cells like to do their own thing :(
Fairly the same, if everything at the lowest level is just programmed to do what occurs.
As an ex-repair tech, I can't applaud this comment.
It's similar to the genetics of schizophrenia. Families with genetic schizophrenia and more specifically individuals with high chances of mental illness often see bifurcated life outcomes, they are both more likely to end up down and out, homeless, in a mental hospital etc. But they are also more likely to see outsized success, academically and business wise. This has been studied and proven. It's common among siblings, one succumbing to schizophrenia, the other reaching upper echelons of society.
I'm both somewhat shy and very much introverted. I don't like artificially-created social situations. But I'll talk at great length to family members and people I work closely with.
If I were in a Pleistocene tribe where basically I'm surrounded by 120 members of my extended family, coworkers, etc. etc., I'd probably talk a lot more. I like social interactions, I'm just uncomfortable in novel situations and I don't like small talk.
I have been thinking through this question quite a lot recently. In an employment scenario loners often appear to be driven to manage or encompass all aspects of their domain. This leads to a breadth of knowledge and skills.
If this pattern has occurred across their entire life, then they can appear to be highly intelligent, "across everything", driven, etc - or they can appear frenetic, unfocused and disorganised.