RichardKennaway comments on The Psychological Diversity of Mankind - Less Wrong

79 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 09 May 2010 05:53AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 10 May 2010 10:18:07AM 14 points [-]

People in agricultural societies, frequently encountering lots of people, are likely to suffer a lot more from being overly aggressive than people in hunter-gatherer societies. Rulers have also always been quick to eliminate those breaking laws or otherwise opposing the current rule, selecting for submissiveness.

On the other hand, submissiveness is surely selected against in rulers, who as noted in the posting leave more descendants than proles. So perhaps in a society in which the strong rule and the weak submit there is some evolutionarily stable distribution along a submissive/aggressive spectrum, rather than favouring one or the other?