tut comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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It's inspiring to know that we really can create a better and more peaceful society, just by pursuing some simple ideals like killing fifty percent of males.
(I didn't fully understand that part. So the males who ate the infected meat didn't spread the TB to females? And when the male/female ratio changed, that shifted the social dynamics and made everyone more peaceful because there was less reason for status competition? Or because the next generation had only nonviolent female role models and so learned less violence?)
No. I have heard Sapolsky tell that story before, and unless I completely misunderstood it the point is not that killing males made them peaceful, but that the strongest and most aggressive males disappeared. Then the remaining baboons in the troop were females and submissive males, and any new arrivals were integrated in a baboon "society" that had been created by females and submissive males.