Re: poly: Belief divergence to induce emigration?

From: Carl Feynman <carlf@alum.mit.edu>
Date: Tue Apr 14 1998 - 12:29:15 PDT

At 11:56 AM 4/14/98 -0700, Robin wrote:

>Another explanation for such disagreement occured to me. Genes
>which were spread across a tribe in ancient times would have wanted
>some diversity of a tribe in response to threats. If the tribe
>was facing a war, flood, bad winter, etc., the genes might want
>some small fraction of the tribe to flee, and have the rest stay
>and fight.

This argument applies with extra force to more closely related individuals.
 Hence, one would be more likely to persistently disagree with parents or
siblings than with a randomly selected tribemate.

Do people in preagricultural tribes have the same level of persistent
disagreement that we do in modern society? It might be that persistent
disagreement is a result of taking decision-making mechanisms designed for
a 100-person society and using them in a 6000000000-person society. For
example, deciding on a handful of people one respects, and then giving
great weight to their opinions, will produce near-unanimity in a small
group and diversity in a big one.

--CarlF
Received on Tue Apr 14 19:33:28 1998

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