The Piggy Problem

Studying people, The Lord of the Flies seems to pop up from time to time. How does a group of relatively-restrained people self-organize into a violent tribe with restraints removed? (Schelling may be instructive here.) There seems to be a real issue of scale with group interaction. For instance, why do market forces seem to work reasonably well and be regarded as fair at large scales, but seem absolutely out of place in a group of five? (e.g. what would happen if you asked explicit payment from a co-worker for a favor.) That’s something that’s always bothered me about Ayn Rand’s work; her characters operate in the market at every scale – and so often come across as monstrous for it. There’s been some work done in evolutionary psychology that may hold an answer. There seems to be a biological limit to the number of people we can keep track of well – i.e. the number of people that can be tracked for their reciprocity, loyalty to the tribe, forthrightness, etc. The market, then, is a surrogate for memory? There’s a rich field to be mined here just on the Game Theory side of things.

Which brings up an interesting topic: Is group evolution possible? Which is to say, is it possible to select for traits that benefit the group to the detriment of the individual? I think that this goes against classical Natural Selection theory, but seems to dovetail nicely with philosophical observations dating back millennia. If (so the argument goes) you’re programmed to help both yourself and your cousins, then at least some of your genes are more likely to survive (in them.) Nietzsche might agree; the group evolution argument seems to conform with his ideas about the origin and purpose for Good and Bad (as distinct from Good and Evil.) So might, for that matter (at least obliquely,) Aristotle. From the Iliad on down the survival of the tribe is a recurrent theme. Why can’t there be a feedback loop between culture and biology?

Reading list: The Selfish Gene, Beyond Good and Evil, Consilience, Adam Smith, Nicomachian Ethics, anything by Gould, The Golden Bough, The Science of Good and Evil, Von Neumann.