Athena Aktipis with David Sloan Wilson - Evolving Alignment Podcast

Yeah, I want to add my own thoughts on that and amend it a little bit, although in a way that I think you'll probably agree with.

So we kind of, it's easy to say that small groups are easier to foster cooperation than large groups, but even small groups can be a problem.

And I think something a lot of people don't know is how despotic many animal societies are.

There would be nightmare societies from our perspective in which basically the most powerful members of, and these are small groups, powerful members of smaller groups basically have their way.

and so on.

And so the reason that that doesn't happen so much in human groups is that because group selection has been operating so much in the origin of our species, that you might say that we are, so it's easy for us.

But even in the smallest group, protections need to be in place.

Since in some ways, small groups, through the formation of norms, by punishment and so on and so forth, are the most highly regulated groups of all.

And then as we get bigger now through the course of human history, through larger and larger groups, then of course we have to add so much more structure.

But at least at the starting of small groups, you could say that we're the alignment species, thanks to the fact that group selection has been exceptionally strong in human origins.

Would you like to comment on all of that?

Yeah, sure.

So I would mostly agree, but maybe put the focus a little bit more on the sort of decentralized mechanisms that allow for us to achieve high levels of cooperation in small groups.

Because I think there are huge problems that need to be solved, both in terms of the cooperation dilemmas, you know, where individuals can take advantage of each other.

and coordination problems in terms of sharing information in order to be effective in a group.

You know, if you sort of think of like if you were paired with three random people in the world and you had to accomplish some task, what are the chances that you all are all sort of ready to cooperate and that you can communicate in ways that will allow you to be effective? You know, probably not that likely.

But if there was some opportunity for partner choice, you know, if it was like, OK, David, you can choose the three other people in the world that you want to do this project with, much more likely that you would be able to solve those cooperation and coordination dilemmas.

And so I think that we as humans have an amazing ability to.

sort of understand how to associate with others and create especially small groups that can be really effective at accomplishing goals.

And to the extent that individuals are allowed to do that partner choice, to have the groups be groups that they're able to cooperate and coordinate with effectively, that the potential for what can be accomplished is really, really vast.

And once you build a group like that, however, and it starts to grow and others want to join, et cetera, then you can get into a situation where you have to start solving these problems of regulating.

But I think that when we're in small groups, we can very, very effectively reach high levels of cooperation and coordination through partner choice and also through a sort of feedback loop where we're paying attention to how things are going and, okay, can we correct Can we get better at coordinating? And when we are in small groups that are really effective, it's really positively reinforcing.

We feel really good about those interactions.

And I would go so far to say that a bunch of things that we do recreationally are kind of like practicing that.

So dancing, music, sports, in a way, what we're doing is practicing.