Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history
Why is it not self evident that cooperation is driven by self interested paired with intelligence? Animal A sees animal B in its territory. This tends to result in an immediate battle where both animals expose themselves to risk of death. Higher intelligence would instead tell you <i>&#x27;hey if I cooperate with this guy, not only can we both keep all this land - but we can go take over the land owned by animal C&#x27;.</i><p>There&#x27;s plenty of evidence of this happening in animals with greater levels of intelligence. For instance chimps tend to join up into groups and then go engage in war with other groups. But they, in turn, lack that intelligence to go even one step further. The same logic of &#x27;2 individuals can go kill 1 individual and take their land&#x27; leads to &#x27;two groups can join up to go kill one group and take their land.&#x27; Presumably some outlier will eventually manage to start realizing this at which point you&#x27;re well on your way to to the evolution of another highly intelligent species spreading themselves all over the place.<p>I also think there&#x27;s even evidence of this in society today. When social order collapses, for instance due to a natural disaster, we turn to some pretty nasty behavior quite quickly even when it&#x27;s in no way necessary. This seems to suggest cooperation, in and of itself, is not innate - but rather something else drives that cooperation. We can even see it in higher order systems. Corruption is a regular part of all societies at all levels. And that is people simply determining that they can get more by working outside the interests of society than working within it. It&#x27;s quite easy to see how the same intelligence can drive both corruption and cooperation. Once again, self interest driven by intelligence enabling an accurate assessment of probable outcomes. Do I work just for myself, or do I work with this guy?<p>---<p>One argument against this are simple creatures that possess no semblance of higher order thinking, yet cooperate. Examples would include most types of ants. But I think there are too many differences to start considering these sorts of species. They tend to be extremely short lived and have extremely minimal needs relative to the quantity of resources out there -- that&#x27;s unlike anything we can imagine. Imagine if a single banana could feed thousands of chimps for days. That rather reduces any motivation or incentive for competition. Well, except for when your thousands of other familiars run into a group of thousands of unfamiliars - which does happen and can lead to &#x27;ant wars&#x27;.