Humanity Solved the “trust Paradox” by Going Tribal — and Paid a Horrific Price David R. Samson (2023)

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Big Think: Humanity solved the “trust paradox” by going tribal — and paid a horrific price by David R. Samson (2023)

Here is a summary of the key points from the article:

– The article discusses the “trust paradox” – who to trust is a difficult problem for social species. Kin selection was evolution’s first solution, but doesn’t scale well.

– Humans evolved friendship as another solution, allowing trust beyond kin. But as populations grew, even friendship didn’t scale well enough.

– So around 300,000 years ago, humans evolved “tribalism” – bonding and trusting based on shared group identity and symbols. This allowed cooperation at larger scales.

– However, tribalism also inevitably created out-groups who were not trusted. It enabled cooperation within the in-group, but also conflict between groups.

– The development of tribalism allowed human cooperation to scale up massively, enabling civilization. But it also sowed the seeds for horrific inter-group conflict and violence throughout human history.

– So tribalism was both an ingenious evolutionary innovation to scale trust, and a curse which facilitated terrible atrocities between groups. It solved cooperation locally but created conflict globally.

In summary, the article argues that tribalism evolved to scale human trust and cooperation beyond kinship, but this solution came with a horrific cost in terms of inter-group conflict. It was an evolutionary innovation with both benefits and profound dangers.


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