Ah, I wish there was a more... academic forum to discuss this. Sometimes I think Chase could have been a researcher instead of an entrepreneur (maybe if higher education wasn't so messed up these days.) Honestly I'm in the same boat, I love social science research but I'd never publish because it's too far outside my field.
Well, Calhoun's experiments have certainly painted an insightful picture for us, but my own studies have led me to conclude it's not so bleak (sort of). This is something I've thought about for a while, so here are my thoughts on the effects of reaching "social" population carrying capacity in highly social species.
First, increasing population in a social species promotes individual specialization. This is a well-established fact that most people get intuitively. The human species has evolved a fairly complex system of behavioral archetypes which are both partially genetically encoded in certain bloodlines and partially activated by environmental stimuli in early life. For example Dawkin's "selfish gene" suggests there is fraction on the order of 10% of the population which is predisposed to atypically high altruistic behavior, though intense environmental pressure in early life (what we call childhood trauma) produces lethally self-sacrificial behavior independent of this, as Calhoun observed.
This brings me to the first main point. Our physiologies are wired to make us sacrifice ourselves for the good of the community, if those "red alert" circuits are triggered. In a prehistorical society this might mean engaging in a suicide mission to find water, resources, or fight looming predators. In a historical human society this meant going to fight neighboring tribes or, later, becoming a solider, explorer, sailor, crusader, etc. However our modern society has become so obsessed with preservation of life (Another point Chase wrote about in his review of The Denial of Death) that we have cut those people off from the ability to express their natural behavior, and in some senses we have made their behavior and existences purposeless.
Now, what happens when a species which has already evolved fairly sophisticated social behavior experiences a sudden, dramatic increase in population carrying capacity (like what happened to humans in the 20th century)? Well, to understand that, you have to look at the prevalence of social niches.
Let's say human social architecture has delineated a subcategory of humans known as Weevers (just an arbitrary term). Weevers have certain behavioral (or personality) traits that are significantly different from the neurotypical norm, which allow them to perform a certain role for the benefit of the community. This prevalence rate is highly fine tuned by millennia of evolution and further regulated by environmental trigger circuits to be exactly the right ratio to maximize the survival of the species. Let's say it's 10%. Thus 10% of the population are Weevers and provide the Weever service for the whole species.
Now, suddenly the carrying capacity expands tenfold. The optimal prevalence rate of Weeverism may not scale proportionally with that expansion. Say the new optimal prevalence rate is 5%. Now you've got 5% of the population behaving "badly" and getting deselected by intense evolutionary pressures.
Of course, in real life it's neither instantaneous or that cut and dry. What actually happens is that as population increases, intense competition breaks out among Weevers, with the "best" or "most" Weevrish Weevers making the cut from 10%, to 9%, to 8%, and so on, all the way to the new equilibrium 5%. This intense competition "weeds out" the intermediary Weevers, leaving a gap in the normal distribution -- creating a sort of "mushroom" or "umbrella" pattern if you're looking at a graph. As population further increases, this process increases, and the competition drives the selection of ever more Weeverish Weevers -- the edges of the "umbrella" get further and further away from the neurotypical mainstream traitholders, and the space underneath the umbrella gets wider as more and more formerly cutting-edge Weevers get deselected.
Indeed, this is the underlying mechanism for the development of the very set of archetypal social roles that we see in complex social species. It's also the mechanism behind speciation itself -- if the umbrella gets too wide, the Weevers may find a distinct environmental niche and start breeding exclusively with each other. However, taken to the extreme, it likely drives the formation of highly physiologically and socially disparate subspecies categories -- like the typical ant or bee colony.
For the literary side, that's also basically what Huxley predicted in Brave New World for the human species.
Well, Calhoun's experiments have certainly painted an insightful picture for us, but my own studies have led me to conclude it's not so bleak (sort of). This is something I've thought about for a while, so here are my thoughts on the effects of reaching "social" population carrying capacity in highly social species.
First, increasing population in a social species promotes individual specialization. This is a well-established fact that most people get intuitively. The human species has evolved a fairly complex system of behavioral archetypes which are both partially genetically encoded in certain bloodlines and partially activated by environmental stimuli in early life. For example Dawkin's "selfish gene" suggests there is fraction on the order of 10% of the population which is predisposed to atypically high altruistic behavior, though intense environmental pressure in early life (what we call childhood trauma) produces lethally self-sacrificial behavior independent of this, as Calhoun observed.
This brings me to the first main point. Our physiologies are wired to make us sacrifice ourselves for the good of the community, if those "red alert" circuits are triggered. In a prehistorical society this might mean engaging in a suicide mission to find water, resources, or fight looming predators. In a historical human society this meant going to fight neighboring tribes or, later, becoming a solider, explorer, sailor, crusader, etc. However our modern society has become so obsessed with preservation of life (Another point Chase wrote about in his review of The Denial of Death) that we have cut those people off from the ability to express their natural behavior, and in some senses we have made their behavior and existences purposeless.
Now, what happens when a species which has already evolved fairly sophisticated social behavior experiences a sudden, dramatic increase in population carrying capacity (like what happened to humans in the 20th century)? Well, to understand that, you have to look at the prevalence of social niches.
Let's say human social architecture has delineated a subcategory of humans known as Weevers (just an arbitrary term). Weevers have certain behavioral (or personality) traits that are significantly different from the neurotypical norm, which allow them to perform a certain role for the benefit of the community. This prevalence rate is highly fine tuned by millennia of evolution and further regulated by environmental trigger circuits to be exactly the right ratio to maximize the survival of the species. Let's say it's 10%. Thus 10% of the population are Weevers and provide the Weever service for the whole species.
Now, suddenly the carrying capacity expands tenfold. The optimal prevalence rate of Weeverism may not scale proportionally with that expansion. Say the new optimal prevalence rate is 5%. Now you've got 5% of the population behaving "badly" and getting deselected by intense evolutionary pressures.
Of course, in real life it's neither instantaneous or that cut and dry. What actually happens is that as population increases, intense competition breaks out among Weevers, with the "best" or "most" Weevrish Weevers making the cut from 10%, to 9%, to 8%, and so on, all the way to the new equilibrium 5%. This intense competition "weeds out" the intermediary Weevers, leaving a gap in the normal distribution -- creating a sort of "mushroom" or "umbrella" pattern if you're looking at a graph. As population further increases, this process increases, and the competition drives the selection of ever more Weeverish Weevers -- the edges of the "umbrella" get further and further away from the neurotypical mainstream traitholders, and the space underneath the umbrella gets wider as more and more formerly cutting-edge Weevers get deselected.
Indeed, this is the underlying mechanism for the development of the very set of archetypal social roles that we see in complex social species. It's also the mechanism behind speciation itself -- if the umbrella gets too wide, the Weevers may find a distinct environmental niche and start breeding exclusively with each other. However, taken to the extreme, it likely drives the formation of highly physiologically and socially disparate subspecies categories -- like the typical ant or bee colony.
For the literary side, that's also basically what Huxley predicted in Brave New World for the human species.