> it is not generally advantageous to actually hurt the opponent more than needed to signal dominance
It is advantageous to beat a rival and take their energy even within a species. That's part of the whole 'survival of the fittest' thing. Preserving them for cooperation or something like slavery happens, but it's a rare strategy specific to intelligent animals like the GP implies.
As Dawkins points out in `Selfish Gene`, it's the DNA sequence that's the evolutionary entity. For example, all mothers (and most fathers) protect their young even though it's a food source. Eating your own species (even children of other mothers) is counterproductive for the DNA itself, despite being productive for the particular copy of the animal doing the eating.
>reserving them for cooperation or something like slavery happens, but it's a rare strategy specific to intelligent animals
Exactly, GP thinks this is a higher order behavior.
I should had clarified, this is lower, more intuitive behavior. It is not, which is why it arises emergently in lower-complexity/class systems.
>beat a rival and take their energy even within a species
Beating a rival and taking their energy is awesome!
And if done with literal, figurative, social, and complex "CLASS", it is literally sexy too!
National Geographic is entertaining for many dimensions of reasons.
Actually dismembering your sexual-rival and literally consuming their poor caloric conversion is pitifully inefficient compared to making them a sub-ling, whether it be via hen-pecking or innate dominance. It made sense before sexual dimorphication (moreso), but less so now.
Ladies like a gentleman, and gentleman's agreements are literally non-colluding emergent behavior to abide by unspoken higher-order rules for one's own explicit conscious self-incentive (lower order, high entropy), but also the implicit collective unconsciousness incentive (higher social order, lower entropy)
Both are reslience traits, which only emerge when selected for.
It is advantageous to beat a rival and take their energy even within a species. That's part of the whole 'survival of the fittest' thing. Preserving them for cooperation or something like slavery happens, but it's a rare strategy specific to intelligent animals like the GP implies.