This was a great read, thank you—I especially valued the multiple series of illustrating/motivating examples, and the several sections laying out various hypotheses along with evidence/opinion on them.
I sometimes wonder how evolution ended up creating humans who are sometimes nonconformist, when it seems socially costly, but I think a story related to what you’ve written here makes sense: at least one kind of nonconformity can sometimes shift a group consensus from a fatal misinterpretation to an appropriate and survivable group response (and furthermore, presumably in expectation gain some prestige for the nonconforming maverick(s) who started the shift). So there’s maybe some kind of evolutionary stable meta-strategy of ‘probability of being conformist or not (maybe context-dependent)’.
This was a great read, thank you—I especially valued the multiple series of illustrating/motivating examples, and the several sections laying out various hypotheses along with evidence/opinion on them.
I sometimes wonder how evolution ended up creating humans who are sometimes nonconformist, when it seems socially costly, but I think a story related to what you’ve written here makes sense: at least one kind of nonconformity can sometimes shift a group consensus from a fatal misinterpretation to an appropriate and survivable group response (and furthermore, presumably in expectation gain some prestige for the nonconforming maverick(s) who started the shift). So there’s maybe some kind of evolutionary stable meta-strategy of ‘probability of being conformist or not (maybe context-dependent)’.