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Very interesting podcast. However, there are differences when translating the social hierarchy of primates to humans. In human society, we observe many social hierarchies with different objectives. This allows many males to be top dogs in the same group. Among the general population, a person might be a top dog in areas related to physics: good managers will differ to that particular top dog's judgment. Very good managers will yield to judgments that contradict the ones they'd like. Multiple top dogs in different contexts allows us to handle far more complex problems. Unlike the primates, we aren't limited to a single top dog.

Our ancestors began to realize the economic benefits of trade: things like beautiful shells could be exchanged for rocks which made better stone tools. Specialization -- making better stone tools, for example -- became valued. The concept of a single alpha male in a more complex world became less advantageous. In reality, one doesn't always get one's way in mutually beneficial trade. Self-centeredly, you might prefer to simply steal that hunk of obsidian from that stranger: giving him some shells the stranger's females desire and food to return and bring back more rock to exchange requires trust, delayed gratification, and non-aggressive behavior. But in this more complex non-zero-sum game, you, with you obsidian tools, get higher status and more females ... and so does the stranger.

Trade and specialization bring economic advantages that provide survival advantages, but require a lot more brain power. This huge advantage of longer range trade may help explain why humans evolved to consume 20% of our energy budget feeding that which lies between our ears. Other stone tool using primates (many species) made no shifts to trade and specialization with their short term costs but long term advantages.

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