The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation

The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation
Max Hartshorn, Artem Kaznatcheev and Thomas Shultz (2013)
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 16 (3) 7

Abstract

Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. Selfish and traitorous strategies are self-limiting because such agents do not cooperate with agents sharing the same genes. Traitorous strategies fare even worse than selfish ones because traitors are exploited by ethnocentrics across group boundaries in the same manner as humanitarians are, via unreciprocated cooperation. By tracking evolution across time, we find individual differences between evolving worlds in terms of early humanitarian competition with ethnocentrism, including early stages of humanitarian dominance. Our evidence indicates that such variation, in terms of differences between humanitarian and ethnocentric agents, is normally distributed and due to early, rather than later, stochastic differences in immigrant strategies.

Comment: Ethnocentrism among Whites has been pathologized for decades, while humanitarianism among Whites is constantly encouraged by eliciting spasms of guilt about the White past of colonialism, conquest, slavery, etc., as well as by eliciting the closely related emotion of empathy for non-Whites, particularly refugees and immigrants. Since this anti-White war is massively incentivized, there is no shortage of traitors and selfish Whites willing to aid the ethnocentric strategies of others by, e.g., cooperating with the Israel Lobby, being a cuckservative talking head on Fox News, having a well-paid position with a pro-immigration group, or being a university administrator promoting anti-White indoctrination and special programs for non-Whites — among a myriad of others, even though these are losing strategies in the long run for their people.

At the same time, the ethnocentrism of non-Whites is encouraged and is glaringly obvious. It’s not hard to see the end result.