Baseball Bats And Dominance Hierarchies

Introduction

Who is more willing to baseball someone over the head to win? Here again, patterns in networked information reveal the metaphysical reality we inhabit. In the last episode, we discussed how collecting the most points and autocatalytic reactions leads to exponential growth and the 80:20 rule – the distribution of information in nature. Like how lucky-duckies—the wealthy, the sun, and popular kids—attract money, matter, and social connections.These lucky-duckies are also atop their respective dominance hierarchies, they are the winners in the winner-loser continuum and examples of Darwinian’s “survival of the fittest.” In this episode, let’s examine a few neurological processes that keep lucky-duckies atop the hierarchy, which in turn will inform who’s more likely to baseball bat someone over the head.

The Lessons of History

Will and Ariel Durant, best known for their exhaustive eleven volume: The Story of Civilization wrote a delectable 100-page book titled The Lessons of History (should be mandatory reading for grade school kids) that distills the processes that perpetuate civilized history. In the opening chapter The Durants highlight that history and by extension human interactions are the manifestation of the laws of biology: competition, selection, and propagation.

Life is Competition – All living organisms, including humans, must compete for resources, survival, and dominance. This competition occurs at individual, group, and national levels. (If some manage to skip competing for resources it is because they are protected but inevitable their groups compete to provide them with this security.)

Life is Selection – Nature favors the strong, intelligent, and adaptable. Over time, certain individuals and groups rise to prominence due to their ability to outcompete others.

Life Must Breed – Societies that fail to reproduce sufficiently (either biologically or culturally) will decline and be replaced by those that do.

Indeed, natural selection is also a form of networked effects – the traits that enhance survival and reproduction – tall pretty people with thick lush hair and pearly white teeth for example – they reproduce and spread their genes. While those who can’t get dates, their traits fade like farts in the wind.

Darwinism also shows how small advantages compound over generations, like autocatalytic feedback loops in networks, the pretty people secure hot rich dates, accumulating resources, influence, and power – the survival of the fittest. And because of the 80:20 rule, only a few lucky-duckies can rise to the top. Let’s dig into the competitive mechanics to see who’s got the bat and balls to use them.

The Winner-Loser Continuum

The great lobster analogy highlights that 480 million year-old lobsters, those tasty little creatures that go so well with smoked paprika infused garlic butter, behave much like trash-talk-fighting humans because of their shared neurotransmitters. Research into lobster brains and social interactions reveals that when lobsters compete for resources like shelters (there aren’t enough shelters for lobsters to shed their shells) there are winners and losers, which manifests in their neurochemistry.

If a lobster needs a home and they challenge another lobster to a fight, their brains start with high levels of serotonin, displayed by their impeccable posture: they stand tall, strut and fuss. If the battle proceeds to round two they excrete fluid from glands below their eyes to communicate health and stamina status—much like human posture and the quantity of collagen in ones’ face showcases vitality.

If they make it to round three someone is losing a limb and when the dust settles a clear winner and loser emerge. Unfortunately for the loser – their brain breaks with a surge of octopamine that bums them out, contracting their posture and slouching them over as the octopamine feedback loop takes hold. Coincidentally, when researchers feed losing lobsters prozac they fight again because much like in humans, prozac cures depression with a shot of serotonin.

On the flipside, winners get shots of serotonin, which propels them further up the hierarchy, maintaining their winning feedback loops. For some lucky-duckies, they keep winning and are the 20% responsible for 80% of the outcomes. Some become vice presidents – yay!

Herd Culture

Consider how horse herds, with their kick-you-in-the-teeth hierarchies, operate much like corporations. In herds, each horse simultaneously dominates and is dominated, with the exception of the top and bottom horses: A dominates B, B dominates C, C dominates D, D dominates E. C is subservient to A and B, but gets to dominate D and E. E is the lowest thus is dominated by ABCD (E can’t say no if someone wants a bj). Companies have similar hierarchies: senior vice presidents dominate vice presidents, vice presidents dominate senior directors, senior directors dominate directors, directors dominate managers, managers dominate entry-level workers.

Much like duelling lobsters, those in the corporate herd are winning and losing on waves of octopamine and serotonin feedback loops. When enterprising directors want power and money they rise up on a wave of serotonin and stab some vice presidents in the back! Alternatively, they slip and shit themselves, sliding down a stream of octopamine.

Location-Location-Location

Much like winning lobsters secure the best shelters near great food in lobsterland, the biggest chickens position themselves at the front of the coop for the best food. This pattern scales to human societies where senior vice presidents and directors get the best pay and live in the best communities with the finest foods in close proximity to great schools and hospitals.

The lucky-duckies, with their winning neurological autocatalytic feedback loops also accumulate the most real estate, they are the 20% with 80% of the property within their communities. (It’s worth noting the story of Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian polymath of The Pareto Principle who was an avid gardener and observed during an audit of his pea harvest that 80% of his yield came from 20% of his plants, which inspired him to investigate municipal data wherein he discovered 80% of property in the municipality was owned by 20% of the population. All of this to say…) Entry-level employees the slaves with their lower pay at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy, live in high crime, stab-you-in-the-face communities. Thus, location-location-location showcases how networked information’s 80:20 rule manifests in the form of communities – yay!

Are You A Slave, Prostitute, Or Lucky-Ducky?

What’s the difference between a slave, prostitute and luck-ducky?

Slaves are full-time employees working for one business entity. Prostitutes are contracted workers servicing multiple business entities.

More often than not, slaves and prostitutes are married with mouths to feed, mortgages to pay and financial obligations that make them do uncomfortable things, like get their knees dirty.

Where slaves aren’t typically the prettiest, tallest, or cleverest and lack the ability to seduce anyone into anything, prostitutes excel in this domain.

Singing for their suppers, slaves and prostitutes serve the lucky-duckies who sit atop the dominance hierarchy, controlling slaves and prostitutes, and creating autocatalytic reactions to collect money and power – yay!

How does one become a slave, prostitute or lucky-ducky?

Slaves, prostitutes and lucky-duckies are born into it – damn.

In Conclusion

With wealth consolidating at an unprecedented rate, democracies face their greatest existential threat. To circumvent their tax obligations, some wealthy people — not all but some — are funding political parties that employ psychological warfare techniques grounded in heuristics to hack the minds of voters. Through nefarious marketing initiatives, they seize power in democratic elections and once elected they reward their benefactors with tax cuts. The irony? Tax cuts for the wealthy result in higher taxes and reduced social services for the very voters who fall into these traps.

Where liberals tame their Darwinian instincts to rape, pillage, and plunder, Republicans embrace them — whether through brute force, smooth buttery words, or seductive pick-up lines like the “maker vs. taker” myth. The most cunning among them will even pretend to be liberal if there’s power to be had. Who is atop of the political and financial hierarchy but The Republicans. They are the most willing to baseball bat someone over the head to win.

And this is democracy’s fatal disadvantage: when liberals bound by ethics and morality face off against The Republicans willing to do anything to win, liberals lose. Especially now that the medium is the message…

Next Essay: Why The Medium Is The Message