Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Revenge of the Nerds 193advantages to the madding crowd. Neighbors compete over food, water,mates, and nest sites. And there is the risk of exploitation. Hell is otherpeople, said Jean-Paul Sartre, and if baboons were philosophers no doubtthey would say that hell is other baboons. Social animals risk theft, cannibalism,cuckoldry, infanticide, extortion, and other treachery.Every social creature is poised between milking the benefits and sufferingthe costs of group living. That creates a pressure to stay on the rightside of the ledger by becoming smarter. In many kinds of animals, thelargest-brained and smartest-behaving species are social: bees, parrots,dolphins, elephants, wolves, sea lions, and, of course, monkeys, gorillas,and chimpanzees. (The orangutan, smart but almost solitary, is a puzzlingexception.) Social animals send and receive signals to coordinate predation,defense, foraging, and collective sexual access. They exchangefavors, repay and enforce debts, punish cheaters, and join coalitions.The collective expression for hominoids, "a shrewdness of apes," tellsa story. Primates are sneaky baldfaced liars. They hide from rivals' eyes toflirt, cry wolf to attract or divert attention, even manipulate their lips intoa poker face. Chimpanzees monitor one another's goals, at least crudely,and sometimes appear to use them in pedagogy and deception. Onechimp, shown a set of boxes with food and one with a snake, led hiscompanions to the snake, and after they fled screaming, feasted inpeace. Vervet monkeys are yentas who keep close track of everyone'scomings and goings and friends and enemies. But they are so denseabout the nonsocial world that they ignore the tracks of a python and theominous sight of a carcass in a tree, the unique handiwork of a leopard.Several theorists have proposed that the human brain is the outcomeof a cognitive arms race set in motion by the Machiavellian intelligenceof our primate forebears. There's only so much brain power you need tosubdue a plant or a rock, the argument goes, but the other guy is aboutas smart as you are and may use that intelligence against your interests.You had better think about what he is thinking about what you are thinkinghe is thinking. As far as brain power goes, there's no end to keepingup with the Joneses.My own guess is that a cognitive arms race by itself was not enough tolaunch human intelligence. Any social species can begin a never-endingescalation of brain power, but none except ours has, probably becausewithout some other change in lifestyle, the costs of intelligence (brainsize, extended childhood, and so on) would damp the positive feedbackloop. Humans are exceptional in mechanical and biological, not just-