ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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"that depression allows losers to adapt peacefully to a loss of status, and thus it improves the survival of the overall group. "
It's survival of genes that matter, though, not groups (except to the extent that this promotes survival of genes).
Take two individuals who lose status: A gets depressed and accepts inferior status, while B never accepts it and keeps trying to get back high status. In hierarchical societies, A will have greater genetic success than B because he won't get killed by the new dominant person / coalition.
Hunter-gatherer societies aren't hierarchical, so depression will only show up in agricultural and industrial populations. Sure enough, the variants of the serotonin transporter that predispose to depression are at higher frequencies in Europe and East Asia compared to sub-Saharan Africa.
A caveat: any individual plays many games (work, marriage, parenthood/motherhood, etc) at any time, and a serious loss in an important game can send him/her through depression, compelling him/her to new losses (any game), and so forth.
There is not survival of the group, natural selection works on each specimen, not on groups. That is a misconception.
that depression allows losers to adapt peacefully
I know you didn't mean it this way, but the first time through I read your use of "losers" as derisive. Maybe I was thinking too much of this classic Onion article.