• ssj2marx@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      I think the real answer is that it plays an important role in making sure you respond appropriately to being chased by a tiger. For hundreds of thousands of years it was perfectly fine operating in that role, and then in the last ten thousand we accidentally created a civilization where some people get way too much of it.

      • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 months ago

        Also, humans are not machines, we need rest and relaxation. It’s debatable for why, but life would be a lot more boring if we didn’t have a need for relaxation, art, recreation, etc. Just pure work for survival.

    • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Because people who are born lucky enough to have an easy life are likely to have more kids.

      Using cortisol to magnify that improves selection bias.

      The rest is math.

      Evolution is a bitch.

          • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            what does “recent” mean? Poor folks been having shit tons of kids for a long ass time. THey needed to have a) extra workers, and b) a chance at keeping the family name/heritage/culture/whatever going. especialyl being poor, you know at least 3 or your 10 arent going to make it, so you gotta play the odds!

            • Donkter@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              IDK if the original hypothesis is true or not. But it’s kind of impossible to make judgements on evolution based on anything we know about humans and society. Modern homo sapiens are only about 150,000 years old and were pretty sure any semblance of a modern hierarchical society didn’t begin until about 7,500 years ago, much less the concept of money which only happened another thousands of years later.

              10,000 years is a drop in the bucket evolutionarily, hell, 100,000 years doesn’t even do much, so any theory of evolution or why a complex hormone like cortisol evolved to be used in the way it is now is way off base if you’re referencing concepts like “rich” and “poor” or reference to any form of societal structure made in the last 10,000 years.

        • Talia@feddit.it
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          7 months ago

          Immagine what it could be if the cortisol mechanism didn’t work