The Primordial Economics of Antlers

[newjerseyhunter]

3.12 The Beauty of Antlers

3.12. 1 Physical Power Projection is Necessary, but it Clearly has Drawbacks

Most surviving wild pack animals use physical power to settle disputes, establish control authority over internal resources, and achieve consensus on the legitimate state of ownership and chain of custody of property. Pack animals spend a great deal of time establishing physical power-based dominance hierarchies to manage their resources, constantly seeking to display to their peers their physical strength and aggression, all to showcase their worthiness for the pack’s resources because of their capacity and inclination to impose severe physical costs on attackers. For carnivores, this pecking order communication strategy often looks something like that shown in Figure 30.

For animal packs which adopt physical power-based resource control protocols, the strongest and most aggressive power projectors are awarded with food and mating rights, perpetuating a virtuous cycle of systemic security that develops and sustains a well-resourced workforce of power projectors who keep the pack’s BCRA as low as possible given limited resources. The result of this heuristic is safety, security, and survival in a CCCH environment filled with predators and entropy.

An unfortunate side effect for using physical power as the basis for settling disputes, establishing control authority over physical resources, and achieving consensus on the legitimate state of ownership and chain of custody of property is that physical power projection is prone to causing injury. When done kinetically (i.e. using forces to displace masses), displays of physical power can lead to injury. And when physical strength and aggression is disproportionately rewarded with food and mating rights, it’s easy to see why this protocol can lead to life-threatening injuries.

Nature mitigates this risk by making pack animals instinctively disinclined to fatally injure each other. For example, when wolves infight to establish their pecking order, it is not uncommon for one wolf to successfully pin down their opponent. The dominant wolf will press its teeth against the jugular of the opponent, but it will not bite. For existential reasons, the wolf is instinctively disinclined to kill a fellow member of the pack; it needs every member of the pack to hunt for prey, secure the pack against predators, and to survive and prosper for as long as possible. This explains why many animals do not battle to the death over food and mating rights; they battle to the point where they can discern that one is clearly more powerful and aggressive than the other.

The reason why the author has dedicated so much time to explaining these concepts in such great detail is so the reader can understand that humans have similar natural instincts. It takes a considerable amount of training to get sapiens to stop instinctively pulling their punches when fighting hand-to-hand with other sapiens. This is not because sapiens want to minimize injury to themselves. It’s because sapiens have an unconscious instinct to minimize injury to their opponent.

Soldiers must be trained in how to overcome their natural disinclination to cause lethal injury. Hundreds of years ago, when soldiers still used close-ranged rifles where they could see their opponent’s faces, it was not uncommon for them to refuse to fire, even under the threat of death. As one famous example, 87% of the rifles recovered from dead soldiers after Gettysburg (the third-bloodiest battle in American history) were fully loaded. Several of those rifles had been double and triple-stuffed with ball and powder, suggesting that soldiers weren’t firing shots, and were even faking their shots and reload sequences during battle (it’s hard to argue that these soldiers didn’t realize their rifles weren’t firing because of the substantial amount of sound, recoil, and visible smoke that every rifle produced during this time).

Gettysburg was one of many battles which demonstrated how powerful human instincts are to avoid injuring fellow sapiens. Even when facing a clear and imminent threat to their own life, soldiers won’t fire their rifles because their instinct to preserve a fellow human’s life is often psychologically stronger than the instinct to preserve their own life. This is part of the reason why militaries require so much training. Militaries must train their members to overcome this instinct when needed, because deliberately killing one’s own kind is something instinctively unnatural for some species, to include sapiens.

Nevertheless, wolves still end up killing other wolves. Humans end up killing other humans, and so on. The simple fact of the matter is that physical power-based resource control protocols are destined to cause lethal injury; it’s an unfortunate side effect of a demonstrably necessary protocol for survival and prosperity. We know this because the pack animals which survive in the wild are the ones who use this protocol. Is physical injury wasteful? It certainly seems to be. But it also seems to be the case that the risk of physical injury is a price that natural selection demands for survival; a price that Earth’s top survivors are willing to pay. [

Based on extensive randomized experimentation, we know what happens to wolves and countless other animal populations when their physical power-based resource control hierarchies are unnaturally disrupted. They become docile and domesticated; they start to depend on their masters for safety and security, and they get systemically exploited at extraordinary scales. The emergent effect of interfering with an animal pack’s natural instincts to reward their physically powerful and aggressive members is incontrovertible. We see proof of it every day. We eat the proof for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We play fetch with the proof. We post pictures of the proof on our social media pages.

 

3.12.2 There are Less Harmful Ways to Establish Interspecies Dominance Hierarchies using Physical Power

Nevertheless, using physical power as the basis for setting disputes, establishing control authority over internal resources, and achieving consensus on the legitimate state of ownership and chain of custody of property doesn’t necessarily have to cause so much physical injury. Nature shows us there are different ways to project physical power to establish intraspecies dominance hierarchies. Different animals have adopted different strategies to perform the same function, and we can take note of them. For example, mammalian carnivores and herbivores employ much different power projection strategies for establishing their dominance hierarchies.

Mammalian carnivores hunt for their food, so they are already equipped with the power projection technology needed to settle their internal property disputes and establish internal control authority over resources. They often use the same teeth and claws to take down prey as they do to establish pecking order within their intraspecies dominance hierarchies. Mammalian herbivores, on the other hand, are often equipped with much different-looking power projection technology. Instead of having sharp teeth and claws to bite and cut each other, many herbivores sprout heavy and cumbersome protrusions out of their foreheads, then clash them together to settle disputes and establish pecking order in a zero-trust, egalitarian, and systemically secure way. We call this power projection technology antlers.

From a primordial economic perspective, antlers are a fascinating evolution. They can impose as much, if not more, severe physical costs on attackers as a wolf’s teeth or claws can. A well-grown pair of antlers are no doubt effective at lowering the BCRA of a stag and a herd of deer. But antlers aren’t simple stabbing devices like rhino or triceratops horns; they have bizarre geometries like those shown in Figure 31.

The geometry of antlers makes them prone to entanglement with other antlers, a problem that more simplified and easily-to-grow puncturing devices like horns, teeth, and claws don’t have. What could possibly be the benefit of such a bizarre design? Why do stags have such awkwardly-shaped devices growing out of their foreheads when they could grow simple puncturing device like a rhino horn, and use that to impose severe physical costs on attackers instead? Would that not be just as effective? To answer these questions, simply ask yourself the following question: if you were a stag and you had to go head-to head with your brother stag to settle an intraspecies dispute, would you rather have antlers or a rhino horn? Unless you desire to kill your brother, you should prefer to be equipped with antlers rather than a rhino horn, because your antlers would probably entangle with your brother’s antlers without stabbing him, whereas a rhino horn probably wouldn’t. Therein lies the subtle eloquence of antler design.

When two pairs of antlers go head-to-head, their entanglement functions as a cushion and creates a safe standoff distance large enough to prevent either side from being severely injured. Thus, the tendency of antlers to entangle is an emergent property of their awkward geometry. The primary value-delivered function of antlers is to empower stags to defend themselves and establish their intraspecies dominance hierarchy using physical power, but to do it in a way that protects members of the same species against mortal injury.

Entanglement protects members of the same species from impaling other, yet still enables them to impale other species (notably the predators who don’t have antlers) as needed. Consequently, antlers impose far more injury on predators than they do on peers. If you’re a member of the pack or a similar species, you can butt heads all day long to settle disputes, establish control authority over resources, and determine the legitimate state of ownership and chain of custody of property with far lower probability of causing mortal injury to each other. But if you’re not the same species equipped with the same power projection technology (like if you’re a predator who intends to bring harm to them), then you can expect a much higher probability of injury.

The design isn’t perfect. Puncture wounds still occasionally happen, and it’s not uncommon to find two dead stags stuck together because their antlers entangled a little too well. But it’s still less prone to mortal injury than rhino-style horns, or predators who cut each other with their claws and fangs. Natural selection is willing to accept the loss of having stags occasionally get mortally interlocked or impaled by accident; it’s simply a price they’re willing to pay. Stags which pass on their genes are stags with the perfectly awkward antler geometry needed to minimize intraspecies stabbing and interlocking while maximizing strength and physical aggression. What survives is what works, and that process led to the fantastically awkward and beautiful antler geometries we see today.

Awkward antler geometry entanglement is a safety feature, not a bug. Antlers allow stags to secure their pack against outside threats (wolves) while also preserving their ability to use physical power as the basis for establishing an interspecies dominance hierarchy, but do it as safely as possible. This means antlers represent life’s discovery of a safer, less-lethal strategy for physical power-based resource control. It’s a special type of evolved power projection tactic that retains the strategic benefits of physical strength and aggression but minimizes the harmful side effects.

Survival demands that animal packs must feed and breed their strongest and most aggressive power projectors to increase the pack’s overall CA and lower BCRA, but that doesn’t mean they have to severely injure each other. Stags don’t need to hunt their food, so they have a design trade space which carnivores don’t have. With that trade space, stags show us ways to play the power projection game in a way that minimizes the pack’s capacity for injuring each other.

Sadly, very few people appreciate the eloquent design of antlers because they don’t understand the basic dynamics of power projection. To those who don’t factor in primordial economics and the dynamics of security and survival, the unnecessarily large and awkward protrusions growing out of a stag’s head may look like bad design – particularly a waste of energy and resources. Clashing antlers together to establish a physical power-based resource control hierarchy seems unnecessary. The unnecessarily large structure of antlers looks like a waste of keratin. Why burn so many calories carrying around the weight of that much extra keratin, and waste more energy clanging them together? What could possibly be the point of such an energy inefficient-looking design?

It would be tragic to condemn antlers for their inefficiency and waste because the intent of the design is quite noble: the preservation of life. Antlers may look weird and inefficient on the surface (particularly to those who don’t understand power projection), but they enable the pack to lower BCRA and establish pecking order the way natural selection demands, using a strategy which maximizes safety by minimizing the potential of mortal injury. The pack can still feed and breed its strongest and most aggressive power projectors as is necessary for safety, security, and survival. It can still settle disputes in a fair and meritorious way using physical power competition. It can still establish control authority over resources using physical power. But it can strive to do all these things without endangering their own species.

A reason why people may not appreciate antler design is because they don’t understand the governing dynamics of primordial economics. After spending too much time at the top of the food chain, it’s easy to forget that we live in a world filled with predators and entropy. For those who value security, it is an existential imperative to secure oneself by imposing severe, physically prohibitive costs on attackers. That means it’s also an existential imperative to ensure the pack’s most powerful members get the most resources. But how does the pack identify their most powerful members? Without factoring in primordial economics, it’s easy to look at antlers and see a flawed, inefficient design, but the reality is quite the opposite. There’s nothing inefficient about the preservation of life. In fact, few things are more wasteful, not to mention existentially risky, than allowing the pack’s power projectors to kill themselves.

Such is the beauty of antlers. They’re an eloquent display of nature’s determination to preserve life and minimize injury, combined with its stoic acknowledgement that power-based resource control protocols are necessary for survival in a world filled with predators and entropy where the strong survive. Antlers represent a compromise between two opposing design variables – a way to alleviate the tension between security and safety. Pack animals must maximize their ability to impose physically prohibitive costs on attackers to improve their security, but they try to make their physical confrontations as safe as possible.

To that end, they must be able to identify their strongest and most physically aggressive members and award them with control authority over the resources they need to lower the pack’s BCRA. But they don’t have to inflict so much physical injury on each other in the process. Stags prove it’s possible for pack animals to survive and prosper by projecting power the way natural selection demands for it to be done, all while minimizing physical injury to the members of the pack. It is possible to maximize personal security and personal safety simultaneously. All it takes is the right kind of bizarre technology, and the right kind of people to recognize the beauty of the design

"Softwar: A novel theory on power projection..." by Jason Lowery

 

[3Blade]

[JHbowhunter]

Can I start posting 45 years of antlers ????

 

asking for a friend. 

[JHbowhunter]

And can I get cliff notes please? 

[Bucksnbows]

2 minutes ago, JHbowhunter said:

And can I get cliff notes please? 

23 paragraphs in that manifesto and none of them short. 

[tcook8296]

Yeah I'm not reading that 

[Rusty]

11 hours ago, JHbowhunter said:

Can I start posting 45 years of antlers ????

 

asking for a friend. 

Do you have any pictures?

[JFC1]

You can download it free from MITs site, where it was a Masters Thesis in 2022-23.

Seems poorly written, but still a fascinating idea that goes way beyond antlers: From what a first gkance suggests, it's about BITCOIN as a road into physical war tools through networked data. Draws on a wealth of sources, including a surprising book in part about infantry rifle training, On Killing by Col. Dave Grossman

Thanks for posting

[newjerseyhunter]

4 hours ago, JFC1 said:

You can download it free from MITs site, where it was a Masters Thesis in 2022-23.

Seems poorly written, but still a fascinating idea that goes way beyond antlers: From what a first gkance suggests, it's about BITCOIN as a road into physical war tools through networked data. Draws on a wealth of sources, including a surprising book in part about infantry rifle training, On Killing by Col. Dave Grossman

Thanks for posting

Yeah I thought it was interesting, lacking in editing for sure. I didn't realize so many folks on here were limited to 140 characters or less. LOL

[Yobuck293]

3 hours ago, newjerseyhunter said:

Yeah I thought it was interesting, lacking in editing for sure. I didn't realize so many folks on here were limited to 140 characters or less. LOL

We need short and to the point with lots of pictures.  The pictures don't even need to pertain to what you wrote.  Just as long as there are pictures.  

[JFC1]

24 minutes ago, Yobuck293 said:

We need short and to the point with lots of pictures.  The pictures don't even need to pertain to what you wrote.  Just as long as there are pictures.  

How 'bout a Ram truck parked on the curb with a Mexican Federales Shield on the grill? 

[BHC]

21 hours ago, JHbowhunter said:

Can I start posting 45 years of antlers ????

 

asking for a friend. 

haven't you done that at least once per week 

[Greybeard]

On 1/6/2025 at 8:44 PM, newjerseyhunter said:

3.12. 1 Physical Power Projection is Necessary

This sums it up.  GO TRUMP!

[tcook8296]

On 1/7/2025 at 1:54 PM, newjerseyhunter said:

Yeah I thought it was interesting, lacking in editing for sure. I didn't realize so many folks on here were limited to 140 characters or less. LOL

2 pics and 1 run on sentence 😆 

[TDietz]

Yeah I read the whole article. Three hours of my life I’d like to have back