... "Sometimes, 'panic' and 'stampede' ARE the optimal solutions. Indeed, if they were not sometimes and possibly often the correct action at the individual level, they would not likely have evolved to be such a universal part of humanity." On the contrary, the best survival chances are with those who can somehow _avoid_ and control a, y…
... "Sometimes, 'panic' and 'stampede' ARE the optimal solutions. Indeed, if they were not sometimes and possibly often the correct action at the individual level, they would not likely have evolved to be such a universal part of humanity."
On the contrary, the best survival chances are with those who can somehow _avoid_ and control a, yes, "natural", impulse to panic. In a panicked state, one loses the capacity to think clearly and one's reactions can easily contribute to greater, not lesser, danger and risk. So, from an evolutionary biology perspective, "panic" is not selected for in natural selection's work.. Those less inclined to panic have a greater likelihood to survive and, therefore, to reproduce.
The simple fact that we, this highly-evolved species, still know so much in tendencies to panic doesn't invalidate natural selection or "prove" that panic must be a positive survival trait. Any and all rudimentary traits shall survive to the extent that their manifestations are not _so_ deliterious as to be positively life-threatening--for it's only then that they're de-selected evolutionarily (and this is a generational-time-scale phenomenon, not a matter of weeks, months, years or decades). So there's room for traits which are anything from neutral to somewhat but not regularly fatal being passed down. (And all these factors are "environment specific". That is, yesterday's positive survival traits can gradually become negative if environment's conditions change and make them so. This is the most basic Darwinian evolutionary biology theory.) What does have a sound basis in evolution is the natural tendency to sense danger and the natural autonomic physiology which springs from it: widened pupils to enhance vision, a rush of adrenaline (in mammals) lending instant muscle power for flight or fight instincts. All of "panic"'s attendant physiological responses have some positive survival value--except paralyzing fear which also frequently accompanies panic.
... "Sometimes, 'panic' and 'stampede' ARE the optimal solutions. Indeed, if they were not sometimes and possibly often the correct action at the individual level, they would not likely have evolved to be such a universal part of humanity."
On the contrary, the best survival chances are with those who can somehow _avoid_ and control a, yes, "natural", impulse to panic. In a panicked state, one loses the capacity to think clearly and one's reactions can easily contribute to greater, not lesser, danger and risk. So, from an evolutionary biology perspective, "panic" is not selected for in natural selection's work.. Those less inclined to panic have a greater likelihood to survive and, therefore, to reproduce.
The simple fact that we, this highly-evolved species, still know so much in tendencies to panic doesn't invalidate natural selection or "prove" that panic must be a positive survival trait. Any and all rudimentary traits shall survive to the extent that their manifestations are not _so_ deliterious as to be positively life-threatening--for it's only then that they're de-selected evolutionarily (and this is a generational-time-scale phenomenon, not a matter of weeks, months, years or decades). So there's room for traits which are anything from neutral to somewhat but not regularly fatal being passed down. (And all these factors are "environment specific". That is, yesterday's positive survival traits can gradually become negative if environment's conditions change and make them so. This is the most basic Darwinian evolutionary biology theory.) What does have a sound basis in evolution is the natural tendency to sense danger and the natural autonomic physiology which springs from it: widened pupils to enhance vision, a rush of adrenaline (in mammals) lending instant muscle power for flight or fight instincts. All of "panic"'s attendant physiological responses have some positive survival value--except paralyzing fear which also frequently accompanies panic.