A War of Ants and Grasshoppers

Say I run into someone at a party who angrily demands an apology for some perceived slight. It seems like you're arguing against thinking:

1. This person is trying to get something (e.g., status or how careful others have to be around him) at my expense. This is unfair and I should fight it.

But I think I got that lesson long ago and what tends to pop up in my mind is instead a mixture of:

2. I should give in because the person is just running an evolved strategy.
3. Maybe I should fight this because giving in would reinforce the behavior even if subconsciously.
4. If everyone gave in to this kind of behavior, evolution would make it even more widespread. Maybe I should fight it for that reason.

Curious if I correctly got the point you're trying to make, and if so do you have any further thoughts on the topic (such as which of 2-4 is most correct or if I should be thinking something else instead).

Is this yet another Moloch example, or is there something deeper?

What keeps the ants from just agreeing on boundaries and not warring? What keeps them from combining into one sufficiently-fed colony?

The thesis seems to be to caution against automatically blaming those who might've benefited from a disaster, as often enough things don't happen in a goal-directed fashion. ("To fathom a strange plot, one technique is to look at what ended up happening, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.") Not sure this is a widespread enough heuristic to be worth reining in in the form of an unconditional advice.

Your blog is not loading for me. Could you cross-post the post to Less Wrong? (I generally prefer this for link-posts in any case…)

Slaver ants would make "warrior prowness" comment relevant. Even with slaver ants it unlilkey that all nests are enslaved all the time. Too much slavers and they need to fight each other or run out of slave refreshments. With adequate distance between slavers some of the nests will be enslaved late or never.

It also could be very plausible that a colony could actually burn the extra calories and benefit form it for example in the form of extra drones and queens.

If they actually had been better off to not notice there would be a dominant strategy to intentionally not notice. Them not being there is a different thing than them being there and not noticing them.

Ants in fact make supercolonies. They (atleast some) choose PvE strategies over PvP mechanics.

The existence of ants has had a big evolutionary pressure on other species. There are a lot of species that produce sugar that ants collect and ants act to defend these resource sources (which can be understood as a mutually beneficial transaction like mechanic). This kind of symbiosis needed to kick off from somewhere even if there is a feedback loop keeping it stable. One of the plausible stories is that another insect provided free food and ants started to regard those insects more as a resource rather than a piece of background. Once they do this they can favour more generous candymen to more stingy ones.

A lot of the colonies of eusocial insects keep a reduced population over winter. The ones that collect food during good times might not ever consume it during harsh times. Because they have a different insentive strcture it's unlikely a worker ant would save itself at the cost of the colony "colony was screwed, but I survived" is an unlikely ant thought. They have behaviours like the oldest members being the ones that take on activities furthest away from the nest (guess which individuals are nearest to mortal danger).