<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # And they will not revisit the math, because nobody... > And they will not revisit the math, because nobody in a coalition revisits the math while the coalition is paying. Human experiments show people seek coalitions harder as their own strength declines and recruit the strongest partners available; research in small-scale societies shows higher-status people attract more cooperators; primate studies show coalitions raising the rank of their members and depressing the rank of their targets. Alliances answer to current value, current strength, current alternatives and current reputation, and the estrangement built by a raid holds exactly as long as the raider retains something to offer and the target retains nothing. Then it moves. The raider fails, loses the money, loses the house, loses the spouse, loses the standing that made the story worth believing; or the target becomes wealthy, successful, useful, connected, holds something the troop needs; and the relatives who swore they would never speak to you discover a change of heart. The record shows how ordinary the reversal is: in nationally representative U.S. data, eighty-one percent of those estranged from a mother and sixty-nine percent of those estranged from a father later reported the estrangement ended, and the reunification studies list maturation, the reconsideration of earlier beliefs and the weakening of the alienating influence among the reasons given, which is what the field looks like from the inside when the raider's rank has fallen. {{People call reconciliation a change of heart when what changed first was the field around the heart.}} {{The coalition that abandoned you will reconsider on one of two days: the day its builder has nothing left to offer, or the day you do.}} So the strategic lesson is brutal and it is the only one that works: never confuse being right with being defended, never assume blood makes neutrality possible, and never forget that an isolated animal loses the family long before it loses the argument. The civilized family did not invent any of this. It inherited an organism exquisitely attentive to allies, rank, reputation and exclusion, then handed it telephones, group chats, therapeutic vocabulary and round-the-clock access to everyone in the troop. Beneath the boundary, beneath the grievance, beneath the story of who stopped speaking to whom, the animal is still counting who stands with whom. {{Nothing in your family was a mystery. A raid was run on your coalition, the children were taken first because they were cheapest, and the raiders will bring them back the day the price changes.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “And they will not revisit the math, because nobody in a coalition revisits the math while the coalition is paying. Human experiments show people seek coalitions harder as their own strength declines and recruit the strongest partners available; research in small-scale societies shows higher-status people attract more cooperators; primate studies show coalitions raising the rank of their members and depressing the rank of their targets. Alliances answer to current value, current strength, current alternatives and current reputation, and the estrangement built by a raid holds exactly as long as the raider retains something to offer and the target retains nothing. Then it moves. The raider fails, loses the money, loses the house, loses the spouse, loses the standing that made the story worth believing; or the target becomes wealthy, successful, useful, connected, holds something the troop needs; and the relatives who swore they would never speak to you discover a change of heart. The record shows how ordinary the reversal is: in nationally representative U.S. data, eighty-one percent of those estranged from a mother and sixty-nine percent of those estranged from a father later reported the estrangement ended, and the reunification studies list maturation, the reconsideration of earlier beliefs and the weakening of the alienating influence among the reasons given, which is what the field looks like from the inside when the raider's rank has fallen. People call reconciliation a change of heart when what changed first was the field around the heart. The coalition that abandoned you will reconsider on one of two days: the day its builder has nothing left to offer, or the day you do. So the strategic lesson is brutal and it is the only one that works: never confuse being right with being defended, never assume blood makes neutrality possible, and never forget that an isolated animal loses the family long before it loses the argument. The civilized family did not invent any of this. It inherited an organism exquisitely attentive to allies, rank, reputation and exclusion, then handed it telephones, group chats, therapeutic vocabulary and round-the-clock access to everyone in the troop. Beneath the boundary, beneath the grievance, beneath the story of who stopped speaking to whom, the animal is still counting who stands with whom. Nothing in your family was a mystery. A raid was run on your coalition, the children were taken first because they were cheapest, and the raiders will bring them back the day the price changes.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-revisit-math-nobody-day-price-changes ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->