Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally.

Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium.

Primates fighting each other is not.

Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage.

We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.

Or put another way - the 'self' can gain advantage with murder, but the group and species probably will pay for it long term.

I wonder if there are just things that species really have to learn over and over, particularly things like 'active deconfliction' etc..

You're confusing interpersonal murder with tribal conflict.

Personal murder is tightly controlled now. But this is a fairly recent development. In many periods it was tolerated under various forms, including slavery, blood feud, honour killings, and state-sanctioned murder as punishment, or political process.

It's only in the last few centuries that it's been prohibited, and the prohibition in practice is still partial in many countries. (See also, gun control.)

Tribal murder has been the norm for most of recorded history. There are very, very few periods in very, very few cultures where there was no tribal/factional murder in living memory, and far more where it was an expected occurrence.

And technology has always been close by. Throughout history, most tech has either been invented for military ends or significantly developed and refined for them.

How can it be that groups pay for it long term when many of the successful apex predators exhibit interspecies murder and territorialism.

Just to use your own example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapogo_lion_coalition

> We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.

There are plenty of people who advocate for war and consider it good, and plenty of disagreements over war.

People are usually in agreement that war / killing is bad when other people do it but will find all sorts of ways to justify themselves doing it when it is to their advantage. This isn't really contradictory, from an evolutionary perspective.

Plenty disagreements everywhere. Under (usually fake) ideas of not enough resources for everyone, so the strongest must survive.

Nazi planned to exterminate several whole ethnicities. If you think it was (or is) unversally accepted as "Bad" -- think again. Most developed countries had Nazi parties, including US and Canada. Some sympathize today. Several Middle East governments publicly claim that murders/rapes/kidnappings of people from another particular country is just and honorable, and will be rewarded in heavens.

Ancient Spartans (reportedly) killed their own weak children. In order to become a citizen every Spartan must have killed a man (non-citizen). It was considered good and just (by citizens).

In many cultures tribal warfare was paramount, even before states (and some remote tribes practice it even today). It was considered good and just.

And we honor our veterans, and for a good reason. (Without them, we would be captured/killed by other veterans, and honor them anyway). Modern civilizational culture is a thin patina on top of our primal behavior.

In addition to the standard cross-cultural sample, I find the Seshat database useful for checking universals. https://seshat-db.com/sc/scvars/

Sanctioned killing to defend or strengthen the tribe is generally not equated with murder.

No disagreement across cultures? That’s downright funny, there isn’t even agreement over what counts as murder. Do you think a jihadi sawing off a head thinks they’re a murderer?

Cultures aren’t universal, and neither is your particular religious tradition.

I would caution against the use of "murder" so loosely. Lions don't murder their prey. They kill their prey. Murder occurs when one entity with personhood intentional kills another entity with personhood, where personhood is rooted in the ability to comprehend reality (intellect) and the ability to make free choices among comprehended alternatives (free choice). "Murder" thus has a moral dimension that mere killing does not. Personhood is the seat of moral agency; without personhood, murder simply cannot take place, only killing, and it is a category error to ascribe moral goodness or evil to an act committed by a non-person. A spider eating another spider of the same species isn't murder; it may very well be the nature of that species to function that way.

(Entailed also by personhood is social nature. So, murdering another person is bad, because it is opposed to the very nature and thus good of the murderer. It's why killing in self-defense and the death penalty for murder are themselves mere killing, but not murder. Justice is served against the injustice of the gravely antisocial.)

From a game theoretic perspective w.r.t. just resources, murder does not generally pay especially given the social nature of a species given how antithetical it is to the social, but even if it does in some constrained sense, there is a greater intangible loss for those with personhood. Speak to almost anyone who has murdered someone. They will tell you that it changes them drastically, and not in a good way.

It might also depend on mating dynamics. If females mostly prefer to all mate within the top few percent of males in a community, there might not be much to lose if some of the lower status males of them take their chances going on a war party to conquer/steal some females.

>We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.

We argue over it all the time by disagreeing on what counts as "murder." Taking lives in war? Not murder. Taking civilian lives in war? Well the enemy often uses civilians as cover, what else can one do? The state takes someone's life? Not murder, just the cost of civil society. Abortion? Murder, obviously. Bombing an abortion clinic? Not murder, because killing killers in God's name is justified.

So what even is "murder?" It isn't simply the taking of a human life. It isn't even the taking of an innocent human life. It isn't even the taking of a human life with premeditation. Murder is an arbitrary line societies draw between the killing they find useful and the killing they don't. It's a legal and moral fiction.

I mean, the United States practically murdered an entire continent of civilizations and cultures and the only people who even care are the descendants of the few Natives we missed. How have we paid for that long term? We're a goddamn global hegemon and nuclear superpower that threatens to annihilate civilizations just for shits and giggles. Murder seems to be working out pretty well for us.