Why it is a question
Chesson (LIT-1219) separates two ways competitors come to coexist. Equalizing mechanisms shrink the differences in average fitness. A stabilizing mechanism makes each type limit itself more than it limits the others, so a type that falls rare increases again (CASE-118 for two competitors). CLAIM-547 says cooperation within groups and the coexistence of groups can trade off. This question asks whether moral norms can supply the missing stabilization.
- A norm that is equalizing would narrow how much groups gain from cooperating internally: a cap, a transfer.
- A norm that is stabilizing would bear more on a group the larger it is: limits on dominance, protections for minorities, rules against exclusion.
- A loyalty norm strengthens a group’s internal cooperation, and so raises its advantage over the others. It is neither.
What would count as an answer: a model of groups competing under norms in which the invasion growth of a rare group can be computed, with and without the norm, together with a reason to think real norms have that form.
What it is not
- Not whether such norms are justified. Viability does not establish what ought to persist (CLAIM-075).
- Not the record’s question about processes. QUESTION-083 asks whether processes sharing an update rule can come to hold mutually regulated authority. This question is its analogue for groups of agents, with norms in place of an update rule.
Note of 2026-11-04: Van Lange and Bergmann, read
NOTE-1537. No answer. The review has no norm that bears harder on a dominant group. The nearest it comes is a reported argument (its ref. 206) that peace between groups needs “more centralized institutions at the level of the group” to restrain the group’s own aggressive members (p. 554). That limits a group’s aggression from inside, whatever its size, so it is closer to equalizing than to stabilizing. Its refs. 206 and 227–229 (intergroup tolerance as risk buffering) are leads, not registered.