The Meek Did Inherit the Earth, at Least Among Ants

Paper: "The evolution of cheaper workers facilitated larger societies and accelerated diversification in ants" https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx8068

NYT gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/science/ants-exoskeletons...

I love it when biology converges like economics. And there are so many cases in both where scale beats unit quality, in ways that might defy our intuition (or desires).

"Quantity has a Quality all its own" (Stalin?)

Consider: - Roman Legions (or Rome's scale in general) - US WWII tanks vs. Germany's - China's success with low price point products (e.g. solar panels) - (Hopefully) the future success of OS machine learning vs. giant proprietary models

I admit to find attractive the (totally speculative) idea that Neanderthals might have been as (or more) "smart" as sapiens sapiens, 1:1, but we were just much more social and would expand faster / better.