Cooperation Within, Competition Without

Agüera y Arcas's compressed account of why complexity and intelligence ratchet together: increasing internal coordination of a replicator's parts (cells mutually predicting one another; nerve nets; brains) is selected because it improves the whole's competitive standing against other replicators (Cambrian predation; hominin bands; WWII as a "Cambrian explosion of warfare" that birthed cybernetics). Both cooperation and competition are driven by mutual prediction, so the arms race escalates the order of prediction — theory of mind — regardless of whether agents are allies or enemies. The Dunbar plot (neocortex vs. group size) is the human-scale evidence.