The banter is not a cunning safety plan.

And even if it was and watching sport or going down the pub was in fact an extremely safety-conscious environment compared with the sterility and politeness of, say, the aerospace industry, it's not entirely clear how encouraging people to either escalate or laugh off would help them deal with actual danger which generally requires neither of the above...

It's not about the social actions, it's the traits they represent. Are you quick-witted? Do you freeze or overreact and lash out, behave erratically? Do you stay calm? Can you think fast enough under pressure to choose to say and do things that result in laughter or de-escalation, or escalate in a way that shows you're communicating on the same level (i.e. tease back, but not overdo it and insult the other person)?

If I can't stay calm and think rapidly under mild social pressure without threat of bodily harm or lost lives, I personally wouldn't feel honest in telling my teammates, "yes, if you or I are in a situation with risk to life or limb, you should trust that I'll handle it appropriately and protect myself and/or you."

People have tried to study groups like Medal of Honor recipients, and found that they have a wide range of different backgrounds and personalities.

Our assumptions about who will succeed in the most difficult situations don't seem to hold up.

Sorry, without some sort of data I’m refusing to believe that social adeptness has anything to do with ability to act in an emergency or other high pressure situation.

My own experience in tall ships and shipyards, where there are plenty of life and death decisions is not that.

There are people that I can fluster easily in a social situation that are perfectly calm and capable in high pressure dangerous situations. There are people that are practically insult comedians that I wouldn’t want driving a car in the same parking lot.

Not to mention that people doing boring, safe jobs behave like that too. Trust me, when I have the banter with my friends in the pub, I'm really not evaluating whether I can rely on their accountancy or web design to save my life

What actually seems to be the common factor is male groups in informal settings

No, I don't think ability to banter has any relationship with ability to properly handle those risky situations. There's zero intrinsic reason why someone who freezes when insulted must also freeze if a bay crane lift starts going wrong, because to me they are clearly different kinds of stress.

> sterility and politeness of, say, the aerospace industry,

I work in that industry and can say with confidence that statement is false.

Sterility and politeness is variable, but I also work in that industry and have yet to encounter a situation where the banter resembles that of a largely risk free but comparably male environment like, say a sports ground or pub lunch with friends I've known since we were kids.

Which is a good thing really, because I wouldn't want to think that people were actually determining fitness to be trusted with a soldering iron or embedded systems design based on their witty comebacks or tolerance for jokes about their wife.

i agree it's not cunning or a plan, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that this is an evolutionary/societal adaptation that _really works_.

Two things can be true at the same time: that this type of banter has undesirable consequences as well as desirable ones. This type of nuance is generally the sort of thing that's worth trying to understand before you try to 'fix' it.

My mother and father were both fishermen. They would've shitcanned someone firing off slurs in the middle of a stressful situation, because if you're doing that then you're making a stressful situation worse.

This is so bizarre. No, it's not. It's to shit on the new guy because he's new or different or whatever. You just made up a post-facto justification for bullying out of whole cloth and tried to make it sound like some social benefit.

Or, they’re doing it to blow off aforementioned stress.

> Women don't understand this, but nearly all men do.

I completely agree with you about the purpose and value of banter- but do you actually know any women or interact with any on a regular basis?

It's simply not true- women banter with each other just as much as men do, and they especially banter with men they are interested in romantically- for the exact reason you mention - to see if they handle stressful situations well, which is a desirable (attractive) trait in a romantic partner.

I'll admit women tend to be more subtle with this then men- such that some people (especially the ones who are failing the test) will mistake it as complaining or arguing.

I enjoy it very much when my wife does this- I usually respond by turning it into some kind of joke, or turning it back on her in a way she doesn't expect, and I can see her light up with joy that I 'got it' and didn't respond with frustration/etc.