Comments on: Evolution and the Inevitability of Intelligence

By: treezy

treezy — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:02:36 +0000

Intelligence is always going to be a highly valuable adaptation, because more than anything it allows us to spread out to a very, very wide range of environments. Human beings are the ONLY animal that’s found from the North Pole to the South and everywhere in between, and this is because our technology (clothes, fire, preserved food, water purification, sea travel, air travel, et cetera ad nauseum) have allowed us to expand, to colonize. Consider that our ability to exist on virtually any corner of this planet has made us effectively the most hardy species ever to evolve on Earth — and, as we are ENTERING a period of mass extinction, this will come in handy. Yes, human beings don’t have any “natural weapons” like claws or poison, but somehow we’ve made it to the top of the food chain anyway. How? Intelligence. And we will watch in the next few centuries as most of the species that live on this planet with us disappear, long before we ourselves become a threatened species — and of course the very FIRST species to disappear will be the large carnivores, who will find their fangs and claws rather useless as their prey get more and more scarce. Consider the fate of the saber toothed tiger, which was one of the most feared predators of prehistory. Everywhere that HUMANS went, the tiger disappeared, because its saber teeth were no match for our stone tools. WE are the most adaptable species on Earth because of our intelligence and the products of our intelligence. It seems reasonable to me to expect that somewhere else out there some other organism stumbled upon intelligence, which is both the ultimate natural weapon and the ultimate environmental adaptation.

By: Andrew Bernardin

Andrew Bernardin — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:31:40 +0000

@ j thorny – Thanks for the compliment! Though I’m not totally clear on “self fatalistic.”

By: j thorny

j thorny — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:53:38 +0000

YES!!! this is exactly right! How many variables came into play in not only our intelligence, but the condtions witch made the evolution of intelligence favorable… and now in our reletively resent past we evolve the ability to destroy ourselvs… maybe intllegence is rare because it is so self fatalistic

By: Biochemical Soul » Carnival of Evolution #10 - The Oyster’s Garter

Biochemical Soul » Carnival of Evolution #10 - The Oyster’s Garter — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:51:58 +0000

[...] that half a wing is useful indeed. The final straw was when the Evolving Mind noted that evolution does not inevitably lead to intelligence. They ran away, leaving me alone once more in the internet [...]

By: Carnival of Evolution #10 « The Oyster’s Garter

Carnival of Evolution #10 « The Oyster’s Garter — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:37:03 +0000