
“Coincidence?” –Climate Change May Have Powered Evolution of Human Intelligence - BerislavLopac
https://dailygalaxy.com/2020/02/coincidence-climate-change-may-have-powered-the-evolution-of-human-intelligence-weekend-feature/
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hnarn
Most people don't think about the fact that "evolution" really is a euphemism
for a cold, indifferent, rational genocide performed by nature. When I read
phrases like "evolutionary leaps" I can't help but think that yes, with the
luxury of retrospective, even the abhorrent acts of the Mongols can be seen as
a productive force; but at the other end of it is always countless victims,
lives snuffed out by pure chance.

When climate change every so slightly changed the course of our evolution 250
000 years ago, it did so in a world that selected the most competent hunters,
survivors, "animals" in the world as it existed. It's curious, and somewhat
depressing, to think about what type of "selection" the more than likely
catastrophic climate change we will experience in a few generations will have
on homo sapiens.

Society, as I see it, is created upon the foundation of knocking natural
selection out of the equation. And good riddance; I don't want a world where
humans have to fight like predators for the privilege to survive. But this
also means we have rigged the game for alternate selection. Considering what
the most "fit" future survivors will be, I can't help but wonder what our
arbitrary and egocentric selection process will do to the future human -- if
it will even be around.

In a sense, we really are space age apes with stone age minds. Whoever
survives into the future will be more up to chance and gamble than competence,
since our world is so far from meritocratic. At the very least it will be more
like a random selection than a fit selection, and worst case we will doom
ourselves through our own humanity. But what is the option? IQ tests and
fascist elitism? Sometimes it feels like there's no right answer wherever you
turn to look.

