Reading about these people who were persecuted and murdered for advancing human knowledge, and seeing the current state of the world where even our leaders still rail against vaccination, climate change, human rights, the moon landing and other facts, is anyone else bemused by what a self-defeating species we are?
If you placed humanity next to other hypothetical species and looked at us from a detached point of view, what would be our defining characteristic?
That is very interesting, because I don't think the constraints of natural selection and competition for resources are going to be the same in every environment on every planet. Most of what we are is determined by our biology.
Take ants or bees or termites. They have conflict between different colonies, but cooperation within a colony is guaranteed.
If you placed humanity next to other hypothetical species and looked at us from a detached point of view, what would be our defining characteristic?