Is Intelligence Self-Terminating?
Beliefs are the reason we’re so smart but they may also be the seeds of our destruction.
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If you think about it, intelligence is a very strange thing. In all of the animal kingdom, only Homo sapiens currently have massive brains capable of ridiculously complex technology. If intelligence is evolution at it’s best, where are all the other smart animals?
Here on earth intelligence seems to have evolved only once, but we know of several hominin species living at the same time making and using tools. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals are the last two known to mingle from the DNA sequences found in today’s Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Denisovans, Homo erectus, and Homo heidelbergensis also made tools and could have intermingled.
The ability to make tools, suggests that intelligence started to evolve multiple times, and even continues to this day in several animal species. However, only homo sapiens have intelligence orders of magnitude beyond the rest of the animal kingdom.
If it was toolmaking that created intelligence, there should be many more intelligent species of animals and hominins. But that’s not the case. Why?
The following is a summary of the hypothesis I proposed in my article, Memes: Why Our Brains Are So Big.
The ever increasing complexity of toolmaking required a proto-language. Language led to questions like, “Why am I here,” and “What happens when I die?” The anxiety of not knowing the answers created beliefs. Beliefs became the first non-genetic replicators with their own survival agenda.
Parasites are known to co-evolve with their hosts. This creates a kind of arms race that improves both parasite and host. Beliefs are like parasites in our minds. We owe our intelligence to them but because they have their own agenda, they can create a lot of problems.
For example, beliefs will make their hosts do whatever necessary to defend the beliefs including but not limited to:
- Making up false information
- Replicating & disseminating misinformation
- Making its host harm and even kill the hosts of opposing beliefs
- Kill its own host if necessary
Now imagine one hominin species crossing paths with another hominin species, both possessing the beliefs that made them intelligent. They may have struggled and killed over “hard” resources but they would also kill and die for their beliefs.
This could explain why all other hominids have gone extinct. We just happen to be the last hominin species simply by the process of elimination.
Moreover, killing and dying for beliefs continues to this day with us, the last remaining intelligent species.
Animals do not have beliefs, therefore they do not kill and die for them. You will never see an animal committing suicide for a belief, not even lemmings.
Beliefs, acting on their own behalf, is the key to understanding human behavior.
How Beliefs Hijack Minds
Viruses and parasites both use the existing machinery of their hosts to replicate. They depend on the host for survival by hijacking the cells and organs of the host to complete their life cycles.
Beliefs are no different. They hijack our existing machinery, the neurotransmitters that our brains use to motivate us to do or not to do things. When we surround ourselves with people of similar beliefs, our brains will release dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin making us feel good. When our beliefs are threatened, adrenaline and cortisol start to flow making us feel anxious and induces the fight or flight response.
For beliefs, the controlling mechanisms already exist. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, just steer the host in the desired direction.
Observe two people arguing over their beliefs. The biological response is exactly the same as if they were being physically threatened. This is not a coincidence. Increasing our physical stature, getting red in the face, raising our voice, and angrily pointing at the other person all indicate aggression based on a threat to the belief. It’s almost as if we are trying to remove the other belief and insert our own.
If this is the process and mechanism that all intelligence conforms to, we can make the following assumptions.
- Intelligence is rare because the process of co-evolving beliefs and their hosts eliminates all competitors.
- When our beliefs are in control, we are closer to extinction than we realize.
- If the first two are true it would explain Fermi’s Paradox
Where Are The Aliens?
If the universe is teeming with aliens, where are they? That’s the Fermi paradox in a nutshell.
Maybe intelligence has evolved many times before in the universe, but the last surviving species never figured out it was their beliefs, the very things that made them intelligent would also cause their extinction.
When a civilization enters the nuclear age it has the capability of extinguishing most if not all life on its planet. We should never forget how close we came to extinction during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There have been several other close calls and all it takes is a miscalculation based on a belief to end it all.
If we are the last of the “galactic” Mohicans, it’s time to recognize the root cause of humanity’s problems and give some future S.E.T.I. something to find.
References:
ScienceMag.org: Africans carry surprising amount of Neanderthal DNA
Wikipedia: Tool use by animals
Alaska Department of Fish and Game: Lemming Suicide Myth
Wikipedia: Cuban Missile Crisis
