Quint Buchholz, Mann und Esel (a man and a donkey).
I look around and ask myself this question: “How being an idiot became an evolutionary advantage?” OK, if someone wants to convince me in the Darwinian theory of evolution, he would have to explain how being a moron represents a seemingly observable benefit? What is the purpose of the brain if the refine use of that instrument leads to trouble (besides building the atomic bomb to kill everyone)? There is a related question, why do people say stupid things with such an enthusiasm? Perhaps sometime, during the childhood of the humanity, the uncritical learning of the new things was an advantage? But today, with the flood of the data and the stimuli, the most important skill is the unlearning, being skeptical about everything. The hard labor of taking nothing for granted. Yet a man needs a tremendous amount of energy to sieve through the avalanche of the garbage. Especially the deep seeded trash that one often mistakes for an identity. Perhaps this is why there is the evolutionary advantage to being a moron, it’s easier to take things at a face value and let the chips fall where they may. In the randomness of it all, it might make little difference anyhow, but saves the energy for the living. And it boost your coolness factor, gives you the easy, careless, “fearless bandit” attitude (speaking of evolutionary advantage, chicks dig that). Granted in our age, when it’s all about the unlearning, such a dunce might look “weird”. This also explains why Tyler Cowen called the internet the age of the autism. Autism in the sense of being able to focus and on a very tight informational beam naturally. But then this presents a fork in the evolutionary road. If our age values and demands a narrow specialist than the effortless, naïve, “what, me worry” generalist, who in the past had such an upper evolutionary hand, is now at the disadvantage?
But of course I am conflating, being naturally gifted along the slice of the aspergers spectrum, is not the same as having a discerning, data neutral CPU. So today the evolutionary formation is as follows: on top of the culture are the aspergers geeks, than the traditional good old morons and down the time-honored bottom are the sceptics and the philosophers.
Further reading:
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Finally a kindred spirit! I will recommend your website to all my friends. Tell me do you see the hand of G-d working here or the hand of power-hungry men over the course of many decades? The maddening thing is, the people of good will and right thinking are not skilled in waging war, and tend to rely too much on G-d or some other higher power to make things right. I tell such people not to confuse LAZINESS with FAITH. It’s vital that we develop a VOCABULARY OF SPIRITUAL RESISTANCE to understand what is happening, and how to deal with it. Example: When confronted by communists in schools, etc, I say I am a man of the Bible, and the Bible teaches us NEVER ARGUE WITH A SNAKE! The snake respects not the truth of words, only power. THEREFORE CRUSH HIS SKULL BENEATH YOUR HEEL!
Sir, I think you are projecting. I didn’t write about resistance, etc.
Sorry I am so late to the party. The answer is sort of simple. If the intelligence is over evolved and under adaptive then it’s a burden that will make its possessor a candidate for the Darwin Awards.
“The most important skill is the unlearning.” This is true; many things are improved only through subtractive measures.
An intersting article about the evolution of idiocy can be found at http://www.evolutionaryneuropathology.net. It argues that having a low IQ may not have been bad if it didn’t detract from foraging competence. Also see http://www.solitaryforager.com for some interesting ideas about the adaptive value of autism.