Is Human Intelligence the Ultimate Evolutionary Advantage in the Universe?

  • Thread starter TattarBamse
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In summary, the concept of human intelligence being the ultimate evolutionary advantage in the universe is a highly debated topic. Some argue that our ability to think, reason, and problem-solve has allowed us to dominate and adapt to our environment in ways that no other species has been able to. Others believe that intelligence is not the only factor that contributes to evolutionary success and that other traits, such as social cooperation and physical abilities, also play a crucial role. Ultimately, the answer to this question may never be definitively determined, but it remains an intriguing and ongoing discussion in the field of evolutionary science.
  • #1
TattarBamse
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Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

I have only basic education in physics but have spent many hours reading scientific articles about everything that catches my attention. It`s what I do in my free time if i´m not fishing or composing electronic music. Always with a single malt nearby.

I tend to focus on different areas of science during different periods where I often pursue some idea I have gotten when fishing or something. I dig through papers and educational litterature to increase my understandning and often the force driving me, is that I am not comfortable with the level of understanding I have in a subject, and that the common knowledge and publicly expressed opinions seems inadequate as a description. It can be in any area of academics ranging from economics to darwinism and weightlifting. Whatever the subject, I have an unhealthy appetite for knowledge with a manic behaviour when searching for information, it can sometimes be a problem in social situations with family or elsewhere. I neglect things when I´m on to something and my wife gets pissed off sometimes when I have been staring at a screen all of my free time during too many days.
But I love it.

Although I´m not educated in physics on higher level, it is the love of my life and I think I have developed a pretty good understanding through self-study, on top of the basic knowledge from school, which I think is something like the level you get at college in the states. Even if my math skills is not that strong as it used to be, and I have to work to understand some calculations that I encounter, I feel that physics is a science where the concepts are often intuitive but the calculations needs some level of skill. Math is like weightlifting in my experience, you have to do it regularly to keep the strength in both muscles and brain, if one wants to keep the ability to control the weights or the calculations. Nowadays I´m not doing enough of both weightlifting and calculations.

I have a view of reality that physics as a science is all that is needed to address all of the problems that we encounter. Everything boils down to the laws of nature that is the foundation of physics. There is only one process happening in the universe, a journey towards higher entropy. Everything that happens is part of that process and humans are the biggest success in accelerating the increase in entropy as far as we know. Since we still not have found any signs of life of any kind, and intelligent life in particular, outside of our biosphere, it is a totally valid claim to say that humanity is the biggest success in the evolution of the whole universe. We have found ways to increase entropy that was totally impossible before we existed. For example, the burning of fossile fuels was not possible until humans gained the ability to manipulate physics and find ways around laws of nature that was keeping that energy locked up in the crust of the planet. Before humans, that energy was bound by laws of nature to stay at low entropylevels in reservoirs for a long time. When humans entered the scene, the same circumstances is overcome and new possibilities emerge everywhere humans choose to live. It´s amazing and unbelievably fantastic what humans can achieve just from a mental concept manifested in reality when we collectively align our intentions. Gotta love humans.

In a universe that only does one thing, and always maximize itself in the process, human intelligence and our intense search of new ways to make energy flow in ways that work in our favour, always increasing the total flow, humanity classifies as an outstanding success in the universal process of energy flowing to states of higher entropy. At least in my view of ourselves as lifeforms in a space of dead matter.

As a lifeform the most significant ability that is the central evolutional advantage that has made our population explode, is the same ability that separates us from all other known lifeforms, and is no less and no more than our rise above the constraints of only using energy in metabolism to sustain our lives. We are the only lifeforms that create flows of energy outside of our bodies with design that uses the energy to do work for us. I think that one can even narrow it down to humans being the only lifeform that makes energy flow outside metabolism, period.

That makes us extremely effective and superior from an evolutionary perspective, to the extent that we no longer are ruled by nature but increasingly takes control over everything in the environment. To some extent we even have control over the evolution that caused our existense. It started with fire that kept us warm, and have evolved to extraction of energy from atoms and new ways of combustion that has taken us outside our own biosphere and landed humans on another body of matter with an environment where humans shouldn´t be able to live. We have no limitations, we can do anything. Human will is more powerful than the universe we live in. Humans are awesome and the reason is physics.

And as you may have noticed, I like to write. I ask for tolerance for occasional walls of text, I have a problem with keeping it short.
 
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  • #3
Welcome to the forum.

TattarBamse said:
I have a view of reality that physics as a science is all that is needed to address all of the problems that we encounter.
In the real world we live in, I could not disagree more, however this subforum is only for introductions so if you care to pursue that discussion you'll have to open a new thread.
 
  • #4
Also, @TattarBamse you really should consider making shorter posts. You will get more responses if you keep your posts shorter, most people will not even read such lengthy posts. To be honest, I did not read this post or your other posts. I read the first and last couple of sentences and I know people that will look at the size of a post and skip it all together if it's too long.
 
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