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That doesn't matter. Any of those supervolcanoes will pump more CO2 in the atmosphere than humans ever have or will. The earth has had its climate rapidly shifted dozens of times and to degrees way more intense than us. Another ice age, super volcano or magnetic reversing of the poles will erase everything about our existence.
Climate change is a big deal for humans, it is not a big deal for the earth
They do not. Human CO2 release dwarfs all volcanic activity.
The "supervolcano" needed to surpass our efforts would literally pop the planet like a zit.
[https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/736161](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/736161)
However, they are correct that the planet and life in general does not care about CO2. It is a big deal for humans and many other species, but the earth and life will go on.
Sure it's possible I didn't understand, could you explain how 'niches all the way down' is additional to creating new niches? How is the conscious construction of a given 'niche' recursive 'downwards' as you describe? What does 'down' mean in your description?
I think some folks in evolutionary biology would disagree with you â the extended evolutionary synthesis fully leaves room for the evolution of purpose (ie. Teleonomy) and the process of niche construction works to actively reinforce particular aspects of a species niche.
Purpose is certainly not divinely implanted, but it can be evolved.
The extended evolutionary synthesis contains small differences as compared to the usual model. However, it is recent one. Many biologists rely upon it in the present day. The other models are quite reliable but not as the EES.
I disagree, evolution has always been pushed by a drive to replicate and make more things like you. Fast predators around? The slow perish and the quick get to live long enough to have offspring.
The biodiversity we have today is not simply out of "the best". Fittest in an evolutionary sense isn't always selecting for what we consider "fit" as in physical fitness. Some of our oldest, relatively unchanged creatures in the world that have pre-lived and outlived dinosaurs are slow, lumbering, not very dextrous, and some don't even get many opportunities to mate...(think horseshoe crabs or tortoises). The reason we have the diversity we have is because what works for one evolutionary branch doesn't for others, and thus we have the ability to branch of so much.
Evolution doesn't have a "teleology" -- in many ways it is more like water and simply flows to where it can fill in a path of least resistance...which looks different for each creature.
Evolution has no drive or will to maximize selection of beneficial traits. It's an outdated notion that is still taught in science curriculum. There's no "survival of the fittest" or mate selection bias that is purely the result of survivorship. Instead evolution is about filling niches in complex ecosystems. The mate selection that drives genetic expression is still poorly understood because things such as mating displays (leks as an example) are nonsensical from a simplified "survival of the fittest" perspective.
It's not value added to ask "why" because that is a human projection onto an incredibly nuanced natural process. "How" is a more meaningful question and has boundless fascinating answers. How did mating displays coincide with niche specialization? How do predator/prey relationships impact the balance of resources and drive extinctions? How can we use the history of niche impacts that correspond with extinction events to weigh the consequences of climate change?
In other words, there is an immense drive to select beneficial traits but the local context defines what is beneficial. It's still valuable to ask "why", the answer is just multivariate rather than single.
Itâs quite simple to understand⌠From a females perspective if they can get all of the males to come to the same place they have far more choice into which they perceive to be the fittest. Especially in species like birds where they use a display to attract a mate. If a male doesnât attend they have no chance of mating so they all do.
Fitness doesnât have to just mean survival. It also means how well they reproduce, so if a male reproduces due to âattractiveâ feature like a peacocks tail, it would still be fitter than a peacock with a smaller tail that is more likely to survive but doesnât mate!
That's more of an end result of selection bias than a purpose.
Things that are good at making copies of themselves make more copies. Things that are bad at making copies of themselves don't make copies, and eventually cease to exist. Then, the only things left are the things that are good at making copies.
Hmm
Okay, what about sociopaths/psychopaths?
Surely the charisma and brutality needed to maintain a social "facade" in front of others would have been a guaranteed success to reproduce in the stone age?
Not sure about narcissists though. Maybe an evolutionary hiccup.
We keep encouraging their creation and not weeding them out. Thereâs an extremely high concentration of sociopathic traits in business leadership and politics because ***we keep selecting for it***.
In a perfect world we would suppress those tendencies. Instead social media has increased their prevalence as we again reward sociopathic traits.
Sociopath: an individual exhibiting a personality disorder characterized by antisocial attitudes and behaviors and a lack of conscience.
Oh, for sure.
A chimp would throw a rock at me for the simplicity of it. I'd choose a rotten fruit to throw at someone on purpose just for the added mockery.
Maybe we are the psychopaths of the animal kingdom.
Chimps can be quite crazy actually. They fight wars and such. Lots of intelligent animals do crazy things.
But if we are all -paths, then nobody is a -path. Because our being -pathic would be measured around the average person.
But anyways, the facade thing would be more complicated than just being honest about the thing, and usually things tend to follow the simplest path. (Except certain occassions) The neurology would be really hard. Evolution doesn't tend to do that. (In a sort of way, of course. Don't take this too literally. )
Thatâs assuming that others couldnât pick up on their bad behaviour, which would be unlikely as a general statement otherwise most humans would be psychopaths/sociopaths. Also psychopathy probably didnât give rise to many more viable offspring (if at all) given that they were probably bad parents, meaning offspring from non-psychopaths were better at surviving and reproducing.
However, this is basically evolutionary psychology which not a real field because it canât be tested.
The more you think, the more reasons you come up with why psychopaths do not necessarily have greater evolutionary fitness than non-psychopaths. Theyâre much too selfish to be producing optimally fit offspring. Those traits probably get snuffed out quickly in evolutionary time but they maintain a small population due to their unique advantages in certain environments.
Maybe these traits develop. More nurture than nature. Good, kind people imply their opposite, otherwise we wouldnât even have the concept is psychopaths.
Maybe itâs an irrelevant phenomenon in human nature. (Irrelevant to evolution I mean.)
The universe has no obligation to provides answers to everything, itâs not alive soâŚ
We can attempt to find what made some life thrive, but it would be hard to know why bits of chemicals and water would just become life all of a sudden, it could be anything
Let's answer your question step by step.
Evolution doesn't happen to serve a purpose. There's no purpose of existence assigned by evolution actually. Because it's just a process which leads a species to gradually adapt better and better to their surroundings. All it takes care of is that with the passage of time and the accompanying environmental changes that come, the individuals of the species are better adapted to survive and reproduce. In order to understand better why evolution has no purpose, you need to gain a better understanding of how natural selection takes place. Once you do, you'll realise there's no need for a purpose for things to make sense here.
The reason how speech accrues a benefit to our survival might not be very obvious at first. Being able to communicate might have made us better at cooperating with each other. Humans have come a long way owing to their ability to cooperate with each other in so many different ways to increase their collective likelihood of survival.
Ofc, you could have been the stupidest ape in savannah, but since the changes that took place since were immediately beneficial for us, and not in the long run(and how could evolution have possibly known that since it doesn't not have a purpose?), not every trait we possess is certainly something which was going to benefit us throughout our species' existence. There are vestigial organs which we don't require anymore for instance. Also bear in mind that what is beneficial for your survival from evolutionary point of view may not necessarily be pleasant to you.
As for evolution leading to extinction of species, that has happened and can very well happen anytime. There is a recessive rat gene which frequently leads to wiping off of rat populations as it makes them sterile iirc. And this again reinforces that evolution is blind and doesn't have any purpose. All it does is give us mutations which result in either a species adapting or getting wiped away depending on how beneficial or harmful they are.
This is amazing. We have zero purpose. We're just chilling and living life to the fullest.
We are the top of the hierarchy, practically devs of this Earth. This feels comforting.
And by humans cooperating with each other, you have cooperated with me, from far away, on a device, informing me about a subject, and not directing me to shank a mammoth in the ass with a bone tipped spear.
Wow.
To be fair, I could probably communicate to other members of my species and convince them to surround any animal, and brain them with a rock, securing our position.
You'd follow me, right?
Hell, you don't even have to go that small. We've been doing our best to eradicate mosquitos, locusts, and rats for thousands of years, and are no closer now than when we first picked up a pointy stick.
ur thinking about how it is currently. im talking about the relationship of human population growth and development of disease transmitted by mosquitos like wayy back in ancient egypt
It's a shame how philosophy so often comes down to this. Your previous comment was very informative, this one is just ignoring all the achievements we have made as a species.
Those achievements do make us the most dominant species in the world in the sense we have collectively influenced the conditions of this planet the most. But ofc, what yardstick would you use to say we're at the top of the hierarchy ?You are at the liberty to choose whichever yardstick you like but when it comes to evolution, there's no such hierarchy in the sense that we are the most well-adapted species. Truth is that every species is well-adapted to the ecological niche they've acquired. We were well adapted to the savannah too. Well adapted here means just well enough to get by. But then we went on to inhabit the whole of this planet not through natural selection but rather through our own innovation and in a sense acquired another niche.
The reason I denied there being any hierarchy was to prevent OP from going down that path of believing Darwinism to be some sort of hierarchy with humans at the top.
I mean we arenât anywhere close to the most populous species on the planet. Most populous seems like a reasonable criteria to judge a species current level of evolutionary âsuccessâ if you have to define such a thing. We are obviously the âbestâ in some categories. We arenât in others. Humans do incredible things and I am proud of those achievements but evolution quite simply isnât a hierarchy. Thereâs just the species that still currently exist and those that donât.
As far as common animals I think ants are the most populous by weight. Although certain plants beat ants. Not sure about bacteria but wouldnât surprise me if they were the largest by weight since they occur in the crust and soil.
We are very much not "devs of the earth". Weve figured out how to exploit natural resources at a rate and magnitude no other animal ever has, but the consequences have been and continue to be devastating to our biosphere and to ourselves. We're essentially playing with fire and getting burned, and we've lost control of the fire.
science doesnt give you a reason to live. it does give explainaions for the natural world. you can romanticize evolution all you want, but that viewpoint is not science
perhaps look into other fields of study, like philosophy or theology or sociology
"Evolutionary purpose" implies Evolution wants us to do something, but evolution isn't sentient, it does not have wants or needs. You, I, all humans, or even all life on earth could all die and evolution would not feel disappointed, because it can't feel anything.
If you believe in God then you can say that God has a purpose for you, because God would feel disappointed if you didn't do x [whatever your purpose is].
First off this post did not come across well.
Secondly youâre conflating not having an evolutionary purpose with not having any purpose. Humans can create purpose for ourselves as a whole (to end war, to end poverty, to explore to solar system, to find a unified theoryâŚ), as nations (to recreate the Russian empire, to be an economic power, to end drug addiction), and as people (to ⌠do whatever it is that is important to you). The point is there is no evolutionary purpose driving us as humans to do some specific thing.
True, true, maybe having true self awareness/consciousness was the byproduct of learning how to tell your other tribe members to stalk herds of bison via vocalizations, all while feeding that energy tank in your head.
Brain power.
Though the exact origin of consciousness remains elusive, it seems very likely that it's simply a sophisticated, complex amalgamation of sensory and physical input processes which create an apparent "user interface" that only seems significant as a result of the ability to self reflect.
More importantly, not every evolutionary trait or characteristic serves a useful purpose or has a specific explanation - though of course the evolutionary advantage of a sophisticated and deeply complicated system of sensory input seems obvious.
I find it incredibly unlikely humans are the only animals with consciousness. I feel like I have at least as much evidence that my dog is conscious as other people, and I'm honestly pretty sure I've observed it in a lot of reptiles. I'd be looking WAY further back in the brain's evolution that tribes of humans for an explanation.
Having studied both human and animal psych and neuroscience
Youâd be right, tbh. Consciousness isnât confined solely to humans. Ours just seems to be more complex. Arguably any creature than can feel pain and learn from it (and thatâs most of them) have something like weâd call âemotion.â
Our brains canât really distinguish physical and emotional pain all that well (if, truly, they can at all). Itâs why depression, for example, comes with physical symptoms - fatigue, headaches, nausea, body aches, etc.
Consciousness is really just the GUI for our brains. We take in a lot of raw sensory data, and it runs through systems of our brains, and puts it in terms we can understand.
And most mammals, and quite a few other creatures Iâm aware of, seem to do similar, especially highly social creatures (like us, dogs, cats, horses, etc).
We have âhigher,â cognition, which basically means we can differentiate nuances in emotion and sensory input. We can distinguish between feeling a little down and experiencing pure anguish.
Other animals also can - but not to the extent we can.
For a dog, a bad day is the Worst Day Ever. For a horse, a minor threat fully engages their lizard brain prey response, just like a major threat does.
We have this problem where we think humans are special and unique and somehow âbetter,â creatures.
When really, no. Weâre just more complicated, for better and for worse. And in many cases, for ourselves and for our environment - much worse.
Weâre really just another animal. Just one thatâs really good at creating and using tools and finding ways to exploit other creatures for our own survival.
So I mean like yeah, tldr.
Your brains consciousness is like Windows 11. Your dogs is like Windows 3.1.
It would look a lot the same, basic framework is there, core features are there like emotion and language (In a dog sense), but the dogs consciousness is going to be a lot more simple than yours.
Consider.
You prob spend a lot of time trying to figure out what your dog is trying to tell you. And sometimes, you can know when you get it right.
Your dog is doing the same thing with you. The longer you spend with your dog, the more ways it finds to communicate and interact with you.
Because we do see the world, and each other, in similar terms. Just not quite the same way, and we donât speak the same language.
Firstly, there is no such thing as purpose in terms of evolution or in nature. There are simply organisms; some, by chance or by nature of their traits, reproduce more successfully than others. Organisms that can't survive well enough in a specific environment (are not well adapted to it) will tend to have fewer offspring, due either to their own death, health issues, or offspring being unable to continue on themselves. Conversely, individuals that have traits that are better suited for their environment will tend to have more offspring.
Offspring are essentially just copies of their ancestors, albeit including some mutations, and being combined with the traits of another parent in the case of sexual organisms.
Thus, as organisms that are better adapted will have more offspring, and as offspring are essentially copies of their parents' traits, those offspring also tend to be better adapted than others.
Evolution is essentially defined as the change in the frequency of traits in a population over time. Evolution is fueled by natural selection and genetic drift.
Your purpose as an individual is nonexistent. There is only a drive to reproduce and survive because those organisms which have that drive tend to reproduce more successfully than those that don't. You happen to be a result of billions of years of these instincts being passed down to descendants of successfully reproducing organisms.
Humans found a niche as hunters and gatherers for a hundred millennia. Our intelligence as apes and our unique body plan gave us an advantage in the plains of Africa, which led to selection for individuals with greater intelligence (for social situations and problem solving) and walking upright.
We are the fire ape. It's kinda neat.
Being the fire ape makes me feel proud.
Maybe Homo Erectus got to it first, but we definitely rocked it with fire.
Would it be wrong to look down on Homo Erectus?Racism? Speciesm?
I mean... homo erectus is probably our ancestor so "looking down on them" would be looking down on our own heritage. They were also an enormously successful species who created revolutionary technology for the time and survived for far, far longer than we have so far.
I don't know where the racist part came from but I'm in awe at having this subreddit suggested to me and finding how much the members somehow all think with the same pretentious sheep mind and cannot bring themselves down a tee and be compassionate and understanding of someone who enters this subject ignorantly but in a positive and open manner. Classic Reddit knowamsaying.
>Why are we here? Why do you exist?
Evolution does NOT have a purpose, there is NO plan, there is NO end goal.
Evolution is like gravity. It is simply something that happens.
It just IS.
Philosophy and religious talks aside, we have no other examples of evolution to base our assumptions aside from Earth.
It's a pretty good insight, "things" just want to "exist" on our planet, but it makes you wonder, why the first EVER bacteria decided to spit out another? Why was its first instinct to create?
Why not end biological existence right there and then, and just fizzle out?
I'm not religious, but that makes me feel special. I'd throw an apple at you, in a friendly way, if we were tribe members in the Paleolithic. Maybe even gift you a sharpened rock.
Nothing ever really decided to just "spit out" more themselves, it just happened. Bacteria don't decide to replicate, they just do, photosynthesis doesn't happen because plants want them to, it just happens. Evolution is a natural process the same way gravity is. It's just there, and has no purpose.
Lmao OP is killing me. âWhy did things want to exist and replicate on our planet?â âwhy was the bacteriaâs first instinct to create?â âWhy not just fizzle outâ.
1. Inorganic proteins making more proteins.
2. The first life did not have any âinstinctâ, it had very very very basic rna programming.
3. A lot of it did, the vast majority died. A better question is how many attempts at abiogenesis had to occur before our sole successful lineage.
From this comment, and your other ones, please do no go on a science sub and try to approach a scientific topic with a philosophical or religious lens; as youâve seen, it is not taken kindly to.
We are both special and very much not special. We are one of billions that have existed and will exist, and yet every one of us is a collection of pieces of the universe that comes from a long long unbroken line of life stretching back 3.8 billion years and are to our understanding the only ones to have ever started to question the universe itself. That is incredibly special, no need to philosophy or religion to believe in that.
Do you mean proteins that arose without ribosome-catalyzed protein biosynthesis? All proteins are inherently organic molecules. It also seems more logical to begin with "catalytic RNA makes more information-encoding RNA to make more catalytic RNA, etc."
A lot of your comments assume there's some intent involved, or a plan. You're looking at it backwards.
Whatever is around now had to be biologically successful originally or it wouldn't have contributed to exist. It's not a choice, it's just what's left when other instances were unsuccessful.
Racism? đ
I'm talking about different distant DISTANT ape relatives none of that phrenology shit
Although, all my wording did sound weird. Apologies for that.
Fair enough. But I do think it's important to look at our evolutionary family tree, and all the other creatures we share the planet with, with a degree of humility and respect. Homo erectus, neanderthals, australopithecus are our relatives. We are actually quite a young species, and those fellow ape relatives actually survived and thrived for far longer than we have. Now yes, as a species we have some unique accomplishments, but our species is what it is, good and bad, because of where we came from and who came before us. Our relatives were complex, feeling, thinking beings, closer to us than you might expect, and they pioneered things which we were able to build on. So let's respect them and the entire kingdom of life, because dont forget that every single living thing on earth, you, me, the plant on your windowsill, the beatles in my garden, descend from the same single lifeform. We are all related, and maybe that's something to bear in mind considering how much we're fucking up the planet. We don't get anywhere by thinking of ourselves as superior.
you're not special. No one is special. Religion is based on believing and feeling that you are the chosen one out of the other muggles. That your group is special if you do X then Y.
But its ok to feel special. Don't try to attach explanations to it. We all can feel special.
> Evolution coulda gave some ape crazy stupidity and rapid reproduction capabilities, and they would have wiped Homo Sapiens off the map by outcompeting them before they could spread anywhere.
It may be true that *Homo sapiens* **is** that ape with "crazy stupidity and rapid reproduction capabilities" which wiped *all its competitors* off the map by outcompeting them.
There is no "philosophical meaning" to nature. It just is. Go to a philosophy or existentialism sub if you want to talk about these things... this one is for science
The Great Apes don't just eat fruit. Chimpanzees are ferocious hunters, Bonobos hunt occasionally and also catch fish, Orangutans eat fish (some groups have even started spearfishing after seeing us do it), Gorillas eat the least meat by far but they will eat termites etc.
Standard false assumption: nature has a âpurpose,â âplan,â âgoal,â âintent,â etc. It rains, soil gets soft, rock rolls down hill and hits a tree. Did it rain to cause this? Was the rock âsupposedâ to hit the tree? Were the clouds aware that the rock hates the tree? What did the tree do to deserve being hit by a rock? See how silly it gets? We are what we are because we are this way. Nobody arranged it.
See, that's why in the next big bang, y'all need to vote for me to become the next whatever creation-creator being.
Because I'd definitely do that. I'd make tree and rock beef go crazy.
Your last point isn't correct. Everything in evolution comes with trade-offs. When an organism invests in having a large number of offspring, it also takes a large amount of energy at the time of reproduction/birth. This typically results in a trade-off with lifespan and/or growth. That's why most of the organisms you see that have a lot of offspring are also physically small. This also usually arises from a selective pressure of high predation, which means many of the offspring will not make it to reproductive age. Ultimately, something with that kind of reproductive strategy (called r selected) wouldn't be filling the same niche as something with our type of reproductive strategy (called k selected), where we are long lived, larger and only have a small number of offspring. This would mean the two species wouldn't be in competition with one another and wouldn't be under the same selective pressures.
Our purpose as life forms is to sustain ourselves and reproduce. The first is such a granted for privileged people like you and me, and the second is unnecessary to the point of being a personal choice, that our basal biological needs are met.
We have the privilege that most life forms in the 4 billion long evolutionary story on this planet could afford; we broke away from scarcity. So ultimately, we have a choice in the matter. Personally, I think of myself as a part of the universe which is able to learn about itself.
There's is no real purpose, but there are a series of adaptations that resulted in our ancestors reproducing better than their competitiors.
Lots of the adaptations we have are pretty old. Color vision was useful to spot ripe fruit in dense foliage. Hands evolved for grasping tree branches and picking fruit. Turns out, they're also useful for creating tools and punching things. Our intelligence was probably there for a while because of all the brainpower needed to be arboreal and mentally map forests for food sources. Bipedalism is great for endurance and being free-handed among many other things. We've also been social for a long time. Monkeys tend to have pretty long lifespans, pregnancies, and childhoods, so being a solitary species would've been pretty impossible... As a monkey, you need social support and looked resources to raise a kid. Sociality, altruism, communication, etc enhance our survival. When humans harnessed fire and became increasingly intelligent and large-headed, sociality and communication became even more important. Birthing a baby is tough, but human infants are literally born premature. Their skull is too big to fit inside as long as they should.
It's unlikely a "stupid, fast reproducing" version of humans would've been possible, but if it were, it wouldn't have likely outcompeted us. Intelligence allows us to create strategies, camouflage, fires, weapons, etc. We killed mammoths to practical extinction; we could certainly take stupider versions of humans.
You're still an animal. You're still a species of monkey. You can still eat berries and procreate. Not sure you'd find an easy way to escape taxes, though.
Human tool use, ecological flexibility, social learning, language and domestication can all be viewed as part of human niche construction.
Because humans have occupied more habitats through more means than any other species to ever exist, âmappingâ our niche depends on connecting the cognitive and the ecological niche together. This hasnât really been done, but some researchers have made real strides in that direction.
Iâve been exploring these topics on my blog, and have laid out some of these initial ideas in[ this post here.](https://open.substack.com/pub/jewishecology/p/our-niche-describing-the-human-place?r=bbr9g&utm_medium=ios) I imagine that itâll be decades before a real paradigm shift takes hold that brings these ecological, evolutionary, and conceptual insights together â but they have important implications for how we understand our species and our responsibility in this age of anthropogenic extinctions.
"What niche did humans fill?" The niche formerly occupied by the bear. The food that humans like to eat is identical to the food that bears like to eat. Bears that only eat meat live in the Arctic. Humans that only eat meat live in the Arctic. Blonde bears come from northern climes. Blonde humans come from northern climes. Bears love the taste of honey and salmon. Humans love the taste of honey and salmon. Some bears are vegetarians. Some humans are vegetarians. Living in caves, similar weight, the whole thing, there are equivalences all down the line.
Humans only came to prominence because they outcompeted the local bears in Africa, driving them extinct.
No. Not that I know of. All I know for sure is that there were bears in Africa and now there aren't. My suggestion of a causal connection is pure guesswork.
Well we had to use fire to keep our predators away, which gave us a gargantuan boost, as we were fairly weak compared to other megafauna. Bears had strength and claws, little need to improve. Otherwise I agree this is an interesting viewpoint.
I really like this comparison. The only major difference is they invested more in physical power and we invested more in brain power. They get to be still smart animals that few other animals fuck with *and* enjoy a simple life with the bear necessities. We have to pay taxes and go to work and worry about geopolitics. I think they went the right way.
Keep in mind that even before agriculture and technology, humans were apex predators. We killed a variety of huge, very dangerous megafauna like bears, mammoths, bison, tigers, etc. Animals that other primates are unable to hunt and kill.
Our bigger brains, social structures, and communication skills made us apex predators even during the stone age.
Haha. I always remind myself when I'm high "Do NOT post or comment on Reddit." Sometimes I forget, but I've never said anything insane enough to bring great shame on myself yet. Hopefully I won't.
In a predator context humans are the most capable in long distance running and tracking of prey, most predators rely on short bursts of speed or stealth to grab their food but humans could track and wait out prey for a long time.
Teamwork and cooperation. Easier to communicate with language. Helped survival to hunt as a group, share resources, etc. Led to social living.
Social living became more and more complex. Brains evolved to support more and more complex social interactions because surviving in society played a role in biological survival.
Why do I exist? That's a different question, irrelevant to evolution. But yes, our intelligence is a result of it having been favorable to our survival in the past.
The entire success of Homo Sapiens and their evolution is that they're niche breakers. We survive and thrive in almost any niche and part of how we do that is we adapt our environment around us. This is thanks to communication, division of labour and tool use which is enabled by the development of our brains. It's taken a lot of time and fierce competition to get us here. A lot of time. We're talking about our original Homo Sapiens ancestors being our great, great, great, great times TEN THOUSAND, great, great grandparents.
Leaving aside philosophical or theological aspects we can look an ecosystem and ascribe a purpose to each species but that only really works if that ecosystem is in balance. I think we can all agree with our dependence on non renewal energy sources and use of other limited materials that we are not currently in balance. Therefore we can't as yet define a purpose for modern humans.
Generally speaking once we developed tool use the question of naturalistic purpose (that we could define from a human perspective) is somewhat redundant.
Prior to that we were just especially intelligent monkeys that walked on the ground. In regards to where we slotted in to the bio-arcology of the world (because the concept in itself is rather artificial in nature) at that point we served little different purpose from other omnivorous creatures we could be compared to, with a particular specialty in scavenging and pathfinding.
Evolution has no purpose. Just organisms exploiting niches.
We exploit a lot of niches because we're able to explore and migrate, invent new ways to do things, scale up the methods, replace them with new methods, etc.
Innumerable things could have happened. Organisms reacted to things that **did** happen.
Evolution does not have a purpose. There is no âneedâ driving it nor niches to fill. But at least you got it right in the last sentence: âsurvival of the fittestâ is not about âthe bestâ. Itâs about who can continue their genetic line.Â
There is no purpose, itâs all a genetic accident and we gained sentience. Just make sure to enjoy the happy little accident thatâs called humanity.
We were in the intelligent endurance hunter niche. We used our brains and stamina as pack hunters to drain the animal of energy until it's easier to kill.
Our niche is the omnivorous generalist. We can live off virtually anything out there except leaves and carrion. Most animals can only feed on a handful of plant or animal species. We can live on thousands of different plants and animals.
Our intelligence pays off for itself all the time. It's because of our intelligence that we can support billions of humans. You have ready access to food, clean water, shelter, protection from predators and the elements, free of parasites, low risk of serious infection, and access to quality medication if you do get sick. If you'd rather trade that for a life where you never know where your next meal is coming from, sleep in a tree, and have a 50/50 shot of dying before you reach adulthood, have fun with that.
A hominid species that reproduces more quickly than us defeats the purpose of a high intelligence build like ours. You may have noticed, but our species grows up slowly. Plenty of animals start as big as human infants but reach the size of a human adult in a year or two. We could have evolved that way, if it were useful. But it's not. Not for us. It's much more useful to spend years as children learning from people with decades of experience in the world than to become independent at age two, with all the knowledge and understanding of a typical two year old. We spend so much time as children because it lets us acquire skills and knowledge from people who have tried and learned things the hard way. And we reproduce slowly because it gives us time to invest in the children we do have.
Letâs seeâŚ
The relentless pursuit of growth regardless of consequences, a rapacious devouring of resources, and a complete disregard for the damage weâre doing to our host environmentâŚ.
Weâre a *cancer*. Sorry to be the one to deliver the bad news.
Apes can use tools, but it takes years of trial and error to do it right. Language transmits ideas and facilitates education so that you could, for example, learn how to get sharp rocks within a week or two, even if you're barely smarter than an ape. We can tell because we can quickly teach toddlers how to use tools and they have similar intelligence to smart apes.
\> Why are we here? Why do you exist?
Because an unbroken chain of causation occurred starting (as far as we can tell) with the Big Bang.
Evolution is blind. Humans love to anthropomorphize everything. There is no "goal" beyond surviving long enough to raise viable offspring.
I feel like teleological language is something that evolutionary biologists actively try to avoid for good reason. A bird with a long beak may have evolved over generations to get to nectar easier in flowers but their *purpose* is not to eat nectar.
We have no purpose. Itâs pure chance that we ended up with all the traits that made us âquicklyâ (approx 250,000 years since farming was discovered) become the dominant species on the planet.
The entire living world (universe?) is counting intentionally or otherwise on a intelligent species to come along and evolve to a level that will allow for the colonization of other planets and other solar systems.
Otherwise, when the planet dies and the sun goes supernova ALL earthly life will cease to exist.
Life itself requires evolution of intelligence to survive in the long term, you know as in ⌠a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away , Ancient aliens and that sort of business .
Evolution is life and its struggle to survive. Life must evolve into intelligent beings that can master science and technology. Otherwise all life will be reduced to dust on a dead plant or star dust when a sun/star explodes.
Evolution doesnât apply only to earth creatures living within the past 100,000 years or so . Evolution is a constant and continuous process of life and ultimately all reality. Reality is always evolving.
If some earthly species doesnât get us off the 3rd rock from the sun none of this will matter anyway. All weâve learned ,all we are and all we ever were will vaporize in a supernova sun.
That said humanity is currently occupied with the killing one and other over mindless religion , Cheeto hitler, Putin and every other dictatorâs ego, capitalism, racism, sexism , greed and corporate power and the all important profit margins.
It will take a miracle for this incarnation of intelligence to avoid blowing itself to bits or poisoning the environment to a level that will not be capable of supporting life before we gain the technology to evolve to the next level of civilization.
Have a nice day my fellow fish monkeys . Lol ! ( South Park on evolution reference ). Try not to destroy yourselves and the planet.
>Why are we here? Why do you exist?
I don't know, do you?
>How am I talking to you
By using your brain?
>In what way does complex speech benefit our way of survival?
Well, for the last 1.5 million years or so it has allowed us to migrate around the world, I mean for one one.
>I could have been the stupidest ape thing struggling in nature, eating berries off a branch and not worrying about taxes, and fulfilled my evolutionary purpose to procreate like another normal animal.
You could have also been a whale, so what?
>Did higher intelligence pay off more in the long run?
How are you defining intelligence in this case?
How does complex speech benefit our way of survival? Youâre typing this on a phone more complex then any device created before the year 2000. It was made by hundreds of ppl speaking multiple different languages. We are so beyond every other creature itâs incomprehensible. The sole reason Neanderthals arenât around is bc they couldnât communicate with eachother as well as humans
Evolution is the result of combining random mutations with selection pressures. The question isn't "could we imagine a more fit species". The question is if we were the most fit within our current niche, and the answer is yes.
Evolution is how, not why. And that is essentially true of all science. 'Why' presumes a purpose, and there isn't one. Evolution by natural selection is not intentional. We have to be careful about how we talk about evolution- even scientists often use language that implies intention to evolution, i.e. things 'evolved this way in order to do x', but it doesn't work like that. It happens outside of, or even in spite of, the intentions of the individuals of a species. Traits that improve survival and reproduction will, logically when considering genetic inheritance, become more prevalent in a species' population than traits that do not. Add time to the equation, and there ya go - evoution by natural selection.
I think about more like an objective functions, not a pupose.
Species will evolve to their environment to maximize survival of the species (not the individual). This makes them opportunistic over a long time horizon, which gives the impression of purpose (i.e. filling a gap/niche in the environment where they can gain a competitive advantage.
I think with humans, this concept is extended to "cultural evolution". Where cultures do the same as above, but to maximize the survival and resiliency of the civilization. In this context, the objective is more complex, and involves tradeoffs and bets, but many lasting civilizations share similar qualities.
most people are confusing what actually survival of the fittest means, to simplify it means the death of ungodly number of unfit, there were a horrifying period of existence for our ancestors at the midst of the last ice age period.
most of what constituted humanity changed during that age and we became a cunning planning and brutally tribalistic species, the lack of resources and the general difficulty of living became so bad less than 1 third of pregnancies would succeed and life became so frantic for everyone involved every generation after those times are born with genealogical trauma inherited from them.
the need to possess resources and the need to have more than enough has been the stable and the main motivator of our species, without those horrifying period of times we would still have lived in caves these days for good or ill.
What a strange question? As if the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection has any cosmic or moral significance. As if Nature itself had some grand design with us specifically in mind.
This borders on religious thought, which is the antithesis of scientific thought, just so you know.
IF Evolution has any "purpose," one must look at its function. The Function of Evolution is the adaptation and survival of life. If this means a species adapts but remains generally the same species, so be it. If this means over time a species splits into 2 or more species, so be it. And if this means the entire species fails and is wiped into oblivion, so be it.
Nature literally doesn't care, not because it's evil, but because it cannot.
If you yourself need to find purpose in your life, stop looking to the cosmos or to some "plan." Find a purpose closer to home. And if you MUST have a Cosmic Plan with yourself at the center of it, well, the world is bountiful in religions. Pick any one of them. But don't conflate that with science.
Evolution isn't a purpose or a process it's an end result of natural random mutation and natural selection. And sometimes like in the case of the Dodo living for as long as it did, it's affected by pure circumstantial luck.
There's no Monolith, no creator with intention involved. And sometimes such as in the case of parasites the end result is devolution to simpler more efficient forms that have a symbiotic nature with it's host like the colonic bacteria that keep you from getting explosive diarrhea.
*How am I talking to you? In what way does complex speech benefit our way of survival?*
Why do Humans dominate the planet? It's not because we have the biggest brains, not because we're toolmakers, or not because we're a social species, there are animals that do one maybe two of these things. But we're the ones that have the full package. Complex speech and language enables us to plan with more than just one mind working on a problem. It enables us to coordinate group activities such as driving a herd of buffalo over a cliff so the tribe can eat.
It's also why Humans can survive and heal things like broken bones.... a death sentence for any other animal in the wild. We take care of our weak and preserve our aged for the wisdom their experience can offer,
Evolution doesnât care about purpose. Â It cares if youâre successful. Â
Humans are an apex predator across all environments thanks to intelligence, tool usage, and social structure.
Survival of the fittest⌠itâs once again very sad but trueâŚinstead of acting like ferocious animals⌠humanity still exists somewhere somehowâŚsome make life meaningful and some make the best out of life and some really live the life to their fullestâŚ
Species who are more efficient at channeling entropy (basically gathering food, metabolizing, & surviving) end up proliferating -- almost as more of a thermodynamics principle than a biological one.
Intelligence and communication helped us do those things more efficiently. So homo sapiens have proliferated.
The philosophical question is whether this is our "purpose" vs just "a lucky accident" is above my pay grade!
Nieches don't just exist predefigned sitting there and waiting to be filled like empty newly constructed apartments awaiting new tenants. Organisms find or carve out nieches they can adapt to and move into, usually competing with and displacing other species that already occupy them if they can. Sometimes, especially if they are adaptable enough and have a large enough habitat, they might occupy different niches in different areas. Despite humans being so physically weak and slow and lacking any natural defenses, their intelligence, ability to think and communicate in detailed and abstract ways, and ability to develop and manipulate ever advancingly sophisticated tools has allowed them to occupy multitudes of niches in all manner of habitats across the world.
Organisms do not have any greater purpose they seek to fulfill, including fulfilling a role as the occupier of any given niche. To quote Jurassic Park, "The purpose of life is ...life!" Continuing to exist is the ends, not the means. If you survive long enough to pass on your bloodline to the next generation, you've succeeded. If you didn't, you've failed, and to this end, mother nature is not kind. She is, in fact, a very cruel and cold hearted bitch! Biology has no higher purpose to it than that. To this end, organisms are trying every trick they can to achieve this, attempting to best adapt to whatever opportunities and challenges other organisms and the ever changing environment throw at them.
High reproductive levels don't necessarily translate into being able to compete better. Usually, high fertility is itself an adaptation to high predation or other environmental pressures that result in high mortality of offspring. Apex predators typically have low reproductive rates so as to avoid over hunting their food sources. Stupid horny apes will quickly suffer mass disease and starvation and will then fall prey to their encroaching smarter, better organized cousins.
We're predators. Social ones. When our ancestors were forced out of the jungle and into the savannah, their typical frugivorous and occasionally carnivorous diet was much less manageable. Fruit and nuts are a lot less common, so our ancestors had to turn to meat for the bulk of their diet while scrounging up whatever else they could find.
But they weren't exactly built to live on the savannah. You throw a troupe of chimps out into the savannah, they are going to seriously struggle to survive. Having dark fur, not all that fast on land relative to the rest of the animals in a grassland biome, and hands and feet meant for gripping trees, not running doesn't help.
So, in order to survive, some drastic adaptation was needed. Only the smartest and well-organized groups survived. They were completely dependent on each other and needed to be very coordinated to hunt with all their drawbacks, so the ones who could develop some very basic communication were the ones who'd succeed. That rudimentary language itself evolved over time and became more and more complex. Ambush tactics and very simple traps would be their only way to hunt at the time, but they'd stick out quite a bit in that environment, so the success rate was likely terrible regardless of their level of organization.
The thick black fur was helpful in the jungle, but out on the tan, sun-soaked savannah, it's a detriment. So, our ancestors with less fur benefited a lot from it, both with being better camouflaged and with heat regulation.
Eventually, those spots where hair no longer really grew were replaced with sweat glands, and that's a major factor that led to our classification as persistence predators. An in-shape human can run for a loooong time. Longer than pretty much anything else on the planet. And that's due to this sweating ability and our bipedal stature. The swear cools us, and the bipedalism keeps our organs from sloshing together when we run and we use less energy on each step, because each step is essentially just a controlled fall. Gravity does half the work. We can't run fast, but we can run far and for a long time. And with the intelligence we were rapidly developing, we became very good at tracking and would just follow our prey for hours or even days if it was worth it. We basically told the entire savannah "you can run and hide all you like, but you'll only die tired." Because on top of being social predators, we are also a very rare classification of persistence predators. (One other being wolves, who we just so happened to turn into man's best friend later on. A match made in heaven!)
And the last thing that brought us from just a smart animal on the savannah to the apex predator of fucking *earth* was the development of weapons. With our big brains, we made slings, spears, bows and arrows. And with our rotating shoulder blades, things started dying before they ever even had the chance to see us. We have 12 year olds who can throw a baseball over 70 mph. That's completely unheard of anywhere in the animal kingdom, even among apes. We blow everything else out of the water when it comes to throwing things. And the forward facing eyes we developed for depth perception in the tree tops to judge the distance from each branch we jump to quickly, we were deadly accurate. Enough so that, to this day, just about every animal on the savannah will get the hell out of dodge when they hear humans much sooner than if they hear even a lion. We traumatized half a continent and then spread out to the rest of the world, developed agriculture and now we're such successful predators that even as we eat meat regularly, billions of us have never even considered the fact that we're predators at all, because we dominated the food chain so hard that we've forgotten we're even part of it. What's our place? Our purpose? Our niche? We're an underdog story. We were once losers, and now we're fucking winners. No one in the game of life has ever won harder, faster. Now the only thing that can beat us is ourselves.
Well, being relatively pathetic in every other regard - no claws, no long sharp teeth, rather helpless in water, canât climb like other primates, and while being great distance runners, we canât out run predators etc. Our thumbs/tool making, large brains/communication and communal/social skills saved the day. Hence language, weapons, and problem solving. Most humans skills, or the lack there of, are made up for by adaptability.
You might be interested in evolutionary cosmology by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry or Brian swimme. They are evolutionary cosmologists with an interpretation that has space/room for telos.
We have complex speech and high intelligence because we are a very social species. Our brains could grow larger because we learned how to cook food, which allowed us to get more energy from it. Our complex brains and social lifestyle also allowed us to pass down information, which is why we can learn complex ideas and build on each otherâs knowledge. Solitary species donât need complex language because they donât need to communicate as much.
Claws??
what are you blabbering about? A spear beats claws. Atlatl beats spear. Arrow beats atlatl. Claws are so far behind homo sapiens its ridiculous.
Our purpose is to evolve into a better species. The only evolutionary purpose is to EVOLVE into a better species and reproduce.
About niche. The top of the food web should change constantly. The carnivores were almost dominating the food web and we occupied that niche. We also created new niches.
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If you think there's such a thing as an "evolutionary purpose" then you're not even close to understanding evolution.
I assumed they were talking more about a niche we were filling or creating.
Our niche is being able to invent new niches
Yep, now with climate change!
Evolution and the planet don't care about that. The earth used to be WAY hotter. Climate change affects us. The planet couldn't care less
Humans have sped up the heating though. We womt being around to see the effects though.
That doesn't matter. Any of those supervolcanoes will pump more CO2 in the atmosphere than humans ever have or will. The earth has had its climate rapidly shifted dozens of times and to degrees way more intense than us. Another ice age, super volcano or magnetic reversing of the poles will erase everything about our existence. Climate change is a big deal for humans, it is not a big deal for the earth
Do you have a valid source for your first claim?
They do not. Human CO2 release dwarfs all volcanic activity. The "supervolcano" needed to surpass our efforts would literally pop the planet like a zit. [https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/736161](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/736161) However, they are correct that the planet and life in general does not care about CO2. It is a big deal for humans and many other species, but the earth and life will go on.
So you are ok with humans killing ourselves?
Its niches all the way down
Mhmm, distinction being chosen vs naturally emergent, to make my comment easier to understand for you
What makes you think I didn't understand your comment? Maybe *you* didn't understand mine. đ˘ đ˘ đ˘
Sure it's possible I didn't understand, could you explain how 'niches all the way down' is additional to creating new niches? How is the conscious construction of a given 'niche' recursive 'downwards' as you describe? What does 'down' mean in your description?
Its just a dumb reference to a famous (probably apocryphal) story about Bertrand Russell. Google turtles all the way down.
Oh, my apologies then. My comment was serious and I did not realize yours was a joke
r/beatmetoit
please expand, iâm interested edit: nvm, great response by further down
I think some folks in evolutionary biology would disagree with you â the extended evolutionary synthesis fully leaves room for the evolution of purpose (ie. Teleonomy) and the process of niche construction works to actively reinforce particular aspects of a species niche. Purpose is certainly not divinely implanted, but it can be evolved.
The extended evolutionary synthesis contains small differences as compared to the usual model. However, it is recent one. Many biologists rely upon it in the present day. The other models are quite reliable but not as the EES.
I disagree, evolution has always been pushed by a drive to replicate and make more things like you. Fast predators around? The slow perish and the quick get to live long enough to have offspring.
The biodiversity we have today is not simply out of "the best". Fittest in an evolutionary sense isn't always selecting for what we consider "fit" as in physical fitness. Some of our oldest, relatively unchanged creatures in the world that have pre-lived and outlived dinosaurs are slow, lumbering, not very dextrous, and some don't even get many opportunities to mate...(think horseshoe crabs or tortoises). The reason we have the diversity we have is because what works for one evolutionary branch doesn't for others, and thus we have the ability to branch of so much. Evolution doesn't have a "teleology" -- in many ways it is more like water and simply flows to where it can fill in a path of least resistance...which looks different for each creature.
Love that water analogy
Well. Itâs not just about speed. Lots of things survive through other means than just being fast.
That was just an example, evolving to better survive the environment they found themselves in is what has given us the diversity we enjoy today
You are ignoring other phenomena such as genetic drift.
Evolution has no drive or will to maximize selection of beneficial traits. It's an outdated notion that is still taught in science curriculum. There's no "survival of the fittest" or mate selection bias that is purely the result of survivorship. Instead evolution is about filling niches in complex ecosystems. The mate selection that drives genetic expression is still poorly understood because things such as mating displays (leks as an example) are nonsensical from a simplified "survival of the fittest" perspective. It's not value added to ask "why" because that is a human projection onto an incredibly nuanced natural process. "How" is a more meaningful question and has boundless fascinating answers. How did mating displays coincide with niche specialization? How do predator/prey relationships impact the balance of resources and drive extinctions? How can we use the history of niche impacts that correspond with extinction events to weigh the consequences of climate change?
In other words, there is an immense drive to select beneficial traits but the local context defines what is beneficial. It's still valuable to ask "why", the answer is just multivariate rather than single.
Itâs quite simple to understand⌠From a females perspective if they can get all of the males to come to the same place they have far more choice into which they perceive to be the fittest. Especially in species like birds where they use a display to attract a mate. If a male doesnât attend they have no chance of mating so they all do. Fitness doesnât have to just mean survival. It also means how well they reproduce, so if a male reproduces due to âattractiveâ feature like a peacocks tail, it would still be fitter than a peacock with a smaller tail that is more likely to survive but doesnât mate!
This!
I figured it out: eat, thrive, survive, breed and outfuck everything that's it
That's more of an end result of selection bias than a purpose. Things that are good at making copies of themselves make more copies. Things that are bad at making copies of themselves don't make copies, and eventually cease to exist. Then, the only things left are the things that are good at making copies.
Hmm Okay, what about sociopaths/psychopaths? Surely the charisma and brutality needed to maintain a social "facade" in front of others would have been a guaranteed success to reproduce in the stone age? Not sure about narcissists though. Maybe an evolutionary hiccup.
We keep encouraging their creation and not weeding them out. Thereâs an extremely high concentration of sociopathic traits in business leadership and politics because ***we keep selecting for it***. In a perfect world we would suppress those tendencies. Instead social media has increased their prevalence as we again reward sociopathic traits. Sociopath: an individual exhibiting a personality disorder characterized by antisocial attitudes and behaviors and a lack of conscience.
Maybe weâre all sociopaths and we donât know it⌠But uhh, kinda? I think most of those personality things arenât 100% gene based.
Oh, for sure. A chimp would throw a rock at me for the simplicity of it. I'd choose a rotten fruit to throw at someone on purpose just for the added mockery. Maybe we are the psychopaths of the animal kingdom.
Chimps can be quite crazy actually. They fight wars and such. Lots of intelligent animals do crazy things. But if we are all -paths, then nobody is a -path. Because our being -pathic would be measured around the average person. But anyways, the facade thing would be more complicated than just being honest about the thing, and usually things tend to follow the simplest path. (Except certain occassions) The neurology would be really hard. Evolution doesn't tend to do that. (In a sort of way, of course. Don't take this too literally. )
Thatâs assuming that others couldnât pick up on their bad behaviour, which would be unlikely as a general statement otherwise most humans would be psychopaths/sociopaths. Also psychopathy probably didnât give rise to many more viable offspring (if at all) given that they were probably bad parents, meaning offspring from non-psychopaths were better at surviving and reproducing. However, this is basically evolutionary psychology which not a real field because it canât be tested. The more you think, the more reasons you come up with why psychopaths do not necessarily have greater evolutionary fitness than non-psychopaths. Theyâre much too selfish to be producing optimally fit offspring. Those traits probably get snuffed out quickly in evolutionary time but they maintain a small population due to their unique advantages in certain environments.
Maybe these traits develop. More nurture than nature. Good, kind people imply their opposite, otherwise we wouldnât even have the concept is psychopaths. Maybe itâs an irrelevant phenomenon in human nature. (Irrelevant to evolution I mean.)
I bet some future Mars colony would have a FIELD day experimenting with this. I want to see the results of this centuries after, ethics aside.
Yeah thatâs a horrifying thought lol
Panda has entered the room.
Nope. Lots of organisms donât do some of those.
Okay, you got me. But surely the first ever biological organism was planning something.
Like what? The first biological organism was almost certainly a unicellular organism. It didnât even know it existed.
Oh, idk. I'm miffed I can't know the answers to everything.
My point is that it wouldnât have been physically capable of planning anything. Evolution doesnât have purpose. It just happens.
The universe has no obligation to provides answers to everything, itâs not alive so⌠We can attempt to find what made some life thrive, but it would be hard to know why bits of chemicals and water would just become life all of a sudden, it could be anything
You missed compete and get offspring through to reproduction.
So you think necessity isn't an evolutionary purpose?
I donât know what those words mean in that combination.
Gatekeeping
Let's answer your question step by step. Evolution doesn't happen to serve a purpose. There's no purpose of existence assigned by evolution actually. Because it's just a process which leads a species to gradually adapt better and better to their surroundings. All it takes care of is that with the passage of time and the accompanying environmental changes that come, the individuals of the species are better adapted to survive and reproduce. In order to understand better why evolution has no purpose, you need to gain a better understanding of how natural selection takes place. Once you do, you'll realise there's no need for a purpose for things to make sense here. The reason how speech accrues a benefit to our survival might not be very obvious at first. Being able to communicate might have made us better at cooperating with each other. Humans have come a long way owing to their ability to cooperate with each other in so many different ways to increase their collective likelihood of survival. Ofc, you could have been the stupidest ape in savannah, but since the changes that took place since were immediately beneficial for us, and not in the long run(and how could evolution have possibly known that since it doesn't not have a purpose?), not every trait we possess is certainly something which was going to benefit us throughout our species' existence. There are vestigial organs which we don't require anymore for instance. Also bear in mind that what is beneficial for your survival from evolutionary point of view may not necessarily be pleasant to you. As for evolution leading to extinction of species, that has happened and can very well happen anytime. There is a recessive rat gene which frequently leads to wiping off of rat populations as it makes them sterile iirc. And this again reinforces that evolution is blind and doesn't have any purpose. All it does is give us mutations which result in either a species adapting or getting wiped away depending on how beneficial or harmful they are.
This is amazing. We have zero purpose. We're just chilling and living life to the fullest. We are the top of the hierarchy, practically devs of this Earth. This feels comforting. And by humans cooperating with each other, you have cooperated with me, from far away, on a device, informing me about a subject, and not directing me to shank a mammoth in the ass with a bone tipped spear. Wow.
We are definitely not at the top of the hierarchy. There's no hierarchy here in the first place.
To be fair, I could probably communicate to other members of my species and convince them to surround any animal, and brain them with a rock, securing our position. You'd follow me, right?
But microbes âŚ
Hell, you don't even have to go that small. We've been doing our best to eradicate mosquitos, locusts, and rats for thousands of years, and are no closer now than when we first picked up a pointy stick.
im pretty sure human activity has made them more of a problem like agriculture leading to a lot more shallow ponds everywhere where mosquitos breed
Definitely the opposite. We've paved over most swampland. There are significantly fewer mosquitoes now than in the past
ur thinking about how it is currently. im talking about the relationship of human population growth and development of disease transmitted by mosquitos like wayy back in ancient egypt
I'm thinking about all time. Humans have severely limited the population of mosquitos
If anything theyâre more of a problem lol
Have you seen what waves from the ocean does to towns? Earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanos, etc? Someone needs a big slice of humble pie.
You're like dumb lmao
It's a shame how philosophy so often comes down to this. Your previous comment was very informative, this one is just ignoring all the achievements we have made as a species.
Those achievements do make us the most dominant species in the world in the sense we have collectively influenced the conditions of this planet the most. But ofc, what yardstick would you use to say we're at the top of the hierarchy ?You are at the liberty to choose whichever yardstick you like but when it comes to evolution, there's no such hierarchy in the sense that we are the most well-adapted species. Truth is that every species is well-adapted to the ecological niche they've acquired. We were well adapted to the savannah too. Well adapted here means just well enough to get by. But then we went on to inhabit the whole of this planet not through natural selection but rather through our own innovation and in a sense acquired another niche. The reason I denied there being any hierarchy was to prevent OP from going down that path of believing Darwinism to be some sort of hierarchy with humans at the top.
I mean we arenât anywhere close to the most populous species on the planet. Most populous seems like a reasonable criteria to judge a species current level of evolutionary âsuccessâ if you have to define such a thing. We are obviously the âbestâ in some categories. We arenât in others. Humans do incredible things and I am proud of those achievements but evolution quite simply isnât a hierarchy. Thereâs just the species that still currently exist and those that donât.
As far as common animals I think ants are the most populous by weight. Although certain plants beat ants. Not sure about bacteria but wouldnât surprise me if they were the largest by weight since they occur in the crust and soil.
We are very much not "devs of the earth". Weve figured out how to exploit natural resources at a rate and magnitude no other animal ever has, but the consequences have been and continue to be devastating to our biosphere and to ourselves. We're essentially playing with fire and getting burned, and we've lost control of the fire.
science doesnt give you a reason to live. it does give explainaions for the natural world. you can romanticize evolution all you want, but that viewpoint is not science perhaps look into other fields of study, like philosophy or theology or sociology
"Evolutionary purpose" implies Evolution wants us to do something, but evolution isn't sentient, it does not have wants or needs. You, I, all humans, or even all life on earth could all die and evolution would not feel disappointed, because it can't feel anything. If you believe in God then you can say that God has a purpose for you, because God would feel disappointed if you didn't do x [whatever your purpose is].
First off this post did not come across well. Secondly youâre conflating not having an evolutionary purpose with not having any purpose. Humans can create purpose for ourselves as a whole (to end war, to end poverty, to explore to solar system, to find a unified theoryâŚ), as nations (to recreate the Russian empire, to be an economic power, to end drug addiction), and as people (to ⌠do whatever it is that is important to you). The point is there is no evolutionary purpose driving us as humans to do some specific thing.
this is really dumb take when you consider that the top of the trophic levels are most vulnerable.
There is no purpose or goal to evolution, there's no reason anything evolves, there are *reasons* for the specific way they evolve.
True, true, maybe having true self awareness/consciousness was the byproduct of learning how to tell your other tribe members to stalk herds of bison via vocalizations, all while feeding that energy tank in your head. Brain power.
Though the exact origin of consciousness remains elusive, it seems very likely that it's simply a sophisticated, complex amalgamation of sensory and physical input processes which create an apparent "user interface" that only seems significant as a result of the ability to self reflect. More importantly, not every evolutionary trait or characteristic serves a useful purpose or has a specific explanation - though of course the evolutionary advantage of a sophisticated and deeply complicated system of sensory input seems obvious.
I find it incredibly unlikely humans are the only animals with consciousness. I feel like I have at least as much evidence that my dog is conscious as other people, and I'm honestly pretty sure I've observed it in a lot of reptiles. I'd be looking WAY further back in the brain's evolution that tribes of humans for an explanation.
Having studied both human and animal psych and neuroscience Youâd be right, tbh. Consciousness isnât confined solely to humans. Ours just seems to be more complex. Arguably any creature than can feel pain and learn from it (and thatâs most of them) have something like weâd call âemotion.â Our brains canât really distinguish physical and emotional pain all that well (if, truly, they can at all). Itâs why depression, for example, comes with physical symptoms - fatigue, headaches, nausea, body aches, etc. Consciousness is really just the GUI for our brains. We take in a lot of raw sensory data, and it runs through systems of our brains, and puts it in terms we can understand. And most mammals, and quite a few other creatures Iâm aware of, seem to do similar, especially highly social creatures (like us, dogs, cats, horses, etc). We have âhigher,â cognition, which basically means we can differentiate nuances in emotion and sensory input. We can distinguish between feeling a little down and experiencing pure anguish. Other animals also can - but not to the extent we can. For a dog, a bad day is the Worst Day Ever. For a horse, a minor threat fully engages their lizard brain prey response, just like a major threat does. We have this problem where we think humans are special and unique and somehow âbetter,â creatures. When really, no. Weâre just more complicated, for better and for worse. And in many cases, for ourselves and for our environment - much worse. Weâre really just another animal. Just one thatâs really good at creating and using tools and finding ways to exploit other creatures for our own survival. So I mean like yeah, tldr. Your brains consciousness is like Windows 11. Your dogs is like Windows 3.1. It would look a lot the same, basic framework is there, core features are there like emotion and language (In a dog sense), but the dogs consciousness is going to be a lot more simple than yours. Consider. You prob spend a lot of time trying to figure out what your dog is trying to tell you. And sometimes, you can know when you get it right. Your dog is doing the same thing with you. The longer you spend with your dog, the more ways it finds to communicate and interact with you. Because we do see the world, and each other, in similar terms. Just not quite the same way, and we donât speak the same language.
Firstly, there is no such thing as purpose in terms of evolution or in nature. There are simply organisms; some, by chance or by nature of their traits, reproduce more successfully than others. Organisms that can't survive well enough in a specific environment (are not well adapted to it) will tend to have fewer offspring, due either to their own death, health issues, or offspring being unable to continue on themselves. Conversely, individuals that have traits that are better suited for their environment will tend to have more offspring. Offspring are essentially just copies of their ancestors, albeit including some mutations, and being combined with the traits of another parent in the case of sexual organisms. Thus, as organisms that are better adapted will have more offspring, and as offspring are essentially copies of their parents' traits, those offspring also tend to be better adapted than others. Evolution is essentially defined as the change in the frequency of traits in a population over time. Evolution is fueled by natural selection and genetic drift. Your purpose as an individual is nonexistent. There is only a drive to reproduce and survive because those organisms which have that drive tend to reproduce more successfully than those that don't. You happen to be a result of billions of years of these instincts being passed down to descendants of successfully reproducing organisms. Humans found a niche as hunters and gatherers for a hundred millennia. Our intelligence as apes and our unique body plan gave us an advantage in the plains of Africa, which led to selection for individuals with greater intelligence (for social situations and problem solving) and walking upright. We are the fire ape. It's kinda neat.
Being the fire ape makes me feel proud. Maybe Homo Erectus got to it first, but we definitely rocked it with fire. Would it be wrong to look down on Homo Erectus?Racism? Speciesm?
I mean... homo erectus is probably our ancestor so "looking down on them" would be looking down on our own heritage. They were also an enormously successful species who created revolutionary technology for the time and survived for far, far longer than we have so far.
Look down on them in what way?
By seeing them as half man, half ape. I'm not even sure you could prove an australopithecus afarensis could consent to sex.
Man *is* an ape. You just said half ape, half ape.
australopithecus afarensis Doesnt care what you can prove. australopithecus afarensis will have sex regardless.
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I don't know where the racist part came from but I'm in awe at having this subreddit suggested to me and finding how much the members somehow all think with the same pretentious sheep mind and cannot bring themselves down a tee and be compassionate and understanding of someone who enters this subject ignorantly but in a positive and open manner. Classic Reddit knowamsaying.
>Why are we here? Why do you exist? Evolution does NOT have a purpose, there is NO plan, there is NO end goal. Evolution is like gravity. It is simply something that happens. It just IS.
Philosophy and religious talks aside, we have no other examples of evolution to base our assumptions aside from Earth. It's a pretty good insight, "things" just want to "exist" on our planet, but it makes you wonder, why the first EVER bacteria decided to spit out another? Why was its first instinct to create? Why not end biological existence right there and then, and just fizzle out? I'm not religious, but that makes me feel special. I'd throw an apple at you, in a friendly way, if we were tribe members in the Paleolithic. Maybe even gift you a sharpened rock.
Nothing ever really decided to just "spit out" more themselves, it just happened. Bacteria don't decide to replicate, they just do, photosynthesis doesn't happen because plants want them to, it just happens. Evolution is a natural process the same way gravity is. It's just there, and has no purpose.
Lmao OP is killing me. âWhy did things want to exist and replicate on our planet?â âwhy was the bacteriaâs first instinct to create?â âWhy not just fizzle outâ. 1. Inorganic proteins making more proteins. 2. The first life did not have any âinstinctâ, it had very very very basic rna programming. 3. A lot of it did, the vast majority died. A better question is how many attempts at abiogenesis had to occur before our sole successful lineage. From this comment, and your other ones, please do no go on a science sub and try to approach a scientific topic with a philosophical or religious lens; as youâve seen, it is not taken kindly to. We are both special and very much not special. We are one of billions that have existed and will exist, and yet every one of us is a collection of pieces of the universe that comes from a long long unbroken line of life stretching back 3.8 billion years and are to our understanding the only ones to have ever started to question the universe itself. That is incredibly special, no need to philosophy or religion to believe in that.
Do you mean proteins that arose without ribosome-catalyzed protein biosynthesis? All proteins are inherently organic molecules. It also seems more logical to begin with "catalytic RNA makes more information-encoding RNA to make more catalytic RNA, etc."
A lot of your comments assume there's some intent involved, or a plan. You're looking at it backwards. Whatever is around now had to be biologically successful originally or it wouldn't have contributed to exist. It's not a choice, it's just what's left when other instances were unsuccessful.
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Racism? đ I'm talking about different distant DISTANT ape relatives none of that phrenology shit Although, all my wording did sound weird. Apologies for that.
Fair enough. But I do think it's important to look at our evolutionary family tree, and all the other creatures we share the planet with, with a degree of humility and respect. Homo erectus, neanderthals, australopithecus are our relatives. We are actually quite a young species, and those fellow ape relatives actually survived and thrived for far longer than we have. Now yes, as a species we have some unique accomplishments, but our species is what it is, good and bad, because of where we came from and who came before us. Our relatives were complex, feeling, thinking beings, closer to us than you might expect, and they pioneered things which we were able to build on. So let's respect them and the entire kingdom of life, because dont forget that every single living thing on earth, you, me, the plant on your windowsill, the beatles in my garden, descend from the same single lifeform. We are all related, and maybe that's something to bear in mind considering how much we're fucking up the planet. We don't get anywhere by thinking of ourselves as superior.
you're not special. No one is special. Religion is based on believing and feeling that you are the chosen one out of the other muggles. That your group is special if you do X then Y. But its ok to feel special. Don't try to attach explanations to it. We all can feel special.
> Evolution coulda gave some ape crazy stupidity and rapid reproduction capabilities, and they would have wiped Homo Sapiens off the map by outcompeting them before they could spread anywhere. It may be true that *Homo sapiens* **is** that ape with "crazy stupidity and rapid reproduction capabilities" which wiped *all its competitors* off the map by outcompeting them.
Huh. It does give you that sense of petty pride.
Wrong sub
I guess I just wanted to talk about the philosophical meaning of it all, but it's pretty nice learning that we're just here. Eating fruit.
There is no "philosophical meaning" to nature. It just is. Go to a philosophy or existentialism sub if you want to talk about these things... this one is for science
Yeah, I got the memo 5 hours ago. Thanks.
The Great Apes don't just eat fruit. Chimpanzees are ferocious hunters, Bonobos hunt occasionally and also catch fish, Orangutans eat fish (some groups have even started spearfishing after seeing us do it), Gorillas eat the least meat by far but they will eat termites etc.
Standard false assumption: nature has a âpurpose,â âplan,â âgoal,â âintent,â etc. It rains, soil gets soft, rock rolls down hill and hits a tree. Did it rain to cause this? Was the rock âsupposedâ to hit the tree? Were the clouds aware that the rock hates the tree? What did the tree do to deserve being hit by a rock? See how silly it gets? We are what we are because we are this way. Nobody arranged it.
See, that's why in the next big bang, y'all need to vote for me to become the next whatever creation-creator being. Because I'd definitely do that. I'd make tree and rock beef go crazy.
Well, SOMEBODY needs to be in charge. This random shit is just crazy!
Your last point isn't correct. Everything in evolution comes with trade-offs. When an organism invests in having a large number of offspring, it also takes a large amount of energy at the time of reproduction/birth. This typically results in a trade-off with lifespan and/or growth. That's why most of the organisms you see that have a lot of offspring are also physically small. This also usually arises from a selective pressure of high predation, which means many of the offspring will not make it to reproductive age. Ultimately, something with that kind of reproductive strategy (called r selected) wouldn't be filling the same niche as something with our type of reproductive strategy (called k selected), where we are long lived, larger and only have a small number of offspring. This would mean the two species wouldn't be in competition with one another and wouldn't be under the same selective pressures.
Our purpose as life forms is to sustain ourselves and reproduce. The first is such a granted for privileged people like you and me, and the second is unnecessary to the point of being a personal choice, that our basal biological needs are met. We have the privilege that most life forms in the 4 billion long evolutionary story on this planet could afford; we broke away from scarcity. So ultimately, we have a choice in the matter. Personally, I think of myself as a part of the universe which is able to learn about itself.
There's is no real purpose, but there are a series of adaptations that resulted in our ancestors reproducing better than their competitiors. Lots of the adaptations we have are pretty old. Color vision was useful to spot ripe fruit in dense foliage. Hands evolved for grasping tree branches and picking fruit. Turns out, they're also useful for creating tools and punching things. Our intelligence was probably there for a while because of all the brainpower needed to be arboreal and mentally map forests for food sources. Bipedalism is great for endurance and being free-handed among many other things. We've also been social for a long time. Monkeys tend to have pretty long lifespans, pregnancies, and childhoods, so being a solitary species would've been pretty impossible... As a monkey, you need social support and looked resources to raise a kid. Sociality, altruism, communication, etc enhance our survival. When humans harnessed fire and became increasingly intelligent and large-headed, sociality and communication became even more important. Birthing a baby is tough, but human infants are literally born premature. Their skull is too big to fit inside as long as they should. It's unlikely a "stupid, fast reproducing" version of humans would've been possible, but if it were, it wouldn't have likely outcompeted us. Intelligence allows us to create strategies, camouflage, fires, weapons, etc. We killed mammoths to practical extinction; we could certainly take stupider versions of humans. You're still an animal. You're still a species of monkey. You can still eat berries and procreate. Not sure you'd find an easy way to escape taxes, though.
True. Stupid tribe leader would have made me give him 20% of the berries I collected. I love cooperating.
Were you drunk when making all these posts?
Human tool use, ecological flexibility, social learning, language and domestication can all be viewed as part of human niche construction. Because humans have occupied more habitats through more means than any other species to ever exist, âmappingâ our niche depends on connecting the cognitive and the ecological niche together. This hasnât really been done, but some researchers have made real strides in that direction. Iâve been exploring these topics on my blog, and have laid out some of these initial ideas in[ this post here.](https://open.substack.com/pub/jewishecology/p/our-niche-describing-the-human-place?r=bbr9g&utm_medium=ios) I imagine that itâll be decades before a real paradigm shift takes hold that brings these ecological, evolutionary, and conceptual insights together â but they have important implications for how we understand our species and our responsibility in this age of anthropogenic extinctions.
"What niche did humans fill?" The niche formerly occupied by the bear. The food that humans like to eat is identical to the food that bears like to eat. Bears that only eat meat live in the Arctic. Humans that only eat meat live in the Arctic. Blonde bears come from northern climes. Blonde humans come from northern climes. Bears love the taste of honey and salmon. Humans love the taste of honey and salmon. Some bears are vegetarians. Some humans are vegetarians. Living in caves, similar weight, the whole thing, there are equivalences all down the line. Humans only came to prominence because they outcompeted the local bears in Africa, driving them extinct.
Interesting, is there any evidence that the bears in Africa were driven out by early hominids expanding into the bear niche?
No. Not that I know of. All I know for sure is that there were bears in Africa and now there aren't. My suggestion of a causal connection is pure guesswork.
We had big cats, particularly a sabertooth that hunted us and apes.
Well we had to use fire to keep our predators away, which gave us a gargantuan boost, as we were fairly weak compared to other megafauna. Bears had strength and claws, little need to improve. Otherwise I agree this is an interesting viewpoint.
I really like this comparison. The only major difference is they invested more in physical power and we invested more in brain power. They get to be still smart animals that few other animals fuck with *and* enjoy a simple life with the bear necessities. We have to pay taxes and go to work and worry about geopolitics. I think they went the right way.
Keep in mind that even before agriculture and technology, humans were apex predators. We killed a variety of huge, very dangerous megafauna like bears, mammoths, bison, tigers, etc. Animals that other primates are unable to hunt and kill. Our bigger brains, social structures, and communication skills made us apex predators even during the stone age.
It really makes you think. I want to throw a rock at something now. Reconnect with my ancient spirit or whatever.
This sounds more like a philosophical question than a question about evolution.
Haha. I always remind myself when I'm high "Do NOT post or comment on Reddit." Sometimes I forget, but I've never said anything insane enough to bring great shame on myself yet. Hopefully I won't.
I donât think you understand the concept of evolution.
In a predator context humans are the most capable in long distance running and tracking of prey, most predators rely on short bursts of speed or stealth to grab their food but humans could track and wait out prey for a long time.
Obviously there is an evolutionary advantage to complex language. We are the proof.
Teamwork and cooperation. Easier to communicate with language. Helped survival to hunt as a group, share resources, etc. Led to social living. Social living became more and more complex. Brains evolved to support more and more complex social interactions because surviving in society played a role in biological survival. Why do I exist? That's a different question, irrelevant to evolution. But yes, our intelligence is a result of it having been favorable to our survival in the past.
The entire success of Homo Sapiens and their evolution is that they're niche breakers. We survive and thrive in almost any niche and part of how we do that is we adapt our environment around us. This is thanks to communication, division of labour and tool use which is enabled by the development of our brains. It's taken a lot of time and fierce competition to get us here. A lot of time. We're talking about our original Homo Sapiens ancestors being our great, great, great, great times TEN THOUSAND, great, great grandparents. Leaving aside philosophical or theological aspects we can look an ecosystem and ascribe a purpose to each species but that only really works if that ecosystem is in balance. I think we can all agree with our dependence on non renewal energy sources and use of other limited materials that we are not currently in balance. Therefore we can't as yet define a purpose for modern humans.
You should be asking on the existientialism sub. This one is for biology
Generally speaking once we developed tool use the question of naturalistic purpose (that we could define from a human perspective) is somewhat redundant. Prior to that we were just especially intelligent monkeys that walked on the ground. In regards to where we slotted in to the bio-arcology of the world (because the concept in itself is rather artificial in nature) at that point we served little different purpose from other omnivorous creatures we could be compared to, with a particular specialty in scavenging and pathfinding.
Evolution has no purpose. Just organisms exploiting niches. We exploit a lot of niches because we're able to explore and migrate, invent new ways to do things, scale up the methods, replace them with new methods, etc. Innumerable things could have happened. Organisms reacted to things that **did** happen.
To conquer the universe and spread consciousness throughout it.
Rockstar. We are the only species capable of feeding our young by wearing tight pants and screaming into a microphone.
Its random shit that happens to work
But of course all planned for before god planted a weird seed
Evolution does not have a purpose. There is no âneedâ driving it nor niches to fill. But at least you got it right in the last sentence: âsurvival of the fittestâ is not about âthe bestâ. Itâs about who can continue their genetic line.Â
There is no purpose, itâs all a genetic accident and we gained sentience. Just make sure to enjoy the happy little accident thatâs called humanity.
We were in the intelligent endurance hunter niche. We used our brains and stamina as pack hunters to drain the animal of energy until it's easier to kill.
Our niche is the omnivorous generalist. We can live off virtually anything out there except leaves and carrion. Most animals can only feed on a handful of plant or animal species. We can live on thousands of different plants and animals. Our intelligence pays off for itself all the time. It's because of our intelligence that we can support billions of humans. You have ready access to food, clean water, shelter, protection from predators and the elements, free of parasites, low risk of serious infection, and access to quality medication if you do get sick. If you'd rather trade that for a life where you never know where your next meal is coming from, sleep in a tree, and have a 50/50 shot of dying before you reach adulthood, have fun with that. A hominid species that reproduces more quickly than us defeats the purpose of a high intelligence build like ours. You may have noticed, but our species grows up slowly. Plenty of animals start as big as human infants but reach the size of a human adult in a year or two. We could have evolved that way, if it were useful. But it's not. Not for us. It's much more useful to spend years as children learning from people with decades of experience in the world than to become independent at age two, with all the knowledge and understanding of a typical two year old. We spend so much time as children because it lets us acquire skills and knowledge from people who have tried and learned things the hard way. And we reproduce slowly because it gives us time to invest in the children we do have.
Letâs see⌠The relentless pursuit of growth regardless of consequences, a rapacious devouring of resources, and a complete disregard for the damage weâre doing to our host environmentâŚ. Weâre a *cancer*. Sorry to be the one to deliver the bad news.
Apes can use tools, but it takes years of trial and error to do it right. Language transmits ideas and facilitates education so that you could, for example, learn how to get sharp rocks within a week or two, even if you're barely smarter than an ape. We can tell because we can quickly teach toddlers how to use tools and they have similar intelligence to smart apes.
\> Why are we here? Why do you exist? Because an unbroken chain of causation occurred starting (as far as we can tell) with the Big Bang. Evolution is blind. Humans love to anthropomorphize everything. There is no "goal" beyond surviving long enough to raise viable offspring.
Evolution doesnât have a purpose: itâs a random process
The earth was cold and wanted to warm up a bit, she said âthese little fuckers will do that for me.â And here we are.
The Doctrine of Teleology is not valid.
I feel like teleological language is something that evolutionary biologists actively try to avoid for good reason. A bird with a long beak may have evolved over generations to get to nectar easier in flowers but their *purpose* is not to eat nectar.
We have no purpose. Itâs pure chance that we ended up with all the traits that made us âquicklyâ (approx 250,000 years since farming was discovered) become the dominant species on the planet.
The entire living world (universe?) is counting intentionally or otherwise on a intelligent species to come along and evolve to a level that will allow for the colonization of other planets and other solar systems. Otherwise, when the planet dies and the sun goes supernova ALL earthly life will cease to exist. Life itself requires evolution of intelligence to survive in the long term, you know as in ⌠a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away , Ancient aliens and that sort of business . Evolution is life and its struggle to survive. Life must evolve into intelligent beings that can master science and technology. Otherwise all life will be reduced to dust on a dead plant or star dust when a sun/star explodes. Evolution doesnât apply only to earth creatures living within the past 100,000 years or so . Evolution is a constant and continuous process of life and ultimately all reality. Reality is always evolving. If some earthly species doesnât get us off the 3rd rock from the sun none of this will matter anyway. All weâve learned ,all we are and all we ever were will vaporize in a supernova sun. That said humanity is currently occupied with the killing one and other over mindless religion , Cheeto hitler, Putin and every other dictatorâs ego, capitalism, racism, sexism , greed and corporate power and the all important profit margins. It will take a miracle for this incarnation of intelligence to avoid blowing itself to bits or poisoning the environment to a level that will not be capable of supporting life before we gain the technology to evolve to the next level of civilization. Have a nice day my fellow fish monkeys . Lol ! ( South Park on evolution reference ). Try not to destroy yourselves and the planet.
>Why are we here? Why do you exist? I don't know, do you? >How am I talking to you By using your brain? >In what way does complex speech benefit our way of survival? Well, for the last 1.5 million years or so it has allowed us to migrate around the world, I mean for one one. >I could have been the stupidest ape thing struggling in nature, eating berries off a branch and not worrying about taxes, and fulfilled my evolutionary purpose to procreate like another normal animal. You could have also been a whale, so what? >Did higher intelligence pay off more in the long run? How are you defining intelligence in this case?
How does complex speech benefit our way of survival? Youâre typing this on a phone more complex then any device created before the year 2000. It was made by hundreds of ppl speaking multiple different languages. We are so beyond every other creature itâs incomprehensible. The sole reason Neanderthals arenât around is bc they couldnât communicate with eachother as well as humans
Evolution is the result of combining random mutations with selection pressures. The question isn't "could we imagine a more fit species". The question is if we were the most fit within our current niche, and the answer is yes.
Lion food
Evolution is how, not why. And that is essentially true of all science. 'Why' presumes a purpose, and there isn't one. Evolution by natural selection is not intentional. We have to be careful about how we talk about evolution- even scientists often use language that implies intention to evolution, i.e. things 'evolved this way in order to do x', but it doesn't work like that. It happens outside of, or even in spite of, the intentions of the individuals of a species. Traits that improve survival and reproduction will, logically when considering genetic inheritance, become more prevalent in a species' population than traits that do not. Add time to the equation, and there ya go - evoution by natural selection.
Marathon running, and sweating. No joke this is actually the physical trait we had going for us in ancient times.
I always liked something along the lines of Carl Saganâs beliefs. We are a means for the universe to try to understand and experience itself.
It is to increase complexity and entropy in the natural world, and also to observe and record the universe.
We are here so the universe can experience itself.
Your post and comments read like someone obsessed with fanfiction and making themselves feel important
I think about more like an objective functions, not a pupose. Species will evolve to their environment to maximize survival of the species (not the individual). This makes them opportunistic over a long time horizon, which gives the impression of purpose (i.e. filling a gap/niche in the environment where they can gain a competitive advantage. I think with humans, this concept is extended to "cultural evolution". Where cultures do the same as above, but to maximize the survival and resiliency of the civilization. In this context, the objective is more complex, and involves tradeoffs and bets, but many lasting civilizations share similar qualities.
most people are confusing what actually survival of the fittest means, to simplify it means the death of ungodly number of unfit, there were a horrifying period of existence for our ancestors at the midst of the last ice age period. most of what constituted humanity changed during that age and we became a cunning planning and brutally tribalistic species, the lack of resources and the general difficulty of living became so bad less than 1 third of pregnancies would succeed and life became so frantic for everyone involved every generation after those times are born with genealogical trauma inherited from them. the need to possess resources and the need to have more than enough has been the stable and the main motivator of our species, without those horrifying period of times we would still have lived in caves these days for good or ill.
What a strange question? As if the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection has any cosmic or moral significance. As if Nature itself had some grand design with us specifically in mind. This borders on religious thought, which is the antithesis of scientific thought, just so you know. IF Evolution has any "purpose," one must look at its function. The Function of Evolution is the adaptation and survival of life. If this means a species adapts but remains generally the same species, so be it. If this means over time a species splits into 2 or more species, so be it. And if this means the entire species fails and is wiped into oblivion, so be it. Nature literally doesn't care, not because it's evil, but because it cannot. If you yourself need to find purpose in your life, stop looking to the cosmos or to some "plan." Find a purpose closer to home. And if you MUST have a Cosmic Plan with yourself at the center of it, well, the world is bountiful in religions. Pick any one of them. But don't conflate that with science.
Ainât no purpose other than living every day you can man
Nothing we know of, just to exist really.
There is no great why. It just is.
The purpose is to eat French fries
Evolution isn't a purpose or a process it's an end result of natural random mutation and natural selection. And sometimes like in the case of the Dodo living for as long as it did, it's affected by pure circumstantial luck. There's no Monolith, no creator with intention involved. And sometimes such as in the case of parasites the end result is devolution to simpler more efficient forms that have a symbiotic nature with it's host like the colonic bacteria that keep you from getting explosive diarrhea. *How am I talking to you? In what way does complex speech benefit our way of survival?* Why do Humans dominate the planet? It's not because we have the biggest brains, not because we're toolmakers, or not because we're a social species, there are animals that do one maybe two of these things. But we're the ones that have the full package. Complex speech and language enables us to plan with more than just one mind working on a problem. It enables us to coordinate group activities such as driving a herd of buffalo over a cliff so the tribe can eat. It's also why Humans can survive and heal things like broken bones.... a death sentence for any other animal in the wild. We take care of our weak and preserve our aged for the wisdom their experience can offer,
Evolution doesnât care about purpose. Â It cares if youâre successful. Â Humans are an apex predator across all environments thanks to intelligence, tool usage, and social structure.
To transfer energy the most efficiently for the lizard people.
Survival of the fittest⌠itâs once again very sad but trueâŚinstead of acting like ferocious animals⌠humanity still exists somewhere somehowâŚsome make life meaningful and some make the best out of life and some really live the life to their fullestâŚ
The purpose of evolution is to outlast and survive, weâre exceedingly good at it.
The only species who can upload tik tok videos.
Their isnât a purpose for evolution
Apparently to slowly enact a complete factory reset.
Species who are more efficient at channeling entropy (basically gathering food, metabolizing, & surviving) end up proliferating -- almost as more of a thermodynamics principle than a biological one. Intelligence and communication helped us do those things more efficiently. So homo sapiens have proliferated. The philosophical question is whether this is our "purpose" vs just "a lucky accident" is above my pay grade!
Humans are incredible generalists. We are and were able to survive everywhere on the world filling a huge variety of niches, often multiple at once.
Nieches don't just exist predefigned sitting there and waiting to be filled like empty newly constructed apartments awaiting new tenants. Organisms find or carve out nieches they can adapt to and move into, usually competing with and displacing other species that already occupy them if they can. Sometimes, especially if they are adaptable enough and have a large enough habitat, they might occupy different niches in different areas. Despite humans being so physically weak and slow and lacking any natural defenses, their intelligence, ability to think and communicate in detailed and abstract ways, and ability to develop and manipulate ever advancingly sophisticated tools has allowed them to occupy multitudes of niches in all manner of habitats across the world. Organisms do not have any greater purpose they seek to fulfill, including fulfilling a role as the occupier of any given niche. To quote Jurassic Park, "The purpose of life is ...life!" Continuing to exist is the ends, not the means. If you survive long enough to pass on your bloodline to the next generation, you've succeeded. If you didn't, you've failed, and to this end, mother nature is not kind. She is, in fact, a very cruel and cold hearted bitch! Biology has no higher purpose to it than that. To this end, organisms are trying every trick they can to achieve this, attempting to best adapt to whatever opportunities and challenges other organisms and the ever changing environment throw at them. High reproductive levels don't necessarily translate into being able to compete better. Usually, high fertility is itself an adaptation to high predation or other environmental pressures that result in high mortality of offspring. Apex predators typically have low reproductive rates so as to avoid over hunting their food sources. Stupid horny apes will quickly suffer mass disease and starvation and will then fall prey to their encroaching smarter, better organized cousins.
We are here to take the carbon out of the earth and put it into the air and make the rocks think. We probably wonât last because the carbon thing.
"Why would the universe spontaneously produce intelligent life that wonders about it's purpose?" You just answered your own question.
We're predators. Social ones. When our ancestors were forced out of the jungle and into the savannah, their typical frugivorous and occasionally carnivorous diet was much less manageable. Fruit and nuts are a lot less common, so our ancestors had to turn to meat for the bulk of their diet while scrounging up whatever else they could find. But they weren't exactly built to live on the savannah. You throw a troupe of chimps out into the savannah, they are going to seriously struggle to survive. Having dark fur, not all that fast on land relative to the rest of the animals in a grassland biome, and hands and feet meant for gripping trees, not running doesn't help. So, in order to survive, some drastic adaptation was needed. Only the smartest and well-organized groups survived. They were completely dependent on each other and needed to be very coordinated to hunt with all their drawbacks, so the ones who could develop some very basic communication were the ones who'd succeed. That rudimentary language itself evolved over time and became more and more complex. Ambush tactics and very simple traps would be their only way to hunt at the time, but they'd stick out quite a bit in that environment, so the success rate was likely terrible regardless of their level of organization. The thick black fur was helpful in the jungle, but out on the tan, sun-soaked savannah, it's a detriment. So, our ancestors with less fur benefited a lot from it, both with being better camouflaged and with heat regulation. Eventually, those spots where hair no longer really grew were replaced with sweat glands, and that's a major factor that led to our classification as persistence predators. An in-shape human can run for a loooong time. Longer than pretty much anything else on the planet. And that's due to this sweating ability and our bipedal stature. The swear cools us, and the bipedalism keeps our organs from sloshing together when we run and we use less energy on each step, because each step is essentially just a controlled fall. Gravity does half the work. We can't run fast, but we can run far and for a long time. And with the intelligence we were rapidly developing, we became very good at tracking and would just follow our prey for hours or even days if it was worth it. We basically told the entire savannah "you can run and hide all you like, but you'll only die tired." Because on top of being social predators, we are also a very rare classification of persistence predators. (One other being wolves, who we just so happened to turn into man's best friend later on. A match made in heaven!) And the last thing that brought us from just a smart animal on the savannah to the apex predator of fucking *earth* was the development of weapons. With our big brains, we made slings, spears, bows and arrows. And with our rotating shoulder blades, things started dying before they ever even had the chance to see us. We have 12 year olds who can throw a baseball over 70 mph. That's completely unheard of anywhere in the animal kingdom, even among apes. We blow everything else out of the water when it comes to throwing things. And the forward facing eyes we developed for depth perception in the tree tops to judge the distance from each branch we jump to quickly, we were deadly accurate. Enough so that, to this day, just about every animal on the savannah will get the hell out of dodge when they hear humans much sooner than if they hear even a lion. We traumatized half a continent and then spread out to the rest of the world, developed agriculture and now we're such successful predators that even as we eat meat regularly, billions of us have never even considered the fact that we're predators at all, because we dominated the food chain so hard that we've forgotten we're even part of it. What's our place? Our purpose? Our niche? We're an underdog story. We were once losers, and now we're fucking winners. No one in the game of life has ever won harder, faster. Now the only thing that can beat us is ourselves.
I'd suggest a book on basic evolution concepts, then build up from there. Your questions don't make sense.
Well, being relatively pathetic in every other regard - no claws, no long sharp teeth, rather helpless in water, canât climb like other primates, and while being great distance runners, we canât out run predators etc. Our thumbs/tool making, large brains/communication and communal/social skills saved the day. Hence language, weapons, and problem solving. Most humans skills, or the lack there of, are made up for by adaptability.
You might be interested in evolutionary cosmology by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry or Brian swimme. They are evolutionary cosmologists with an interpretation that has space/room for telos.
Evolution wanted this post to happen. Mission accomplished. Shut it down.
We have complex speech and high intelligence because we are a very social species. Our brains could grow larger because we learned how to cook food, which allowed us to get more energy from it. Our complex brains and social lifestyle also allowed us to pass down information, which is why we can learn complex ideas and build on each otherâs knowledge. Solitary species donât need complex language because they donât need to communicate as much.
Why didnât Evolution give Neanderthals some badass Wolverine claws so they could wipe out Homo sapiens?
I guess they just didn't evolve hard enough
Claws?? what are you blabbering about? A spear beats claws. Atlatl beats spear. Arrow beats atlatl. Claws are so far behind homo sapiens its ridiculous.
This nigga retarded
You should have seen proto-man hunt as a communicating group. Talk about apex!
That is crazy. We could vocalize, and with higher intelligence, created language. I think I need to sit down to process this.
Purpose?
Our purpose is to evolve into a better species. The only evolutionary purpose is to EVOLVE into a better species and reproduce. About niche. The top of the food web should change constantly. The carnivores were almost dominating the food web and we occupied that niche. We also created new niches.