Using the Ancestor's Tale to justifying thinking less

by phil on Wednesday Mar 4, 2009 11:15 PM
evolution as a way to appreciate life

Dr. Alex Benzer, writing over at the HuffingtonPost, has an interesting post titled, "Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating." One argument he makes is that smart people shouldn't think so hard if they want to reproduce successfully. He cites the Ancentor's Tale idea to support his argument:

Here's an incontrovertible fact: every one of your ancestors survived to reproductive age and got it on at least once with a member of the opposite sex. All the way back to Homo erectus. And even further back to Australopithecus. And even further back to monkeys, to lizards, to the first amphibian that crawled out of the slime, the fish that preceded that amphibian, the worm before the fish and the amoeba that preceded the worm.

And you, YOU, in the year 2009 C.E., the culmination of that miraculously unbroken line of succession, you, Homo sapiens sapiens, not just thinking man but thinking thinking man (or woman), are the only one smart enough to SCREW THE WHOLE THING UP.

Perhaps you should consider thinking a little less then.

This is a very novel use of this idea. I've touched on it before in a rap song and in a book by Dawkins.