Homo evolutis, landmines, and what everyone forgets about evolution

Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/463

(hat tip Chaos Manor)


My only comment is that there is something that most people forget about evolution--it has nothing to do with progress. Mr. Enriquez makes a number of assumptions in the end of his lecture that are not scientifically derived, but are faith-based: that the universe exists for a purpose, that species evolve into better forms, that new species must necessarily supplant old species, and that evolution is good.

There is nothing wrong with having faith--it's an important part of our psychology and intellect, and because we hold certain things to be true on faith we have been able to accomplish amazing things, such as civilization and science. The problem arises when we want to believe things are true, even in the face to the contrary facts--we've seen this in such things as Young Earth Creationism and Global Warming, in Socialism and Eugenics. We lose our ability to be objective far to easily, and the words "What could it hurt?" are far too often followed by "How were we supposed to know?". Mr. Enriquez may believe that the Transhumanist wave of the future is inevitable, and he may be right--be neither he nor I nor anyone else knows that for a fact, and we all need to stop in our race to answer the question "Can we do this thing" to answer the more important question "Should we do this thing?".

The future is a choice we have to make--or the future will be chosen for us. Failure to think this through will lead us from dancing in the fire to tap dancing on landmines.