mercredi 15 juillet 2009

We were Homines Sapientes

Homo sapiens is not a valid definition of us humans any more. We are no more intelligent beings. Once upon a time we were intelligent, we were smart enough to survive in very adverse circumstances, in drought-stricken plains of Africa, surrounded by carnivores, decimated by fires and other disasters. Our intelligence was our most efficient weapon in that epoch, it was an adequate reaction, adequate answer to the environmental challenges. But then this same intelligence helped us to create a different environment where it is no more adequate. We live in a man-made (although not consciously engineered!) world we are not adapted to. Our intelligence is often not a means of adaptation, an instrument of survival, but an instrument of doom. What could save us? I think we should either lose some of our intelligence, become less smart, live in a more primitive way or we should become much more intelligent, become a kind of Übermenschen. Although it is not easy to imagine the challenges and problems waiting for such a super-mankind: we can by no means be sure that it will not present us new and more sophisticated problems. In a way, no intelligence can cope with all problems it faces: the world is always more complex than any intelligence, any machine that has to model, to imitate, to understand it, to react adequately to its challenges.

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