Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeanette X
evolutionary success is not measured by the complexity of the organism, it is measured by the ability of the organism to surivive and reproduce, or at least that was my understanding of it.
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The problem with this statement, while 100% correct in certain vantages, is that it seems to set a universal standard of "evolutionary success" that is incoherent with the idea of passing such a judgment that evolution "succeeds". That is, evolution itself has no reason to CARE whether or not it is successful because as a mere statistical model that describes the process of speciation it really doesn't bear any emotional or rational judgment. If evolution guides a species one direction to benefit a generation, only humans would say "evolution has succeeded." Likewise, when the same adaptation encounters an evolutionary bottleneck where it actually sees to the demise of all those who have it, evolution doesn't have a voice to say, "oh shit, I failed".
Hence, in this context "evolutionary success" a purely anthropocentric judgment as it ever shall be, but in relation to an anthropentric motion then axiomatically it reduces to "whatever we think is a good thing".
Thus, your question of what it is about being human (as we now know it) that sucks so fantastically becomes more relevant than the goal of excluding ourselves from a definition that would recognize it.