Wednesday, April 12, 2023

The Problem with Human Evolution

 I just had this thought and wanted to capture it.

Can humans evolve to the point for we no longer have some of the traits that cause some of our current social ills?

For example:

Will we ever evolve to suppress our violent tendencies or war-like nature?

or develop altruistic traits (we have enough to feed and house everyone yet there are hungry and homeless)? or develop an ability to avoid logical fallacies?

I believe in social evolution. For example we no longer accept human or animal sacrifice. Most of us have abolished slavery. 

My answer to the first question is No: that humans will not evolve to resolve societal ills. My reason for this answer is the natural selection promotes the traits of the individual, while social evolution is just the collective understanding that gets programmed into our brains. The collective understanding can change (rather rapidly). But I can think of no reason why a more socially evolved person would have more offspring than a socially primitive person.

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