Nothing. It simply has not happened. The development of our own technology was achieved through random mutations that created benefit for us, but it did not happen because intelligence is “good” or “wanted”. Evolution’s selection of a trait is brutally simple – did it increase chance of survival to the point of reproduction and did those that came from that reproduction also get too reproduce. On that scale, intelligence is only one of gazillions of ways to create that sort of survival.
It’s easy to see the mutations in evolution in human terms – e.g. we often think about “when will humans evolve to fly”, which us saying “we want to fly therefore evolution will recognize that idea that it’s good and wanted and eventually we’ll evolve to have it”. There is no _direction_ in human terms of evolution – doesn’t work like that.
The definition of “fittest” in “the survival fo the fittest” is nothing more than circular – the fittest are those that survive.
One major factor is that other animals don’t cook their food. Cooking food provides access to much more nutrients. Cooking breaks down fibers and chemically changes the food so that we can better break it down. Of course, our bodies have also gone through some changes to better process cooked food but I won’t talk about that. Having a better access to nutrients allows for our brains to develop. Brains are very costly in terms of energy and resources. Our brains weigh ~2% of our entire body mass but they use ~20% of our energy.
Intelligence is one of many factors that are selected for not just in us but in other animals. We just happened to have the right circumstances and pressure to develop our intelligence so greatly. There are of course more philosophical or neuroethological questions of intelligence but I think those go outside the scope of this question.
Opportunity cost.
Most animals survive just fine without our big brain intelligence right?
Now that big brain of ours takes up a ridiculous amount of the energy we take in in the form of food. About a quarter of anything you eat is used up by our brains. That is enormous…
So if a life-form does well without that cost… Why would it change?
Latest Answers