Bad news for you is that we are the most advanced species in the Universe. Population III stars are only a billion years old. But our star is 4.5 billion years old - anomalously far older than most (and maybe all) stars that can have Earth-like planets.

That means every other planet in the Universe is younger than Earth. ET is probably no more advanced than green slime right now; maybe not even that. God help us, because He is our only hope.

@TimTuolomne

Ducklings have more military discipline than most humans. Ducklings form a single-file line and follow the adult. Kindergarten teachers envy.

Humans often seem stupid compared to animals because animals can depend on instincts honed by millions of years of instinct. Humans have to learn everything because in order for cultural evolution to work it's magic there has to be a strong disconnect between emotions or instincts and behavior. The instincts didn't go away they just get more difficult to access consciously.

If we define intelligence as the ability to choose between options then instincts are a rudimentary form of intelligence. They are predispositions not robotic or mechanical. Even with advanced robots the number of possible responses to the environment is severely limited. As in advanced computer code randomness is a key ingredient in intelligence. It prevents looping. An animal will try different behaviors until the objective is achieved a robot will just keep repeating it's behavior. Humans use imagination to avoid unnecessary trial and error.

Imagination has a dark side because it can lead us to live according to how we think the world should be not the way it is. Often that means what satisfies are semi conscious instincts. Instincts that are often at odds with the needs of civilization. Children are very hard to civilize for this reason. Civilization is always at odds with nature because instincts evolved in a world where a fast lifestyle increases fitness. Civilization calls for a slow lifestyle that is conductive for the necessary harsh but stable artificial environment. The conflict between the natural and the civilized will always make us a bit mad. Children especially because becoming domesticated is a painful process. Given the opertuinity humans will never mature in the civilized sense. Spare the rod spoil the child is an extreme example of this reality.

When we say socialized what is often actually meant is the ability to ignore instinct. To conform to the needs of civilization. When those needs are forgotten because of "false prophets" like Marx chaos reigns. Traditional religions are all about discipline and to some extent productivity. They are opposed to the natural lifestyle we are inclined to follow. They sooth the pain of the disciplined life with hope. Children especially need what religion once provided because they are just learning discipline. Males unsurprisingly more than females.

Females can make the shift to civilized life easier than males because their animal aggression is more cryptic and less individualistic. Their hierarchies determined by social not physical manipulation. There instincts are masked by low aggression so society ignores them. A lot of our current problems are caused by having ignored the incompatibility of female instincts with the need of civilization for productivity. The idea of free being very seductive. The welfare state is an effeminate state of natural fairness. Meritocracy based of innate characteristics.

@wolfhnd

Nice analysis. Cool theme, "Instinct vs. Civilization".

Once upon a time, 1 million years ago, the wolves held a wolf congress. The boss wolf said: "It looks like humans will win the Game of Darwin. We need to adjust. Henceforth our strategy is Survival of the Friendliest. Adopt the instinct of friendliness. Previously, this instinct got you eaten, but now, it gets you free food from humans." Henceforth, address me as Boss Dogg.

Dogs are smart. If you give a dog food, it responds with friendliness. Good deal. If you give humans food, they're usually ungrateful.

Therapy animals see humans as bummers. When the aliens come, they'll exterminate humans and keep the therapy animals.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

@wolfhnd raises a good point about "breaking out of the loop". Most humans can't do it. By analogy, suppose you're in a mountain range and you're looking for the deepest valley. If your strategy is to go downhill, you will find your way to the bottom of a valley, but it may not be the deepest valley. You have to sometimes abandon the valley, jump over mountain ranges, and look for deeper valleys. This is a standard algorithm in the world of computational physics called the "simulated anneal", and it's one of the things in the AI black box.

Baby Procyon put on weight fast. His parents know what they're doing. Birds make milk with a gland in their throat and feed it to the baby.

Mother Guilden has the instinct to avoid predators. Good instinct. After a month of patience and 10 pounds of peanuts, Guilden changed her instincts and laid an egg in my room.

Imagine the challenge of finding a place to lay an egg. The ground has cats and the sky has hawks.

@jaymaron

We all live as if the world is deterministic, as if the same actions will produce the same results. Randomness like zero or infinity is incomprehensible. Even the religious live their daily lives as if determinism rules. They plant their seeds expecting they will grow the way they have always grown.

One of the things that physics and biology have in common is they start with an aberration. The big bang can be thought of as a glitch in the system and evolution depends on random mutations. Neither however is comprehensible without some level of reproductive fidelity. It's very hard to think in a non deterministic way. What sets genius apart from high intelligence is the ability to generate a large number of "errors". To use imagination to sort through the "errors" and discover something that had been locked away by reproductive fidelity.

High levels of reproductive fidelity are essential to life. Mutations are almost always deleterious. If you think of societies as organisms the same principle applies. What is ironic about the times we are living in is we live in perhaps the most deterministic paradigm the world has ever seen. At least in part because of the tremendous success of natural philosophy. At the same time we have embraced social mutations as never before. All the social norms are up for grabs. Men can be women, homelessness is a lifestyle, all energy needs can come from solar and wind, history is what some activists say it is, fantasies of all varieties are the norm. The one area where determinism doesn't rule is at the behavioral level. Despite fully embracing DNA genetics doesn't have a role in the current paradigm. We seem to have forgotten that you reap what you sow. As liberalism has come to dominate the social melee it's fundamental tenet that humans are infinitely malleable is the mantra of the social engineers. Just as mutations cause chaos in biological systems this idea of infinite malleability has caused chaos in the social system. It turns out the social engineers are not geniuses. They seem incapable of picking the good mutations from the bad and are prone to repeating the same ones over and over as if they have limited imagination. The saying comes to mind of repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.

The answer of course is that once a DNA is established, in this case liberalism, it has mechanisms to insure reproductive fidelity. It stops adapting. Conservatism is the new mutation. It's under tremendous selection pressure as it tries to adapt. It begrudgingly even accepted Trump, perhaps the greatest aberration in political history. Conservatism cannot succeed unless it continues to adapt. To sort the good DNA from the bad. Not all the old ways of living were adaptive. You can learn from history but it doesn't exactly repeat. Environments are constantly shifting. What we can't do is predict what the environment will be in the future. We don't have the "science" to deal with complex chaotic systems.

We all know that adaptation is the key to survival at some level but you can't adapt without "random" mutations. Embracing any mutation comes with risks. Imagination is required to assess those risks. Just because something worked in the past doesn't mean it will work in a new environment. A new kind of determinism is called for. One that makes room for the chaos of complex systems.

I have proposed on numerous occasions that the new kind of determinism that is called for is compatibilism. The one thing that is doing the most harm in society because of the way liberals have embraced determinism is the rejection of freewill. Without freewill human agency and dignity are impossible. We already see how their brand of determinism is destroying society. Criminals are not responsible for their crimes, transgenderism and homosexuality has run amuck because people are at once slaves to their genetics and not responsible for how they feel and at the same time free to choose infinite genders, since economics are social construct you can print as much money as is convenient, no one is responsible for consequences because they can't choose, as Scott Adams put it humans are wet robots. The thing that conservative have gotten right more than anything else is freewill. The responsibility that creates agency and dignity. Agency and dignity doesn't exist in nature because nature is amoral as are liberals. Determists lack the imagination to see how anything is created. "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" is the definition of hell.

The concept of freewill is in many ways the greatest creation of Western Civilization. Conservative however need to reject the concept of natural law because it also leads to amorality. Morality is a human creation, it doesn't exist in nature. The contribution of religion is that it places morality outside nature. Religion bridges the gap between nature and the abstract. It is paradoxically true morality doesn't change because human nature has tremendous reproductive fidelity.

@RobD1

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, a wizard tries to learn a spell that's too complex for him, and the spell takes over the wizard.

Most Democrats can't pass a Touring test.

Most humans are easily fooled by AIs. We need something stronger than a touring test. We need a bladerunner test.

Science fiction foresaw the pitfalls, and Democrats ignored the warnings. Democrats fall for it every time.

Ideas ? Culture ? An idea is a powerful tool to influence others. Culture is a set of ideas that together have a huge influence over others. (Pier pressure) A child's life is filled with interactions that re-enforce cultural norms. The parents job is to enable the child to think for themselves. The Teacher supplies the basic tools to move through life. (Reading ,writing and math) Further education is an exercise in how to think. (Critical thought) This is Western Culture. (Individual freedom based on the ability to think critically thereby refining the Culture) How do you break such a robust system. All you have to do is look at the current situation. The child's interaction are now across electronic media. Internet and phones now ENFORCE culturally abnormal situations. Teachers now enforce thought. (Education a sad second) Further education has become a force to deconstruct Western culture and replace it with a communist utopia. An idea that has been tried and failed with hundreds of million dead.

I agree but it's the young being unable to learn social skills that leave them vulnerable to being taken over. A family and friends and the interactions between those loved ones enable the young to distinguish between good and evil. A child should be raised by a village not a tinny screen on a phone.

@Arty EVERY generation of adolescents are almost completely self centered, and resent adults who generally are less so, and that conflict can't heal until they have to support themselves and reality hits them between the eyes.

But when young folks have an excuse to stay self-centered, they take it - like welfare, free government cash of any kind, etc.. It keeps their development arrested. Whether you blame cell phones or whatever, the dynamic has always been the same. You can even find it in the Old Testament.

The road to wokness is a lack of social skills. Those who prey on these vulnerable young are the cause.