"In Earth, among millions of lineages or organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe its utter improbability."
-- Ernst Mayr
Could this same line of reasoning be used to contend for intelligence's utter triviality--its ultimate irrelevance to survival? Is it simply one of countless many extreme approaches to adaptation, comparable to giraffes' necks or koalas' eucalypt diet. Are humans filling an otherwise empty ecological niche?
Originally posted 20 Oct 2012 on Google+