Evolution always seeks to create a population such that its goal is the proliferation of that species in the short term (in evolutionary terms) with no regard for the future.

Moral conscience is only beneficial to a species when the species exists globally such that there are little or no free resources. Only then is the greater good more beneficial to the survival of the species than the individual or the good of the pack/tribe over another pack/tribe.

However on the flip side intellectual evolution is an advantage even in very sparse populations with plentiful resources. Greater intelligence means you can harvest and utilize those resources more quickly and put them to use growing your family or tribe as well as defending it.

As such due to the nature of evolution moral evolution is doomed to always lag considerably behind intelligent evolution. Furthermore since evolution is, in human life span terms, a very slow process, it isnt something that should be expected to catch up until many generations, and a lot of death has passed first. Due to the nature of intelligence to enable us to find more effective ways of killing ourselves this can inevitably lead to a species destroying itself long before its moral evolution has a chance to balance the equation.

It is this reason that many scientists speculate why we dont see very many radio signals in space indicating alien intelligent life, the theory goes that the very nature of evolution is such that life will almost inevitably destroy itself once it reaches the intellectual singularity before it has a chance to become interstellar and as such simply doesn't have a very long time span where it exists in a state where it gives off radio waves.

Sadly we dont appear as though we are going to be much different in that regard.

#science #evolution #seti #morality #ethics

@freemo Could you expand a little more on the second paragraph? Or provide additional resources?

@sergiopantalone As a reply here or in the document itself?

@freemo Either way. I think it's a neat argument but I'm just having a little trouble following how morality arises from scarcity.

@sergiopantalone morality doesn't arise from scarcity in terms of human behavior, but it does in terms of evolution.

Selfishness is not efficient, it gives the individual the best chances but will happily waste resources if it means the individual gets more, especially if it is other people's resources. There is no sense of the greater good.

Evolution on the other hand cares about the proliferation of the species (or rather the genes that embody that species) and as such when scarcity arises the evolutionary pressure would be towards resource efficiency over individual gain.

So in an environment with scarcity where evolution has had a long enough time to have its effect, a group morality would inherently arise.