EvC Forum: The Problem With Intelligence?

Tusko writes:

I was just reading one of the threads here, and a contribution by Darth Mal interested me.

I'm flattered

I only vaguely remember writing about that, so it must have been a long time ago.

Anyway...

I have recently been thinking about the dire warnings that doctors give about the over consumption of antibiotics, and in this country (UK) at least, the severe problems caused by hospital-bred "superbugs" like MRSA.

Well, it's evolution at work everytime we do something, no matter what it is.

For example, I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the exotic species problem Australia's been having since... forever. In one particular case, in the early 90's, they released a pathogen designed to attack rabbits and nothing else. For a while, the rabbit population in Australia almost went down to zero, but it didn't. Now, Australia is facing a "super rabbit" population explosion. These new rabbits are completely immune to the pathogen that was designed to kill them a decade earlier.

It is an inescapable fact that life will adapt to whatever challenges it meets. So, I don't believe that we are causing that much damage in the biological world. I'm more concerned with the environmental health issues.

So, my point is, is this a serious evolutionary disadvantage, that might make an intelligence like ours - one capable of moulding an environment - a liability in the long term? Unless there is a magic button you can press that wipes out ALL malaria or whatever instantly, aren't your efforts to control it simply going to breed a disease that is beyond the means of your current technology to control, however advanced?

Actually, there is an international effort to wipe out certain diseases in the world once and for all. About 2 decades ago, people began to ask a very simple question: What if we completely immunize everyone in the world from __________ (place a disease in the blank spot)? The very simple answer is within a generation or so the disease would be gone completely. Currently, they are trying to do that with polio, measles, and several other diseases that were once common. Polio is completely gone from North and South America, Europe, and most of Asia. They're having trouble getting people to take the shots in Africa because of the damn witch doctors there.

But anyway, I don't think it's a bad thing at all to wipe out certain diseases once and for all.

Couple this with the fact that it is very unlikely that technology and civilisation will keep improving forever, and that there might be some global disaster sometime in the next few hundred thousand years (if we're lucky!) that would severely hit social and healthcare structures, aren't we making loads of problems - potentially insurmountable problems - for people at that time? Its just a thought.

Unlikely? I disagree with this. I strongly believe that we will one day overcome most of the obstacles in life and even find a cure for aging.

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