Mar 30, 2006

Does Intelligence has a survival rate?

Another one from my old notebook, written on 16th july 2004...

Are we headed for Doomsday?

Most people think that being the most intelligent species of all, has only advantages we can manipulate nature, its resources and other organisms for our interest. But does intelligence has a survival rate? We may be the most intelligent of all animals but we do fight for small things. Nations go on war for mere things. Does that mean we are not stable as the other organisms? In this universe there are 10^11 galaxies and in each galaxy there are 10^11 stars. It is highly possible that there is intelligent life on other planets in far off solar systems. So why have we not been contacted by an advanced alien civilization? Doest it suggest that as intelligence increases we (as a system) become unstable and tend to destroy ourselves.

Our evolution stopped when we became civilised about 10,000 years ago, and since then we have remained biologically the most advanced, evolved species on this planet. But our intelligence has increased many folds, we have understood many complex things. Prior to the development of paper, information was passed on to the next generations only by the way of mouth. When man discovered writing and invented symbols, an information explosion took place. Today we are flooded with information. We have millions of papers been published this very moment. This may definately be the mark of our intelligence but it clearly shows the knowledge and explosion of information.

This explosion of information may not be good for our survival. It is no coincidence that we havent found any intelligent beings in the universe so far. We have not found any alien civilization which are far more advanced than us. Because any civilisation when advances in intelligence and science they either destory themselves or thier planet. In my opinion every species at every stage of its evolution and development has a survival rate. For an organism like bacteria it may be very high , for some viruses it may be infinity (implying that they are immortal), so as intelligence increases the survival rate of that particular species decreases. For a highly evolved and intelligent sepicies like man it may be very close to '0' and we may be on the verge of extinction.

All this do seem to suggest that being intelligent is not a very good proposition but till our survival rate is above zero we neeednt worry but we sure can wonder...

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