Why can we think?
The first post from a brand new Idle Scribe writer! Don't be shy, it's definitely worth the read.
So here goes:
I can only apologise for the somewhat 'deep' title for my first article, but don't worry, I shan't bore everyone with the philosophy that everybody seems to detest so very bitterly. Instead, I'm delving into the wonderful realms of science! (cheering, applause, etc.)
I've always been interested in this question, and imagined I'd spend years striving for the answer, tearing apart theory after theory and spending hours just sitting, staring out of windows with a glazed look and a determined mind. Unfortunately, somebody else had already done all that for me, and I was unlucky enough to stumble across a theory in a completely unrelated footnote of a completely unrelated book. To my irritation, I also quite liked said theory and bitterly accepted it with a reluctant "Hm. Okay. Fair enough."
The theory, as I understand it, seems to go something like this:
To survive longer, you have to predict certain things, to prepare and react to them. Every lovely gift your genes have given you, they have given you in an attempt to keep you alive. Once they've dealt with the problems of you not being struck down by a particularly vicious cold, and have prepared you by predicting every physical condition, they also need to work on you not being stabbed and struck down by a particularly vicious drunk. If you'd like a nicer example, think of the genes having to make sure you could pass them on, and letting you be able to comfort a distraught female (or male, for that matter), inevitably leading to a great opportunity for this to happen. My own genes have decided this to be obviously too simple, and seem to be much happier just being friends with the more successful ones (which we're all totally okay with), but that's besides the point. You're going to need a way to make sure you don't get stabbed and to make sure you can get off with as many girls as possible, in your genes' opinion. So, they decide to let you discover yourself, and let you be able to think in order to understand how other people are going to behave, because you can just imagine how you'd behave yourself. And, bam, empathy was born, as were many more little baby genes.
Although it effectively hit my inner philosopher over the head with a rather large spade, it's pretty clever, huh?
So here goes:
I can only apologise for the somewhat 'deep' title for my first article, but don't worry, I shan't bore everyone with the philosophy that everybody seems to detest so very bitterly. Instead, I'm delving into the wonderful realms of science! (cheering, applause, etc.)
I've always been interested in this question, and imagined I'd spend years striving for the answer, tearing apart theory after theory and spending hours just sitting, staring out of windows with a glazed look and a determined mind. Unfortunately, somebody else had already done all that for me, and I was unlucky enough to stumble across a theory in a completely unrelated footnote of a completely unrelated book. To my irritation, I also quite liked said theory and bitterly accepted it with a reluctant "Hm. Okay. Fair enough."
The theory, as I understand it, seems to go something like this:
To survive longer, you have to predict certain things, to prepare and react to them. Every lovely gift your genes have given you, they have given you in an attempt to keep you alive. Once they've dealt with the problems of you not being struck down by a particularly vicious cold, and have prepared you by predicting every physical condition, they also need to work on you not being stabbed and struck down by a particularly vicious drunk. If you'd like a nicer example, think of the genes having to make sure you could pass them on, and letting you be able to comfort a distraught female (or male, for that matter), inevitably leading to a great opportunity for this to happen. My own genes have decided this to be obviously too simple, and seem to be much happier just being friends with the more successful ones (which we're all totally okay with), but that's besides the point. You're going to need a way to make sure you don't get stabbed and to make sure you can get off with as many girls as possible, in your genes' opinion. So, they decide to let you discover yourself, and let you be able to think in order to understand how other people are going to behave, because you can just imagine how you'd behave yourself. And, bam, empathy was born, as were many more little baby genes.
Although it effectively hit my inner philosopher over the head with a rather large spade, it's pretty clever, huh?