Ask A Genius 219 – The Temptation of Now
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/05
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Rick Rosner: It’s only through the veneer of civilization that we’d even manage to set up structures that remind us to think about other than the now. In the future in case we gain control over our thought processes, you know, we could probably tweak ourselves.
I assume that as we gain control over our thoughts and drives, that we will tweak ourselves to be better adapted to the demands of the current world. You know, we like salty stuff, we like sweet stuff because those things were rare in the world we evolved in and precious because they helped us not die.
But now, you know, since we control the world we can make endless salty and sweet things and now we like those things too much for our current circumstances and salty and sweet things can kill us fast more than if we didn’t eat all those things.
So we can tweak our foods that taste delicious but doesn’t kill us as much as delicious food tends to, but we can also tweak ourselves so we like delicious but deadly stuff a little less.
And we could also tweak ourselves so we could put constraints on aggression if we decide that’s a good thing or we can tweak ourselves for specific mindedness though I don’t know how that would be beneficial to groups.
But it wouldn’t be beneficial to individuals, if it would remain beneficial to individuals, they’d continue to be motherfuckers. So to get an entire civilization to agree that none of us should be fuckers…
that would be a tricky thing to pull off and also would be subject to all sorts of cheating. So maybe… I don’t know, some gorillas of the future, some genetic engineered… what do you want to call them? Terrorist…
I guess gorillas is the word because maybe release a virus that will make people more public spirited and create an epidemic pandemic of a public spirited wimpiness where all of a sudden we all become special snowflakes who are concerned about the future that we’re leaving our kids.
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