alt Hacker NewsI have a feeling that's possibly just a property of life itself, reshaping its environment to maximize its ability to continue. Even simple one cell organisms cluster together to form biofilms to better survive in their niche.
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titzer • today at 1:40 PM
Humans are the only species I know of that goes out of its way to eradicate other species they find annoying, particularly without understanding said species' role in the ecosystem. And we're definitely the only species that has an economic system that rewards superorganisms that accidentally poison the entire ecosystem and then lie about it.
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It's a question of degree. Humans are uniquely adaptable, but only on small/medium scales.
We don't have the evolutionary intelligence to manage a planetary ecosystem without destroying it through overconsumption.
Intelligence is partly about scope. The smarter you are, the wider your predictive horizon.
Humans are semi-smart - good at small/medium problems, not smart enough to understand, build and maintain very complex multimodal systems with many moving parts.