Intellectual Abundance

[Darryl_P]

[ QUOTE ]
What other purposes does evolution have in store for all this intelligence?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it's just a big experiment, the outcome of which is not known yet. Dinosaurs represented the experiment of whether size and strength were the most important. Their eventual plight showed that the answer was "no". Now the grand jury in the sky, be it God, Mother Nature or whatever, is deliberating on whether extreme intelligence will be shown to be the ulitimate asset. So far it seems like it might be, but there are some areas of doubt.

We seem to be lacking overall purpose. Mere survival is trivially easy to accomplish while higher-level goals cannot be agreed upon. We have some duking out amongst ourselves to do before we can embark on the important mission of what's best for the human race.

Probably a major event or two that will serve to control the growth of (or maybe even reduce) the population of humans will be the necessary first step. The next step will depend on how the first step pans out.