A Letter to Roger Ebert Concerning a Misconception About Evolution

Dear Roger Ebert,

In your recent review of “Extract,” you made the comment about the film “Idiocracy” that “those Idiots had the benefit of a few hundred years during which to refute Darwin by evolving less intelligence.” I know that you are a man who appreciates science, and thought you should know that your statement reflects a common misunderstanding of evolution through natural selection: that species are always evolving to better, more advanced states. In fact, there are many examples of animals “de-evolving” to previous states, such as whales, which are descendent of land mammals, but gave up their legs and returned to the seas. Many species of whale still have the remnants of tiny hip bones floating deep inside them and the remnants of finger bones inside their fins.

Vestigial Hip Bones in Whales
Credit: Moi

The same is true of intelligence. Our big brains have conferred a magnificent survival advantage on us, but they come at a huge cost in energy to fuel them. The Indonesian “hobbit” fossils, homo floresiensis, discovered in recent years tell the story of a species of human that, once geographically isolated on an island with limited resources, adapted by shrinking in stature, including atrophying of the brain. The sea squirt is born with a brain, which it uses to navigate the world until it finds a suitable spot to plant itself, at which point it promptly .

I believe the evidence, in the form of increasing average IQs and other test measures, shows that we are growing more intelligent as a species. The sophisticated cultural environment we have constructed makes increasing demands on our average intelligence in order to survive and be successful; however, the sea squirt and homo floresiensis are cautionary tales that we must remain ever-vigilant. As the evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane said, “The ancestors of oysters and barnacles had heads. Snakes have lost their limbs and ostriches and penguins their power of flight. Man may just as easily lose his intelligence.”

Sincerely,

Ryan Somma
https://ideonexus.com

PS – Thank you so much for your recent blog-post about trivia. You so eloquently expressed ideas I have been trying to articulate for years on the subject.