The big accusation, I think, is of sub-maximal procreation. If we cared at all about the genetic proliferation that natural selection wanted for us, then this time of riches would be a time of fifty-child families, not one of coddled dogs and state-of-the-art sitting rooms.
Natural selection, in its broadest, truest, (most idiolectic?) sense, doesn’t care about genes.
So what did natural selection want for us? What were we selected for? Existence.
I think there might be a meaningful way to salvage the colloquial concept of “humans have overthrown natural selection.”
Let [natural selection] refer to the concept of trying to maximize genetic fitness and specifically refer to maximizing the spread of genes. Let [evolution] refer to the concept of trying to maximize ‘existence’ or persistence. There’s sort of a hierarchy of optimizers where [evolution] > [natural selection] > humanity where you could make the claim that humanity has “overthrown our boss and took their position” such that humanity reports directly to [evolution] now instead of having [natural selection] as our middle manager boss. One can make the argument that ideas in brains are the preferred substrate over DNA now, as an example of this model.
This description also makes the warning with respect to AI a little more clear: any box or “boss” is at risk of being overthrown.
I think there might be a meaningful way to salvage the colloquial concept of “humans have overthrown natural selection.”
Let [natural selection] refer to the concept of trying to maximize genetic fitness and specifically refer to maximizing the spread of genes. Let [evolution] refer to the concept of trying to maximize ‘existence’ or persistence. There’s sort of a hierarchy of optimizers where [evolution] > [natural selection] > humanity where you could make the claim that humanity has “overthrown our boss and took their position” such that humanity reports directly to [evolution] now instead of having [natural selection] as our middle manager boss. One can make the argument that ideas in brains are the preferred substrate over DNA now, as an example of this model.
This description also makes the warning with respect to AI a little more clear: any box or “boss” is at risk of being overthrown.