Darwin & Varki have made by far the largest contributions to helping us understand why we exist, how we came to be, why we are unique, why we are so successful, why we have not yet acknowledged or acted on our overshoot peril, and what we must do to continue as a successful species.
The first question that should be asked when assessing the intelligence of alien life is, “Have they figured out evolution by natural selection yet?”.
The second question should be, “Are they aware of and effectively managing their inherited denial of reality yet?”.
I therefore consider Darwin & Varki to be the two most important scientists ever.
If pressed, I would have to give the edge to Varki because Darwin loses points for having 10 children.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Discovered, with Alfred Russel, the theory of Evolution by Natural Selection which explains the:
Ajit Varki
Discovered, with Danny Brower, the Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory which builds on Darwin’s theory to explain the:¹
- Singular emergence of an extended theory of mind.
- Uniqueness of humans.
- Success of humans.
- Human belief in life after death.
- Human optimism bias and denial of overshoot.
- Likelihood that similar or higher intelligence is rare and fleeting in the universe.
- And redefines God from creator of consciousness to genetic adaptation.
¹Ajit Varki makes a much narrower set of claims about his MORT theory. This broader set of claims is solely my own interpretation of the MORT theory’s implications.
un-Denial 