The Earth Has Grown A Nervous System,

Let Me Lay My Cards On The Table. If I Were To Give An Award For The Single Best Idea Anyone Ever Had, I'd Give It To Darwin, Ahead Of Even Newton Or Einstein And Everyone Else. In A Single Stroke, The Idea Of Evolution By Natural Selection Unifies The Realm Of Life, Meaning, And Purpose With The Realm Of Space And Time, Cause And Effect, Mechanism And Physical Law. It Is Not Just A Wonderful Idea. It Is A Dangerous Idea.

Thanks To Technology, What Almost Anybody Can Do Has Been Multiplied A Thousandfold, And Our Moral Understanding About What We Ought To Do Hasn't Kept Pace.

Has It Ever Occurred To You How Lucky You Are To Be Alive? More Than 99 Percent Of All The Creatures That Have Ever Lived Have Died Without Progeny, But Not A Single One Of Your Ancestors Falls Into That Group! ... Not A Single One Of Your Ancestors, All The Way Back To The Bacteria, Succumbed To Predation Before Reproducing, Or Lost Out In The Competition For A Mate.

Darwin's Idea Of Natural Selection Makes People Uncomfortable Because It Reverses The Direction Of Tradition.

If The Best The Roboticists Can Hope For Is The Creation Of Some Crude, Cheesy, Second-rate, Artificial Consciousness, They Still Win.