A new study—citing genetic evidence from a disorder that in some ways mirrors elements of domestication—suggests modern humans domesticated themselves after they split from their extinct relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, approximately 600,000 years ago.
As for why humans might have become domesticated in the first place, hypotheses abound. Wrangham favors the idea that as early people formed cooperative societies, evolutionary pressures favored mates whose features were less “alpha,” or aggressive. “There was active selection, for the very first time, against the bullies and the genes that favored their aggression,” he adds. But so far, “Humans are the only species that have managed this.”
It’s your coffee cup… I mean life.
Well there wouldn’t be “accidental disasters”, would there? They might seem accidental to us but they would actually be part of a larger script.
And understanding what we actually do know of the Universe, what could any master plan actually look like? An asteroid or any number of other cosmic disasters could hit the Earth at any time pretty much nullifying any plan that might involve us. Is the grand plan to find some species in the infinite universe that can eventually learn to develop the technology to master all time and space, turning us (or whomever) into gods themselves only to start the process again with some other species of dumb jerks?
And does God have a time line where he’s like “I hope these stupid monkeys figure shit out in the next trillion years before their sun blows up and the universe evaporates into its component particles”?
I’m often reminded of these quotes:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
-Blaise Pascal
“I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing.”
-Peter Gibbons, Office Space
I think the trick is figuring out something between sitting on your ass all day letting life pass you by and feeling so compelled to constantly be “doing stuff” that you let life pass you by.
The closest we have of a master plan is engaging in behavior that enhances survival and fitness, and avoiding behavior that reduces survival and fitness. Most of our behavior aligns with this, because all our ancestors who didn’t feel compelled to act that way were out competed. Most people want good relationships, good health, autonomy, healthy boundaries, status, security, resources, etc. Stuff that enhances our survival fitness.
I really dislike new age beliefs that life is a school and we are here to evolve to learn how to love. It would take like 5 generations of selective breeding to create a race of humans that were like mr rogers or ned flanders. Just take the top 5% of men and the top 50% of women who are highest in pro-social traits (love, kindness, compassion, empathy, cooperation, the light triad, etc) and breed them. Then do it again and again. After 5-10 generations most evil traits will be bred out.
Its surprisingly easy to create a world with very little human evil. The problem is in evolution an evil person can come in and conquer and mistreat everyone. then their genes spread.
Also why did all these religious prophets who claimed to have access to divine knowledge always have philosophies, but none of them explained how germ theory worked, or how to improve agricultural productivity? That would’ve been far more useful to people who were starving and dying of disease.
I don’t believe there is anyone guiding the Universe
I watch many space videos, and the ones that scare the socks off my feet contain titles such as “Where is the Edge of the Universe?,” “What is holding up the Earth?”, and “Is our Galaxy just part of a Big Black Hole?,” as well as video content as regards the Sun, and just what is happening there on that gas ball (short answer: it better stay how it is, or we die instantly).
So, very true, No One is guiding the universe, it is indifferent (at best!) to our existence, and we gotta make it here, no where else to go.
My meaning of life manifesto: I must live with myself, most of all, so I try hard to never do anything that would cause me to hate living with myself. But that is meaning of life on a personal level and maybe you want a universal one. Well, here it is: None of it will matter in 60 years.
A coffee cup is designed with a purpose in mind. Some here believe that about life and if that belief has utility to them good for them. Some of us don’t believe that there a purpose that life was designed for …
Designed or not the object that you label “coffee cup” only has that purpose because that is the function you imbue it with: a found half coconut shell can be “coffee cup” as well if that is the purpose you assign to.
And yeah the object labeled “coffee cup” can never be used for coffee but have its purpose be … paperweight … or doorstop.
Human minds create the concept of “coffee cup” and it really only exists as the meanings our minds give it.
Yeah the meaning of life is literally me that,
That is absolutely it. Almost everything else is religion, woo, and self-glorification. The one single exception is that morality has a place because it recognizes the legitimacy in others of the same natural qualities of self-interest that we possess ourselves.
a year’s supply of antibiotics,
a personally autographed picture of Randy Mantooth
and Bob Dylan’s new unlisted phone number,
a beautifully restored 3rd Reich swizzle stick,
Rosemary’s baby,..
or how about a McCulloch chainsaw,
a Las Vegas wedding,
a Mexican divorce,
a solid gold Kama Sutra coffee pot,
or a baby’s arm holding an apple?
I’ve never really understood the question. Or perhaps it would be better to say I’ve never understood how people seem commonly to interpret it.
When one asks the meaning of something, one is typically asking what it indicates; its definition; what it symbolises.
Accordingly most things have no meaning. Only symbols have meaning.
What is the meaning of brick? You can give the definition (“a building block”) but people who ask “what is the meaning of life” are not typically asking for the definition of the word “life”. They are asking the meaning of life itself not the definition of “life”.
But people wouldn’t ask for the meaning of brick.
So it seems to me it’s a loaded question. It contains an assumption that life is a symbol for something. Consequently it would seem that one first needs to ask “is life a symbol for something?“ and only if someone answers “yes“ can you ask the follow-up question of “what is the meaning of life“.
Even Discourse agrees with you!
Yeah not in this context. The dictionary definition of the word “life” is not the question. The dictionary definition of “meaning” has more entries than as a synonym for “definition” …
And as interesting as I think the question of where we draw the line between life and not life, with relevance to synthetic biology, that is not the question being asked.
Of course one could take your answer literally … there are belief systems in physics that all of what we experience as a physical universe is information at its core … that it fundamentally isn’t turtles but symbols all the way down. So in that sense our experienced sentient existences, our lives, are emergent symbols nested in a vast information exchange.
So feel free to run with that: what is it a symbol for, or of? I’d riff as symbol of the result of many calculations dynamically processing and input into a vast higher level calculation that we do not comprehend. Your turn! 
I nearly started off saying that there’s no meaning in the universe; but of course there’s meaning in the universe, because humans are part of the universe, and humans invented meaning. (Probably not out of whole cloth, probably out of things also going on in our ancestors, just like other things we think we invented.)
Other species in the universe may also have invented meaning; though if so we may never find out about them. Or may never find that out about them.
As to what that meaning is? We’re inventing that too. Try to make it a good one.
Here’s something that boggles my mind.
The Known Universe is estimated to be 93 billion light years in diameter (with Earth at the center). The Observable universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion light years (based on the length of time it takes for light to travel since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
That’s a lot of Universe that, according to what we know of science, is literally meaningless to us. No information past that 13.8 billion light year horizon can ever reach us. It might as well not exist. at yet we know for a fact that there is a huge volume of universe beyond that. Perhaps an infinite amount.
An infinite amount of shit that is scientifically impossible to ever mean anything to us!
Are symbols and information the same thing? I don’t think so.
Waste of spacetime if you ask me.
I was reminded today of the Viktor Frankl quote that neatly encapsulates my meaning of life:
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
It’s true in the suffering sense but it’s also true in the sense that hard effort is itself a kind of burning. You don’t make a difference without putting the time in.
Trying to remind myself of this now.
It’s a bit much IMHO.
It’ll have to go.
To leave the planet overall better for your presence than when you entered it. Doesn’t matter how or how much, although of course some proportions are more ideal than others.