How does that work? A related example.
There is no evidence that UFO's do not exist and lots of eye witnesses reporting their existence.
So do UFO's exist or not? By the quoted criteria above, it seems that they do.
(Define UFO as: Appearance of an Object flying, appearing to violate the observer's expected laws of physics, and appearing to the observer to be under intelligent control. Oh yea, and also unknown to the observer! (Unidentified in even the most general category.))
This is very funny, because the dragon analogy, that I brought was used by Carl Sagan to demonstrate that the UFO- myths are impossible to disprove for the same reason (I am not 100% sure anymore, but I think he used it for that). The UFOs are the dragon. Again people are claiming things for whatever reason and it is a chore to disprove. But again there is lots of evidence that there are simpler explanations for each phenomenon described. In the UFO- cause you have to focus on each sighting individually also. You can not take all "sightings" as evidence for "the existance of UFOs" in general. If you go and look at each eye witness report individually and each piece of "evidence" provided by the UFO- believers individually, then you get a very different picture.
Most of these can be easily explained with much simpler, rational explanations.
The problem is again that unless you have another eye witness report that contradicts the first, it is very hard to disprove an eye witness report.
If that person is clever and tries to cover their tracks, it gets even harder.
A: I have aliens landing in my backyard every night.
B: Can I come and see them too then?
A: They only come for me. If someone else is there, they wont come.
B: Can we record them on video then?
A: You cant record them on video, they are jamming all electronics in the area.
B: How about a film camera then?
A: They have means to sense the presence of such a device and they will destroy it.
And so on and so on...
In the end it is possible that there are such aliens in his backyard, but given the evidence and the fact that there is a much simpler explanation (that dude simply talks bogus), it does seem rather unlikely, right?
I'm arguing that high functional intellect and sentience may be less of an advantage than outright robustness and survivability iin some circumstances (such as, if you were to be forced to settle on a hostile planet). Drop a zoo chimp and a city-human into a jungle on the other side of the world and see who survives the longest.
This might be true depending on the environment and the starting situation. However I can think of very few situations where intellect is a disadvantage, especially if paired with sufficient muscles. If I was those aliens, I would give my offspring both, superior intellect and a good amount of muscle to come by. There are even situation where a large amount of muscle can be a disadvantage. Lots of muscles mean a high basic energy consumption, that you can not go below, even when resting (your muscles just constantly burn energy, more muscle also require a bigger heart, etc...).
Why would they get dummed down? Easy - you would most likely need to upgrade their senses - bigger eyes, bigger olfactory organs, bigger hearing, all this means less space for the brain.
I am not to sure about these being exclusive to each other.
'Evolution' doesn't mean the cleverest and most intellectual, it is about physical strength and survivability.
Clearly not. Humans are among the weaker animals per KG of bodymass.
Also, evolution does not work that way. Evolution works with pressure. You have a certain trait that is favorable for survivability for a certain environmental condition and the individuals with such trait will most likely survive longer and therefore have more offspring.
being able to philosophise and contemplate the nature of the universe, or being able to detect predators, fight, defend, and kill prey?
Who says that a higher intelligence is not more favorable for survivability?
It depends on the circumstances.
The problem is also that over the millenia conditions change. Evolution favors those that can survive changing conditions best.
Humans have managed to conquer the most inhabitable spots on earth.
MirariNefas got that right. We humans are the evidence that a higher intellect does help a lot. It is possible though that through certain environmental changes, smarter creatures do die out.
However, in case of us humans there is no evidence to support the theory that we are descendents of a much smarter ancestor, who died out.
In contrary, there is lots of evidence that our ancestors were less intelligent.
I also want to throw in that we do have a very good mix of other traits that did help us to become more intelligent. Stereoscopic vision, for example. This is very important for understanding of dimensions and distances. This in turn is important for math and math means logic. Our hands are able to hold and craft items. Though the question here is, what came first. The neanderthal men had an anatomic difference to the homo sapiens that made them unable to throw spears. Whether this really made a difference, or whether it was something else that meant their demise, we dont know, but it did make a difference. They were about as smart as we were, btw. Anyway being able to handle items of course gives those with the mental skills to develop new, better items a survival advantage.
Speech is another such thing. The homo erectus did have only very limited speech capabilities (if I remember correctly). This was an anatomic problem, more than a mental one. He was not that dumb, but he could not comunicate much of his thoughts with his friends. I do think that comunication is very important however. You need to be able to tell your thoughts to the others in order to make the entire population "smarter" (in terms of knowledge, not intelligence).
IMHO this ability to comunicate new ideas also gives those with a better memory and advantage, because they will be able to gather more knowledge.
I might also throw into the mix the fact that purely by numbers, we are far outnumbered by insects and rats. If you simply go by numbers, they were much more successful than we were.
If we humans ever die out, rats are among the most likely to take over the world. They have been responding very well to changing environmental conditions and the extreme pressure put on them by human "verminators".
They are smart and they have a lot of offspring. A very potent combination. They are not tall and they do not have that huge muscles (though sufficient muscle for what they need).
Cockroaches and other insects are also very successful. Roaches mostly for their insane number of offspring, each with enough mutations to- simply by chance- have something useful for survivability (many more will die though due to unfavorable mutations).
So maybe those aliens were the predecessors of cockroaches, or rats?
In any case, rats show very well how evolution works. They have become resistant to most poisons e.g. and their smarts allow them to outsmart many of the others, or traps, etc.
