A simple look at Life and Nature reveals a lot of similarities: 2 arms (wings), 2 legs, 2 eyes, 1 mouth, 1 nose, 1 head, 1 brain and so on. Humans may thus appear average rather than extraordinary compared to (other) animals. Hence, some people claim that the “mediocrity principle” applies to humans (eg, Futurism).
Wiki: “The mediocrity principle is the philosophical notion that if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it’s likelier to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories”. In statistical terms, the “mediocrity principle” would apply to the 95% in the normal or Gaussian distribution.
In the Tree of Life, animals – let alone humans – are not even visible because both are part of the Ophistokonta, one the 5 Eukaryotic supergroups (my 2016 blog). A closer look at animals reveals that more than 1.3 million of species or 95% have no spine (invertebrates). Only 66 thousand species or less than 5% have a spine (vertebrate). These facts do not suggest that the mediocrity principle should or would apply.
Does the vast number of 8 billion humans warrant its application? I am not so sure. Only the global ant population may (!) amount to 100 trillion (BBC-2014) or 10,000 trillion (1994 claim by Harvard University professor Edward O Wilson and German biologist Bert Hölldobler). There are also at least 10 million trillion microbes (eg, bacteria) for every human on the planet (BBC-1998, Nature-2012, PNAS-2015, NYT-2016).
Humans are extraordinary in various ways, if only as they have the (technological) capacity to destroy this planet (eg, nuclear warfare). They also seem to be the only species in the entire Tree of Life that migrated from Needs (eg, food, water) to Wants (using tools & technology) to Beliefs.
Without any doubt, there is another extraordinary species: the octopus. Some facts: it has 3 hearts, 8 limbs, 9 brains, has blue (copper rather than iron-based) blood and is also (very) smart. Smithsonian, 2013: “the big-brained cephalopod can navigate through mazes, solve problems and remember solutions, and take things apart for fun–they even have distinct personalities.”
The evolutionary timeline of octopuses, ants and humans is very different: 296 mya vs 120 mya vs some 4 million years ago (mya). Clearly, octopuses and ants both did survive extreme climate change (see yesterday’s blog on the Great Filter). However, both miss the technology to escape Earth and are doomed to go extinct unless they “join” human space travel.
Humans might actually be black swan events in Evolution. Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced the term black swan events in his 2007 book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Wiki: “The book focuses on the extreme impact of certain kinds of rare and unpredictable events (outliers) [].” Excerpt from my 2016 blog.
While it might be true that mediocrity is king for 95% of all humans, it’s the less than 5% that makes all the difference to this world. In the words of Arthur Conan Doyle: “Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Mediocrity is King (2014) by Paul Thorn – artist, lyrics, video, Wiki
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