Gregg’s book If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity makes some extraordinary and thought-provoking points...It is not only engagingly written, but its controversial thesis is worth taking seriously...Some of the cognitive concepts introduced in If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal are nothing less than brilliant...Take 'prognostic myopia,' which Mr. Gregg defines as 'the human capacity to think about and alter the future coupled with an inability to actually care all that much about what happens in the future. It’s caused by the human ability to make complex decisions availing of our unique cognitive skills that result in long-term consequences. But because our minds evolved primarily to deal with immediate—not future—outcomes, we rarely experience or even understand the consequences of these long-term decisions'...Think nuclear weapons, greenhouse gases, long-term pollution for short-term profit...Our 'shortsighted farsightedness,' argues Mr. Gregg, is 'an extinction-level threat to humanity'...It is startling to consider that our very intelligence may have made humans no better morally, even no better off physically, than other species...Indeed, by many measures of evolutionary success (number of individuals, persistence over time, likelihood of persisting into the future), Homo sapiens is doing poorly compared to many other species...And not benefiting the Earth, either...Mr. Gregg concludes, glumly but effectively, that 'there’s good reason to tone down our smugness. Because, depending on where we go from here, human intelligence may just be the stupidest thing that has ever happened.'
Gregg, a senior research associate with the Dolphin Communication Project, examines the 'puzzling gulf between the way humans understand and experience the world, and the way all other animals do' in this entertaining work of pop science...He begins with a brief account of Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental health decline, arguing that superior intelligence might not always be a good thing, because if the philosopher’s mind had been more like that of a narwhal’s, he wouldn’t have suffered such despair...It’s a lighthearted conceit, and it leads to an enlightening tour of animal behavior: a chapter on deception contrasts the human tendency to lie with the 'tactical deception' of the male cuttlefish, which disguises itself as a female when rivals are nearby...Wonderfully accessible and charmingly narrated, this is a fascinating investigation of intellect and cognition.
While many of us believe that possessing a higher degree of intelligence is inherently good, Gregg shows how increased cognitive skills do not necessarily equate to success...In fact, human intelligence has frequently resulted in tragic consequences, and 'evolution is still deciding what to make of the human capacity for causal reasoning'...Humans are keenly aware of their own mortality, and knowledge of the inevitability of death has resulted in ongoing holy wars among competing ideologies...In a seemingly innocuous but telling contemporary example, Gregg notes how Americans 'love their lawns,' investing countless hours and natural resources to maintain them...At the same time, most people fully understand the dangers of burning fossil fuels and the effects of climate change...The author labels this cognitive dissonance 'prognostic myopia,' which 'makes it difficult for us to make good decisions about our future because we’re heavily influenced by our problems in the here and now'...With frightening clarity, the author shows how prognostic myopia could even lead to human extinction...Nietzsche believed that nonhuman animals’ inability to understand time or the concept of the future gave them an edge over humans...This insightful book provides food for thought and lends credence to that notion...A fascinating take on human intelligence.
