Are Humans Really the Dumbest Species on Earth?

The idea that human self-awareness is an evolutionary mistake has no scientific basis: consciousness is not understood as a poisoned gift, but as one more trait of the biological repertoire. The rest of the manifesto is opinion, not fact.

Some texts are read with a smile and others with a raised eyebrow. This one belongs to the second category. Its central thesis is that self-awareness, that spark that sets us apart from other animals, was a poisoned gift: instead of emancipating us from instinct, we use it to refine our greed. It is an old idea in new clothes.

## Self-awareness was not an evolutionary mistake
Evolution hands out neither prizes nor punishments. It does not design with intent, so talking about a "poisoned gift" is a literary metaphor, not a biological mechanism. Human consciousness emerges from a complex nervous system and is studied through neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, not through the suspicion that nature made a mistake with us.

Claiming we are the only creature that chooses lies and self-deception does not hold up either. Deception exists in other species: there are primates that hide food, birds that feign injury to divert predators. The human difference lies in scale and culture, not in exclusivity.

## Two decades of the internet do not measure anyone's intelligence
The text rails against **two decades of hyperconnectivity** —since **2006**— as if that were the deadline for proving collective lucidity. It is an arbitrary yardstick. The internet is not an intelligence test: it is infrastructure. Confusing the quality of the content circulating on it with the intellectual capacity of billions of people is a logical leap.

The existence of philosophers, musicians like **Chopin**, or any figure the author spares proves nothing about the rest. The history of culture has always had visible minorities and anonymous majorities. That is not new, nor exclusive to the digital age.

## Calling people "automatons" does not explain alienation
The manifesto describes the majority as "absurd beings of flesh and electricity" serving a macroeconomic machine they do not understand. Work alienation is a serious concept, with a tradition in sociology and economics. But reducing it to a collective insult does not explain it: it turns it into contempt.

Economics does study how work can disconnect people from what they produce. That debate exists and has names attached. What has no scientific name is the conclusion that the entire species is stupid for persisting. Persisting is what species do. The interesting question is not why we are still here, but what we do with the time we have.

If the text triggers an existential crisis, talk to someone you trust or to a professional. Barroom philosophy is fine for an afternoon, not for diagnosing humanity.