The Great Temptation
“The fundamental problem is that any evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness itself. We don’t seek reproductive success directly; we seek tasty foods that tended to promote survival and luscious mates who tended to produce bright, healthy babies. Modern results: fast food and pornography. Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote our real biological fitness, but it’s even better at delivering fake fitness—subjective cues of survival and reproduction, without the real-world effects… This is the Great Temptation for any technological species—to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance.” Geoffrey Miller, Evolutionary Psychologist