Why humans are less old than we think

We often see ourselves as a species that’s millions of years old. While that’s technically true, it misses the point. What something is also depends on how it sees itself. Homo sapiens did not think of themselves as “humans.” We do. That’s way more important than you might think. In that sense, humans are much younger.

I think one of our earliest predecessors saw themselves as part of everything. If you think like that, every question becomes more nuanced, because you're making decisions for all of nature.

For example: when you say you want to cure cancer, what you’re really saying is that a human life is more important than cancer. That’s a pretty extreme claim. Maybe cancer has a vital function in nature we don’t yet understand. Maybe humans have a very unhealthy relationship with dying (we do). Maybe the environmental damage we cause by keeping everyone alive at all costs doesn’t balance out against the benefits of curing cancer.

We humans are notoriously bad at accepting that there’s a lot we still don’t understand. Maybe cancer was an extreme example, but there must be diseases we eradicated that actually benefited the system as a whole.

See how I sound? Religious. I’m not religious—but religion is much smarter than we give it credit for. A lot of things actually do work exactly the way they should work. I’ve hardly found any real irregularities so far.