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Success as a Subset of Evolution

I got to thinking, as I tend to do between periods of arduous labor.  It tends to fill the gaps nicely.  I was thinking about success and more specifically successful people.  There's a famous quotation by Bertrand Russell:  ""The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt".  That idea annoys me.  Evolutionarily it seems like a negative on the species.  That is, the quotation does seem pretty true.

A thought occurs to me now though, one of two actually which may be key to this.  The first is that intelligence may not be evolutionarily useful beyond a certain point and the second is that what we define as intelligence may be evolutionarily useless.

In the end though, I think I've answered my own musing.  I think that we as a species do in fact move forward and that the intelligent are not necessarily full of doubt, but the people who are full of doubt may find this quotation to be soothing of the fact that there are indeed people smarter than them.

Or perhaps not.  Perception is an interesting variable in this line of thought.

I apologize for the scattered quality of my thoughts tonight, but they are as they are and I wouldn't attempt to play with them afterward.


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