Bret Weinstein

But any squirrel that had just a little advantage in getting to that next tree would outcompete ones that got consumed or died because they hit the ground too hard or fell in front of a predator that took advantage of it or something like that.

So there is an advantage that comes from even a tiny little increase in the distance you can jump.

So that gets you pretty clearly from no ability to glide at all, ability to jump as is, to the ability to glide a little, to the ability to glide a lot, to the ability to glide the way modern flying squirrels do, which is like so impressive, right?

But it's still not flapping flight.

It's not powered.

So you can imagine a story in which the shrew ancestor climbed things,

and had the same situation.

And maybe it starts out, in fact, it probably does start out with maybe a little webbing between the fingers that gives it just a little extra lift, right?

And you could imagine once you get onto that little foothill, a little lift, well, a little more lift would be good.

So those individuals that had just slightly more webbing outcompeted those individuals that had slightly less webbing.

Well, that's just it is, you know, you have... Is that random mutation?

Is that... Well, yeah, I would say at some level, these things all have to start there.

But my overarching point is selection...

not only discovers forms, it discovers ways to discover forms.

So I call these ways explorer modes.

This is a concept I've taken a certain amount of crap over, but I'm quite convinced of it.

I would argue that our consciousness is an explorer mode.

Our consciousness allows us to come up with ideas that might be useful and to kind of test them in our heads

And to figure out how we would try them out in life and then to build a prototype and see how it works and then discover how it might be improved.

And, you know, sooner or later you get from, you know, the right flyer of 1903, which can stay off the ground for barely half a minute.