Rachell Powell

speaker

762 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 26 Jan

Rachell Powell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas · 342 | Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Morality, and Mind · 26 Jan 2026 podcast

So in a way, it's like you're trying to get out of anthropocentricism, but you're sort of falling back into it.

And I think Gould did the same thing

In a sense, when he's saying, look, if there was no asteroid from the Oort cloud, I don't know if he knew that Oort cloud was likely back then as the originator of that, but if there was no asteroid that hit contingently, there would be no intelligent mammals, there's no intelligent mammals, there would be no intelligent humans, and so blah, blah, blah.

There would be no intelligence in general.

And interestingly, that's a contingency thesis, but it's also quite anthropocentric.

So once you bring convergence to the picture, you say, well, actually, the avian and non-avian dinosaurs were probably extraordinarily cognitively adept and sophisticated.

And if you just look at evolution in birds or encephalopods or even in insects post-KT event, you see complex cognition kind of everywhere.

So, you know, there's a sense in which convergentism, although speaking to necessity, can also speak against anthropocentricism.

So it is a weird balance how these things are playing out.

I agree.

Yeah, no, absolutely true.

I mean, look, I mean, ultimately, I think, and this is sort of jumping the gun is probably a better thing to conclude with.

But it's like, I think ultimately, extraordinary levels of cognitive flexibility and intelligence is probably a liability in the long run.

I mean, none of us are going to be here to know how that that turns out.

But

That would be my guess.

There's going to be plenty of much stupider animals peppering the stratigraphy of the Earth long after we're gone.

I think we are quick to tout.

the things that we take to be one unique to us or close to unique to us and two, to be morally important.

And so there are values based assumptions sort of playing a role there, but I agree with you a hundred percent.

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