It's not a well supported theory, but fascinating. Possibly an epigenetic influence? Much more likely a cultural effect, if any, that nudged early humans down the path of spiritual pursuit as a sort of cultural glue. The more spiritually inclined you were, the more likely you were to thrive in the societal hierarchy.
Use of psychedelics could have helped accelerate an individual's "spiritual" development and therefore afforded them additional offspring. So the correlation, if any, might be a favoring of genes that paired well with the effects of psychedelics. Pure speculation on my part.
As for AI, it seems highly likely a new class of designer drugs will emerge, tailored to a specific individual to enhance societal adaptation. We've already seen this in play over the past 40+ years in the pharmaceutical industry. AI will only accelerate it IMO.
Imagine your cognitive abilities today if no one ever spoke a language to you through your childhood. Cultural influence is able to significantly improve this. Thats not a genetic factor but an environmental one that is predominantly responsible for this phenotype of a developed and modern adult.
Todays babies rapidly grow their brain while learning new languages. Kids who wind up feral for whatever reason have severe cognitive issues from a lack of learning language at a critical age.
It makes you wonder how this brittle system got its start. Considering everyone today needs this language kick start induced by cultural practice, maybe the initial kick was also some cultural practice that also introduced new ideas where there wouldn’t be otherwise. Maybe that practice at one time was a shamanic like experience considering the proliferation of these practices in the most basal religions we have around the world. Its really hard to say what came first, the language or cultural practices such as ritualized drug taking, considering what archaeological evidence we have seems to suggest these things were happening at the same time.
Use of psychedelics could have helped accelerate an individual's "spiritual" development and therefore afforded them additional offspring. So the correlation, if any, might be a favoring of genes that paired well with the effects of psychedelics. Pure speculation on my part.
As for AI, it seems highly likely a new class of designer drugs will emerge, tailored to a specific individual to enhance societal adaptation. We've already seen this in play over the past 40+ years in the pharmaceutical industry. AI will only accelerate it IMO.