Did you forget a footnote? :)
Also, I'd be willing to bet that our sex drive had a decent role in evolution. Basically be strong, smart, and acquire stuff so we can put our dicks into pretty females.
I also think it's putting the horse before the cart. To some degree we don't even shape the world to have kids, we also have kids to shape the world. That is, for them to live, because we like to live. Life likes to live; it also likes to see other life thrive. That with similar genes preferably, sure, but also simply life in general.
Plus, from the perspective of genes, it makes zero difference if "my" genes or similar ones that "belong" to someone else are replicated, completely contrary to how we feel about that.... which to me is another indication that this view of life being this endless and futile struggle (harshly put, like a malignant cancer trapped in a finite universe), is more to do with cultural pathology or delusion than life itself.
Start with "The Selfish Gene", his best IMO.
Have fun!
(Only click if you're SURE you have 6 minutes to kill)
Unless they are not.
For example, we might get a total surveillance society, ruled by a tyranny that cannot be overthrown, because it controls everyone's use of information. We seem to be heading that way now.
Or a bad singularity that turns the solar system into paperclips.
Or one of those old favourites, nuclear war and ecological catastrophe.
It is not obvious to me that humans will still be around in 100 years. Which would be sad considering we may be the only sapient life in the universe.
Sitting in front of our flat monitors with access to nearly all information which is stored all around planet Earth.
Phones that connect us to billions of people.
Brains large enough to hypothesize the creation of the universe.
We can create rockets that send probes to other planets and even the edge of our solar system.
We regularly travel around in amazing personal vehicles that allow us to travel at over 100 mph in about 10 seconds.
The fact that each one of us had about one quadrillionth percent chance of even being born, yet here we are.
The fact that we can even talk and communicate effectively is amazing.
We can imagine future technologies and have goals to work towards such as immortality, brain-computer interfaces, teleportation, and mining asteroids.
We have so much to be thankful for. Everything is amazing.
WTF. [0]
I have a dog that can't do anything but eat, pee, poop, and play fetch. What kind of activities do other organisms do that humans can't do? Other than telepathy, and flight, and breathing without oxygen, and energy creation through sunlight.
Yet we still make fellow humans and animals suffer daily. We eat shit food and get depressed and some people even try to kill themselves. We have concepts like good and evil and actually hate other humans just because they are not exactly like our culture or have more stuff than we do. We have enough nuclear missiles in the ocean to eradicate life on earth.
Terraforming mars will be fun. I hope that I live to see the start of that adventure. The next 100 years in general will be very fun. I'm extremely glad that I get to be a part of this awesome world at this extraordinary time in human history. Please, nobody fuck it up too bad.
My point is, regarding the article, ANYTHING is possible. God is possible, ghosts are possible, flying spaghetti monsters are possible but until I see a video with convincing explanation or accredited scientists agree that something is very likely, is there really any point of just making up stuff?
Mars having a thriving self-sustaining human-like civilization underground is possible. Aliens living among us for several years is possible. No scientist will say that either of those hypothesis are absolutely impossible, but there is no point in proposing it unless you're writing a science fiction novel/movie/comic book.