Demian, this conversation has been interesting, but yes, we probably need to wrap it up pretty soon.
By currently adaptive I mean that something is useful in the current environment. Natural selection goes on at all times, but something may have been selected for in the past and be no longer adaptive today. I submit xenophobia as an example.
The universe has no perspective, so yes, everything comes from a social standpoint. But social standpoints are constrained by the way the universe works, which means that some standpoints are better (in terms of human flourishing) than others.
Truth has obvious survival value. If you think vaccines don’t work and refuse to take them, you are more likely to die in the next epidemic. Even in terms of sexual attraction it is an established principle in evolutionary biology that it’s really difficult to cheat, because your potential mates are equipped with lying-detecting mechanisms.
Social consensus is the result of the sum of individual thinking, so the two are not as sharply distinct as one may assume. Sure, for a lot of things it’s convenient to just go with the social consensus. But as I said, sometimes that’s going to be lethal.
Ethics is how human beings solve the problem of living together in a way that allows everyone to flourish. Yes, it is “social,” but it is also markedly constrained by objective facts about human nature.
Yes, flat-earthers “thrive,” but only because the rest of us don’t buy their lunacy. if we did, there would be no air travel, for instance, and society would be worse off in general. They are what in evolutionary biology are known as free-loaders. Their existence doesn’t undermine the general concept that truth is preferable to falsehood.
You yourself say that at some point magical thinking reaches a limit and society collapses. Hence the importance of truth.
I don’t see anything irrational in the desire to live, so long as one can live well. But it’s not a matter of “deserving” it. It just happens.
As for the Fermi paradox: nobody really knows.
