Is self-awareness or consciousness actually an evolutionary disadvantage?

Blindsight is a first-contact Sci-Fi novel based on a group of transhumans exploring an anomaly in space and discovers a species that has great intelligence but no self-awareness.

The author mentions that consciousness is a bottleneck and reduces the fitness of a species / renders a species noncompetitive in the long run compared to other unconscious space-faring species. "Intelligence and self-awareness stuck in counterproductive lock-step for half a million years"

I find such a conclusion disturbing as a major idea of being human is based on self-awareness.

Is there any empirical evidence or theory that unconsciousness is superior in terms of evolution and the evolution of being conscious is "wrong" for a species?

Can a highly intelligent organic species be unconscious? If so, then what is the difference between being dead and living your whole life unconsciously?

is a duplicate

This question has been asked before and has already been answered. It should be marked as a duplicate.

Please enter the URL of the proposed duplicate in the details field below.

not constructive

This question cannot be answered in a way that is helpful to anyone. It's not possible to learn something from possible answers, except for the solution for the specific problem of the asker.

Communities

Is self-awareness or consciousness actually an evolutionary disadvantage?

0 comment threads

0 answers