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?

posted almost 5 years ago

Quartz2‭

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