Quote:Individual people are smart and altruistic enough, but (organized) groups usually are not. Groups need to be popular to attract members. Besides, if low human intelligence was the real problem, we might as well give up now.
Well this is what you see in countries with no real governments, like is the case in many countries in Africa for example. You get anarchy, and the formation of clans that battle eachother.
You also see this closer to home in former yugoslavie where neighbours of many years started killing and raping eachother when the government control fell away, and the populists took over.
We might not give up now. Some of our government system keep the people together......so that you only need a number of smart people, so that low human intelligence (on average) can be counterbalanced.
Still....I think at the moment even our average collective intelligence doesn't really stop us from destroying our planet.