How Is a Genius Different From a Really Smart Person?

Plus: mining the moon to save the ocean; big eruption prepping; nothing underlies everything; fast-forwarding evolution; and more moon stories from the archive. [View in browser]( | [Become a member]( EDITORS’ CHOICE September 04, 2022   Did a friend forward this? [Subscribe here](. Good Morning! Start your Sunday with some of the most popular stories from Nautilus—and this week’s Behind the Scenes below [READ NAUTILUS](   [ENVIRONMENT]( [To Save the Deep Ocean, We Should Mine the Moon]( The moon contains a lot of mineral wealth—but how practical is mining it? BY BRANDON KEIM It’s a Faustian bargain for the Anthropocene: The greatest source of rare-earth metals are to be found at the bottom of the sea—and so are Earth’s most fragile ecosystems, an undisturbed and largely unexplored world of marvels. [Continue reading →]( Experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers [SUBSCRIBE TODAY](   [Harness the Power of the Sea]( From marine-based ingredients to sustainable production, ocean conservation is the inspiration behind [One Ocean Beauty’](s clean skincare line. Save the oceans—and your wallet—with the [Labor Day Weekend Sale](. [Explore Clean Beauty](   BEHIND THE SCENES [Justin Gregg Takes Us Behind “The Wisdom of Gay Albatrosses”]( His argument isn’t quite the cliche, “Ignorance is bliss.” But Justin Gregg gets you thinking—maybe our knowledge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. His new book, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals about Human Stupidity, considers the tradeoffs of human ingenuity. “I was really interested in this question of whether or not intelligence is a good thing,” he told me. Our intelligence, or lack thereof, when it comes to moral matters comes under scrutiny in his story for Nautilus, “[The Wisdom of Gay Albatrosses](,” an excerpt from his book. “I use homophobia as the main focus,” he said, [in our recent conversation.]( Animals punish each other for lots of things—free-riding, theft. Yet there are no animal social systems that punish animals for engaging in same-sex behavior. “Only humans do that,” Gregg, an animal cognition researcher, said. “That's because we’ve rationalized ourselves into the corner with our moral systems, where we become strangely intolerant of same-sex behavior. That creates a lot of unhappiness and misery and death for a lot of other humans for no real good reason. That’s a huge problem and animals maybe have a better system.” What does Nietzsche have to do with that? “I used Nietzsche as a frame because Nietzsche quite famously had a passage about cows in a field, and he was lamenting that he wished he were more like a cow, because cows were not worried about the future, not thinking about their past, just happily in the moment,” Gregg said. “He envied them for not being smart enough to think about complex topics, like nihilism, that made him so miserable.” Gregg also discussed the sorts of intelligence we might find elsewhere in the cosmos. “We always think of biological systems and natural selection is what generates forms. But you can imagine anything else, like atoms, chemicals floating around in a cloud, that for some reason have a capacity for action and agency and can create things, and so it’s not a biological system at all,” Gregg said. “It functions almost more like a computer than it does a life form. This is why science fiction is so fun. Maybe I’ll work on a science fiction book.” For Gregg, that wouldn’t necessarily seem like a creative leap. “I’m only a part-time scientist, really,” he said. “I work as a voice actor. I work in theater. I record music. I teach improv. I’m already doing a lot of weird, artsy things, but I don’t think my publicist wants me to talk about those because I’m supposed to be a very serious scientist. So, forget I said anything.” [Watch here.]( —Brian Gallagher, associate editor   [“We have this gift of our geological twin, the moon, to provide us with mineral and energy wealth.”]( [An MIT engineer and NASA geophysicist makes the case for mining the moon.](   [GEOSCIENCE]( [Are We Ready for the Next Massive Volcano?]( BY BRIAN GALLAGHER Mike Cassidy was there in 2010 when Eyjafjallajökull, a volcano-covering ice cap in Iceland, erupted. [Continue reading →](   [PHYSICS]( [How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything]( BY CHARLIE WOOD Millennia ago, Aristotle asserted that nature abhors a vacuum, reasoning that objects would fly through truly empty space at impossible speeds. [Continue reading →](   [PSYCHOLOGY]( [How Is a Genius Different From a Really Smart Person?]( BY CLAIRE CAMERON The most intelligent two percent of people in the world. [Continue reading →](   [ARTS]( [He Fast-Forwarded Evolution into the Future]( BY ED SIMON Some 50 million years from now, a long-limbed, long-necked, and long-eared herbivore roams the temperate woods and grasslands of the Northern Continent. [Continue reading →](   More [MOON]()[stories from]()[Nautilus]() [The Moon Is Underrated]( New research hints at what makes Earth’s moon special. BY SEAN RAYMOND [Continue reading →]( [The Moon Is Full of Money]( Capitalism in space. BY POPE BROCK [Continue reading →]( [Why Lunar Ice Caps Don’t Change My Moon Base Design]( For the author of The Martian and Artemis, it’s simple economics. BY ANDY WEIR [Continue reading →]( [Your Brain Can’t Handle the Moon]( How the moon stirs tension between your conscious and subconscious minds. BY BRIAN GALLAGHER [Continue reading →](   Today’s newsletter was written by Brian Gallagher   BECOME A SUBSCRIBER [Not Your Average Science Magazine]( [Nautilus](takes you into the depths of science and spotlights the ripples in our lives and culture. With each issue, readers gain an in-depth understanding of science and philosophy through multifaceted narratives as told by distinguished scientists and writers. [Subscribe now]( and experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers. [Join Today](   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2022 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from nautil.us. 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