but they have a different goal: they want drivers to feel like they’re making progress instead of actually improving things.

Sorry but I want a source for that claim.

Okay, how then would you generalize this trait? We would expect an intelligent species to be social to some degree? It’s hard to imagine how a species could evolve the capacity to achieve technological advances without cooperation between individuals.

A beak falls under “some kind of appendage”

Yeah… no, I don’t think that can evolve naturally

I understand the sentiment, but there must be some number of common attributes all advanced intelligent species across the universe have. Tool use, for example, would require that the organism have some kind of appendage that can manipulate things.

Why does it often seem like only China is using modern tech to make real quality of life improvements? It’s the opposite of the US. Seems like that same modern tech is making everything a bit worse day after day.