re: The knowledge of good and evil, and other primate limitations.
The primate model of intelligence trades the comprehensive scope and long life of the collective for the simplicity and directness of the individual. But it's always a tradeoff. It is a low-overhead but relatively oversimplified way for a life-form to deal with reality. We may have the adaptability and simplicity to outperform the social invertebrates in the short run, but do we have the long-term stability and resilience to last as long as they have? Just as in engineering, every solution is a compromise between robustness and flexibility. The successful species are those which discover an optimal combination of the two.