Left side: Evolution took their tusks away.
Middle: Acktually it's selection pressure acting on the population combined with random mutations that...
Right side: Evolution took their tusks away.
More charitably, pedantry is a stage of learning. Practicing until the concepts get reinforced enough that you can substitute the rule of thumb again.
It's the same pattern as the hero's journey. Start at home (the naive view), do righteous battle with the concepts, return home (to the naive view) but changed.
I was into all this stuff when I was 13, reading Dawkins and Hitchens. Blind watchmaker, selfish gene. What's interesting is that the fuel for that kind of learning is part intellectual exercise, part making sense of the world, and part superiority (other people are wrong and I'm right). And now we're doing the same thing one level up.
