They also may have been created to be the social equivalent of the damper rods in a nuclear reactor. Imagine a frenetic society where everyone is rushing around and impatient and unwilling to take the time to see if a new policy works or not before they start tinkering with it, and then an addition of slow, deep thinkers to provide a longer-term perspective. Long-lived, uplifted sloths could be found all over the planet, tending to gardens growing on old disaster sites and other deep time projects...