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4 UNIVERSAL DRIVERS. “Self-improvement causes systems to allocate their physical and computational resources according to a universal principle. It also causes systems to exhibit four natural drives: 1) efficiency, 2) self-preservation, 3) resource acquisition, and 4) creativity. Unbridled, these drives lead to both desirable and undesirable behaviors.” https://lnkd.in/dAGQTQs View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this discussion of the female heart of flowering plants, the carpel. This is a case study of the evolutionary importance and impact of a tiny structure, not only on a lineage of living things, but also on the planet. For with flowering plants came an ecosystem of insects, and nested in the insects, came their symbionts, and so on. It shows that biological innovation can be easily overlooked. View in LinkedIn

REPURPOSED GENES. “Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that: (1) orthologs of most floral genes existed long before their specific roles in flowering were established; (2) novel gene lineages first appeared with the origin of the angiosperms and probably contributed to the origin of the flower; and (3) after a functional flower evolved, genetic innovations continued as new genes originated and/or were recruited into floral genetic programs.” http://www.genetics.org/content/202/4/1255 View in LinkedIn

HOUSE OF THE EMBRYO. “To accomplish their role in seed dispersal, fruits undergo considerable post-fertilisation changes, though many of the mechanisms that bring these about are established at earlier developmental stages. Thus, the basis for fruit development is laid down during the formation of the carpel.” https://lnkd.in/dN-h-K2 View in LinkedIn

CHANCE. “It seems unlikely that humans are near the ceiling of possible intelligences, rather than simply being the first such intelligence that happened to evolve.” https://lnkd.in/dAZH9Vg View in LinkedIn

FRUIT OF THE WOMB. “What becomes of the carpel after fertilisation. Indeed, the greater part of carpel-related biodiversity becomes apparent only at this later stage, as the gynoecium transforms into a fruit.” https://lnkd.in/dN-h-K2 View in LinkedIn

MACHINE INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE. "Humans may create human-level artificial intelligence (AI) this century. Shortly thereafter, we may see an “intelligence explosion” or “technological singularity”—a chain of events by which human-level AI leads, fairly rapidly, to intelligent systems whose capabilities far surpass those of biological humanity as a whole." https://lnkd.in/dAZH9Vg View in LinkedIn

FEMALE HOUSE. “Upon fertilisation, gynoecium and ovule developmental programmes are switched to those of fruit and seed development. In Arabidopsis, fruit development is characterised by a dramatic elongation of the ovary, concomitant with the differentiation of specific tissues along the carpel margins. Unfertilised gynoecia fail to elongate and develop seeds, and will eventually undergo senescence.” https://lnkd.in/dN-h-K2 View in LinkedIn

SMARTS DEFINED. “Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments. For our purposes, “intelligence” measures an agent’s capacity for efficient cross-domain optimization of the world according to the agent’s preferences.” https://lnkd.in/dAZH9Vg View in LinkedIn

COMMON GENES. “An increasing amount of evidence suggests that the pathways regulating the basic morphological outline of ancestral leaf-like organs have been recruited to the developmental programmes of both leaves and floral organs, including the carpels, of present-day plants, although in the latter case, these have been slightly modified and positioned downstream of genes determining floral organ identity. For instance, mutations in genes affecting carpel morphogenesis also result in defects in the basic morphogenesis of the leaves.” https://lnkd.in/dN-h-K2 View in LinkedIn