Month: September 2022

THE QUESTION. “If we ever make contact with life from other planets, will our science of biology help us understand it?" https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

LEAPING BOUNDS. “As computers become more prevalent, more complex, and more highly interconnected, we suspect that so will computer viruses. Eventually it is likely that a computer virus will be created with 'a robust capacity to evolve, that will progress far beyond its initial form.” https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

BEWARE. “One Nobel Laureate said: Well, there’s no way we’re going to see self-replicating nano-technological entities for at least 100 years. And I then replied that: Yes, that’s actually a reasonable estimate of how much work it will take–it’ll take 100 years of progress, at today’s rate of progress, to get self-replicating nanotechnological entities. But the rate of progress is not going to remain at today’s rate, and I’ll be showing you some charts of what’s happening to the rate of “paradigm shifts”; it’s doubling every decade. We will make 100 years of progress, at today’s rate, in 25 years.” http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-human-machine-merger-why-we-will-spend-most-of-our-time-in-virtual-reality-in-the-twenty-first-century View in LinkedIn

FALSE DEFINITIONS. “Computer viruses and genetic engineering are a reality, a tangible demonstration that artificial life is not only the subject for science fiction. However, neither of these are self-sufficient life forms; both computer viruses and genetically engineered life forms require human beings to create them. This does not say that they are not alive - there are many natural organisms that cannot exist without other organisms.” https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION. Herbert Spencer "defined evolution as "a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity". https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

ANTI-ENTROPY. “In Spencer's view, evolution is the antagonist of dissolution. His notion of dissolution is essentially what physicists call the second law of thermodynamics. According to the second law, disorder, or entropy, tends to increase in the absence of an input of energy.” https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

BROAD EVOLUTION. “According to Spencer, evolution is a process giving rise to increasing differentiation (specialization of functions) and integration (mutual interdependence and coordination of function of the structurally differentiated parts). He viewed evolution as the dominant force driving the spontaneous formation of structure in the universe, including the formation of matter, stars, geological formations, biological species, and social organizations. Thus, Darwinian evolution is just. a special case of a broader principle.” https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

CULTURE. “In contrast to biological evolution, in social evolution acquired characteristics are passed on to subsequent generations. Cultural evolution is essentially a Lamarckian process. The capability of cultural evolution for bringing about effective change on a timescale far faster than biological evolution demonstrates the power of Lamarckian evolution.” https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

STEP JUMP. “The introduction of culture, with its more rapid mechanism of Lamarckian evolution, can be viewed as a watershed event in the history of evolution as a whole - a "phase change" accelerating the global evolutionary process.” https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

ADDITIVE EVOLUTION. “The human species has made an enormous amount of progress since evolving around fifty thousand years ago. This is because we can pass on knowledge and infrastructure from previous generations. This is a type of self-improvement, but it is not recursive. If we never learned to modify our own brains, then we would eventually reach the point where making new discoveries required more knowledge than could be gained in a human lifetime.” https://lnkd.in/dpPHp3a View in LinkedIn