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ARTIFICIAL LIFE FORMS. "At first, they will be quite unsophisticated, simple tools that we have built to satisfy our needs. Ultimately, however, economic and political pressures will drive artificial life forms to greater degrees of sophistication, until their complexity and information processing capabilities are comparable or superior to those of humans. This may engender competition with humans.” https://lnkd.in/dMvAeqz View in LinkedIn

LAMARCKIAN HARDWARE. “Assuming that artificial life forms become dominant in the far future, this transition to Lamarckian evolution of hardware will enact another major change in the global rate of evolution, comparable to the enormous acceleration that occurred with the advent of culture.” 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

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

TWO STAGES. “In angiosperms the diploid sporophyte is the dominant stage and the haploid gametophyte is completely dependent upon the sporophyte. The flower is part of the sporophyte: it is diploid and through meiosis will produce spores that will undergo mitosis to form gametes. The anthers will produce haploid microspores. These will undergo mitosis and differentiate to form the pollen grains, each of which carries two sperm. The ovules will produce haploid megaspores.” https://lnkd.in/d4Dqxx6 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

OVERLY COMPLEX. “The angiosperm life cycle is more complex than the life cycles of the other major groups of plants that we have discussed. This is because in addition to having alternation of generations, angiosperms also have a process called double fertilization.” https://lnkd.in/d4Dqxx6 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

UNIQUE TO FLOWERING PLANTS. “Double fertilization is the defining characteristic of flowering plants. However, the molecular mechanisms regulating the fusion of one sperm with the egg and the second sperm with the central cell are largely unknown.” https://lnkd.in/dxHFh57 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