Clipmarks | Djiezes's 'evolution' clips

Biocultural Evolution in the 21st Century: The Evolutionary Role of Religion

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:17:45 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks:

My outline introduces the concept of biocultural evolution, particularly with reference to the Twentieth Century and the prospects for the Twenty-First Century. I then explore the concept of complex distributed systems to characterize all highly creative processes in both culture and nature. Subsequently, I turn to the problem of complexity horizons and the challenge that these present for traditional moral reflections. Humans are then characterized as a Lamarckian wild card in epic of evolution. I close by discussing the evolutionary role of religion.

See source for the full paper:
http://metanexus.net/magazine/ArticleDetail/tabid/68/id/8779/Default.aspx

Clip Source: metanexus.net

Biocultural Evolution in the 21st Century: The Evolutionary Role of Religion

By William Grassie

human evolution bypasses genetics and allows for intentional culturally-acquired adaptations and their cultural transmission between generations in a Lamarckian evolutionary pattern. As humans are about to embark upon large-scale genetic engineering of other species and ourselves, even as we have already engaged in large-scale environmental engineering, our biocultural evolution becomes literal and directed Lamarckism. This new pattern of evolution now dominates all life on Earth and places the values and intentions of humans as the driving force in the future evolution of the planet.

Tags: k21st, religion, biology, culture, evolution, technology, transhumanism, future, humanity

Partisan Gaps Over Evolution and Atheism

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:45:21 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: Source:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Partisan Gaps Over Evolution and Estimates on Atheism

A Gallup survey out this week reveals a wide partisan gap in perceptions of evolution. Specifically, 60% of Republicans say humans were created in their present form by God 10,000 years ago, a belief shared by only 40% of independents and 38% of Democrats.

In other words, it's very easy for citizens to convert climate change, stem cell research, or evolution into just one more wedge issue like abortion, taxes, or gun control that help define what it means to be a Republican or Democrat. The political packaging of science for electoral gain is the unfortunate outcome of a lot of different forces, with both Republican and Democratic leaders to blame.

the proportion of Americans who believe that evolution has occurred with God playing no part has edged up slightly over the past 15 years to roughly 14%.

Tags: evolution, religion, atheism, usa, politics, poll, gallup, survey, god, stats

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution (paper)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:29:29 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: Thanks to Kore7's comment on invictus' clip, I discovered there's a working linux version now.

2 minutes later, I found this paper on the Electric Sheep Project and simply had to share it.

Clip Source: draves.org

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution

Scott Draves

Spotworks, San Francisco CA, USA

Electric Sheep is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms known as sheep. The votes of the users form the basis for the fitness function for a genetic algorithm on a space of fractal animations. Users also may design sheep by hand for inclusion in the gene pool. This paper describes the system and its algorithms, and reports statistics from 11 weeks of operation. The data indicate that Electric Sheep functions more as an amplifier of its human collaborators' creativity rather than as a traditional genetic algorithm that optimizes a fitness function.

Full paper as PDF (c) Springer-Verlag

Electric Sheep Home Page

Tags: pdf, paper, sheep, electric sheep, screensaver, free, evolution, art

Why You Should Talk to People

Sat, 03 May 2008 12:26:18 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Be nice to me or I might not talk to you. Or worse, maybe I will talk to you...

Recently published research shows that individual humans will be nicer (more altruistic) when there is the possibility that the recipient of an act can respond verbally. The paper, "Anticipated verbal feedback induces altruistic behavior" is published in Evolution and Human Behavior for March.

Apparently, there is a tendency under different conditions to give either nothing or half of the money.

In any event, the key finding here is that under conditions where feedback was going to happen, the "dictator" (divider of the money) more often gave away half of the cash.

Tags: science, altruism, morality, language, ethics, game theory, psychology

Why men think with their ...

Sat, 03 May 2008 12:21:49 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Evidence that Men Think With Their Junk

Us dudes are always accused of thinking with our dicks. Perhaps it's because the genes expressed in our brains are similar to those expressed in our 'nads:

Among the 17 tissues, the highest similarity in gene expression patterns was between human brain and testis, based on DDD and clustering analysis. Genes contributing to the similarity include ribosomal protein (RP) genes as well as genes involved in transcription, translation and cell division.

Tags: science, paper, brains, genes, evolution

The Economic Causes of Monogamy

Sat, 03 May 2008 11:45:59 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

The Economic Causes of Monogamy

In a paper in this month's AER, Eric Gould, Omer Moav and Avi Simhon undertake to address the mystery of why the developed world is so uniformly monogamous, when the developing world (and much of human history) is polygynous.

Throughout much of human history, this has been the case. George Murdock recorded in his ethnographic atlas that 850 of the 1,170 societies he provided data on practiced polygyny. It is therefore something of a puzzle why modern industrialized societies are so monogamous.

Tags: science, monogamy, polygamy, society, economy, evolution, industry, paper, psychology, economics

Homo Superior

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:08:19 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The risks may be great, but so too are the rewards.

Clip Source: www.scienceagogo.com

Genetic engineering is getting serious. Recently researchers have shown that otherwise "hardwired" or innate responses, such as fear, can be manipulated and even reversed, that extreme muscle growth is possible, and that sexual preference can be changed. Genetic manipulations like these go well beyond the promised cosmetic enhancements – such as changing skin and eye color – and may in fact allow us to become the drivers of our species' evolution.

But are we capable of handling our newfound god status? If we could create a fearless, well-fed, disease-free world, would this lead to a golden age of peace, love, and understanding, or will it be business as usual?

add to these developments the recent experiments in what you could call "directed selection" – the ability to knockout certain genes to produce a change in behavior or physiology – and we're well on the way to becoming masters of our own destinies.

But what would a world without depression, anxiety, or fear be like?

Tags: human, v2, h+, transhumanism, genetics

Questioning Consciousness

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:11:21 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks:

What we should be doing instead is trying to explain just how we have been set up—and why.

[...]

1. What exactly is the real-world brain activity that we are engaging with when we say a sensation is like something?

2. Why does this activity have the (tricky) properties it has, such that our experience of it is seemingly something so strangely private, not of this world, and indescribable in common terms?

3. What makes this trick work? How is it done?

4. What is the point? Why was it designed like this? What might have been the evolutionary advantage of our having these marvelous experiences?

I believe we can already propose plausible answers to each of these questions—although they are all quite radical.
Here they are.

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Questioning Consciousness

To understand consciousness and its evolution, we need to ask the right questions.

by Nicholas Humphrey

any of us might very well innocently ask the (bad) question: "How can we explain the existence of this triangle as we perceive it?" Only later—indeed only once we have seen the object from a different viewpoint (Fig. 2), and realized that the "triangle as we perceive it" is an illusion—will it occur to us to ask the (good) question: "How can we explain the fact we have been tricked into perceiving it this way?"

it will only be if we undergo a radical shift in perspective and realize that the "qualia as we experience them" could be a mental fantasy, that we shall move on to asking

How can we explain why we have the impression that such fantastic qualia exist even if they do not?

In the case of consciousness, we cannot simply change our perspective to see the solution. We are all stuck with the first-person point of view.

Tags: consciousness, science, qualia, perspective, subjective, philosophy, mind, brain

The Role of Intimacy in the Evolution of Technology

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:02:04 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: jetpress.org

The Role of Intimacy in the Evolution of Technology

Alessandro Tomasi

Abstract

In this article, Georges Bataille’s notion of intimacy will be re-interpreted to show that it has a role to play in the evolution of technology. The specifically human form of intimacy can be experienced through the successful adoption of technological devices that have the qualities necessary to fit in and work out in our life context. If they manage to become part of our life, then we experience them as projections of our psychophysical personality, and, as such, they escape our positing, objectifying consciousness. Intimacy can be seen as the organizing principle that shapes the evolution of technology towards an ideal end that promises at least an approximation to the absolute intimacy that is unique to the gods.

Tags: journal, article, evolution, technology, bataille, intimacy, tomasi, psychology

Daedalus, or Science and the Future (by Haldane, 1923)

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:55:07 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: cscs.umich.edu

DAEDALUS

or
Science and the Future

A paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, on February 4th, 1923

by
J. B. S. Haldane

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

The book is an early vision of transhumanism [2] and his vision of a future in which humans controlled their own evolution through directed mutation and use of in vitro fertilization ("ectogenesis") was a major influence on Aldus Huxley's Brave New World. The book ends with the image of a biologist, much like Haldane himself, in a laboratory: "just a poor little scrubby underpaid man groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultramicroscop...conscious of his ghastly mission and proud of it."

The book has been discussed at length by other writers, including Freeman Dyson in his book "Imagined Worlds", "Science, Society, and Values" by Sal. P. Restivo [3] and the conceit has been used in contemporary science lectures [4].

Tags: future, science, history, evolution, transhumanism, scifi, biology, haldane, literature, paper

Michael Shermer on "The Mind of the Market" (at Google Talks)

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:35:55 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: youtube.com

Authors@Google: Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer discusses his book "Mind of the Market" as part of the Authors@Google series.

[Video]

How did we evolve from ancient hunter-gatherers to modern consumer-traders? Why are people so irrational when it comes to money and business? Bestselling author Dr. Michael Shermer argues that evolution provides an answer to both of these questions through the new science of evolutionary economics. Drawing on research from neuroeconomics, Shermer explores what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and how trust is established in business. Utilizing experiments in behavioral economics, Shermer shows why people hang on to losing stocks and failing companies, why business negotiations often disintegrate into emotional tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy. Employing research from complexity theory, Shermer shows how evolution and economics are both examples of a larger phenomenon of complex adaptive systems.

Tags: google video, video, shermer, michael shermer, skeptic, science, market, evolution, economics

The Paradox of Political Animals

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:29:31 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks:

“The paradox of a highly social species like rhesus monkeys and humans is that our complex sociality is the reason for our success, but it’s also the source of our greatest troubles,” he said. “Throughout human history, you see that the worst problems for people almost always come from other people, and it’s the same for the monkeys. You can put them anywhere, but their main problem is always going to be other rhesus monkeys.”

aka 'le condition social'?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Political Animals

Just as there are myriad strategies open to the human political animal with White House ambitions, so there are a number of nonhuman animals that behave like textbook politicians. Researchers who study highly gregarious and relatively brainy species like rhesus monkeys, baboons, dolphins, sperm whales, elephants and wolves have lately uncovered evidence that the creatures engage in extraordinarily sophisticated forms of politicking, often across large and far-flung social networks.

Male dolphins, for example, organize themselves into at least three nested tiers of friends and accomplices

rather like the way human societies are constructed of small kin groups allied into larger tribes allied into still larger nation-states.

Wherever animals must pool their talents and numbers into cohesive social groups

the better to protect against predators, defend or enlarge choice real estate or acquire mates, the stage will be set for the appearance of political skills

Tags: society, social, animals, biology, evolution, politics, maestripieri, monkey, rhesus, macachiavellian intelligence

Secrets of Bird Flight Revealed

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:39:44 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Secrets of bird flight revealed

Wing flap experiment

A study published in the journal Nature suggests that the key to understanding the evolution of bird flight is the angle at which a bird flaps its wings.

The US team found that birds move their wings at the same narrow angle, whether they run, fly or glide.

Scientists investigating this area tend to fall into two camps, he said. Those who believe that birds learned to fly from the "top down" - by falling out of trees and gliding, and those who think that birds took to the air from the "ground up" - by running and flapping their wings, possibly to escape predators.

However, both of these scenarios suggest that birds would first need to establish a wide range of wing movement in order to become airborne.

We've been thinking that the wing-stroke is highly specific for different movements but it turns out that Mother Nature just needs a single wing stroke to accommodate all these behaviours.

Tags: science, flight, birds, flying, evolution, biology, wing

Noble or savage?

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:05:56 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend
clipper's remarks: We have been solving them, too. Pessimists will point out that each solution only brings us face to face with the next crisis, optimists that no crisis has proved insoluble yet.

Clip Source: www.economist.com

HUMAN beings have spent most of their time on the planet as hunter-gatherers. From at least 85,000 years ago to the birth of agriculture around 73,000 years later, they combined hunted meat with gathered veg. Some people, such as those on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea, still do. The Sentinelese are the only hunter-gatherers who still resist contact with the outside world. Fine-looking specimens—strong, slim, fit, black and stark naked except for a small plant-fibre belt round the waist—they are the very model of the noble savage. Genetics suggests that indigenous Andaman islanders have been isolated since the very first expansion out of Africa more than 60,000 years ago.

Why change? In the late 1970s Mark Cohen, an archaeologist, first suggested that agriculture was born of desperation, rather than inspiration.

There is a modern moral in this story. We have been creating ecological crises for ourselves and our habitats for tens of thousands of years.

Tags: progress, evolution, hunter-gatherers, agriculture

The Literacy of Cooperation Lecture Series

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:16:07 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: & 4 more @ source (Steven Weber, Ross Mayfield, Zack Rosen, Bernardo Huberman)

--
via wildcat's clip

Clip Source: www.cooperationcommons.com

Video from The Literacy of Cooperation Lecture Series:

Best of Cooperation Lectures - key insights from each lecture (14 minutes, 11 MB)

Howard Rheingold and Andrea Saveri (48 MB); Small version (24 MB)

Howard Rheingold, a long-time student of online communities, places in historical context the emergence of increasingly powerful mechanisms for cooperation

Peter Kollock (137 MB); Small version (62 MB)

lectures on strategies to avoid the social dilemmas posed by the tragedy of the commons and prisoner's dilemma situations.

Paul Hartzog (184 MB); Small version (62 MB)

lectures on institutions for collective action and the different approaches to the social dilemma

Peter Corning (117 MB); Small version (40 MB)

lectures on the role of synergies in natural selection and why Darwin didn't have a blind spot in understanding the value of cooperation.

Jimmy Wales (201 MB); Small version (69 MB)

the founder of Wikipedia, lectures on how cooperation works at Wikipedia.

Tags: video, cooperation, lecture, science, social, future, democracy, evolution, society, humanity

Clipmarks | Djiezes's 'evolution' clips

Biocultural Evolution in the 21st Century: The Evolutionary Role of Religion

Partisan Gaps Over Evolution and Atheism

Partisan Gaps Over Evolution and Estimates on Atheism

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution (paper)

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution

Scott Draves

Spotworks, San Francisco CA, USA

Why You Should Talk to People

Be nice to me or I might not talk to you. Or worse, maybe I will talk to you...

Why men think with their ...

Evidence that Men Think With Their Junk

The Economic Causes of Monogamy

The Economic Causes of Monogamy

Homo Superior

Questioning Consciousness

Questioning Consciousness

The Role of Intimacy in the Evolution of Technology

Daedalus, or Science and the Future (by Haldane, 1923)

DAEDALUS or Science and the Future

A paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, on February 4th, 1923

by J. B. S. Haldane

Michael Shermer on "The Mind of the Market" (at Google Talks)

The Paradox of Political Animals

Secrets of Bird Flight Revealed

Noble or savage?

The Literacy of Cooperation Lecture Series

Video from The Literacy of Cooperation Lecture Series:

DAEDALUS

or
Science and the Future

by
J. B. S. Haldane