Wheat Domesticated Homo Sapiens

Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, con

 Chances We are Living in a Simulation

The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following. Forty years ago we had pong. Like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, forty years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advanc...

 Accelerating Knowledge

The rate at which man has been storing up useful knowledge about himself and the universe has been spiraling upward for 10,000 years. The rate took a sharp upward leap with the invention of writing, but even so it remained painfully slow over centuries of time. The next great leap forward in knowledge—acquisition did not occur until the invention of movable type in the fifteenth century by Gutenberg and others. Prior to 1500, by the most optimistic estimates, Europe was producing books at a r...

 Science is the "Crucible" for Extending Life

People are living longer and societies are getting grayer. You hear about it all the time. You read about it in your newspapers. You hear about it on your television sets. Sometimes I'm concerned that we hear about it so much that we've come to accept longer lives with a kind of a complacency, even ease. But make no mistake, longer lives can and, I believe, will improve quality of life at all ages. Now to put this in perspective, let me just zoom out for a minute. More years were added to av...

 Dogs are Evolved from Wolves Through Artificial Selection

Take the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), a single species that comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and temperaments. Every single one, purebred or mutt, descends from a single ancestral species—most likely the Eurasian gray wolf—that humans began to select about 10,000 years ago. The American Kennel Club recognizes 150 different breeds, and you’ve seen many of them: the tiny, nervous Chihuahua, perhaps bred as a food animal by the Toltec of Mexico; the robust Saint Bernard, thick of fu...