29 NOV 2016 by ideonexus
Earthseed 1-10
1. God is Change
All that you touchYou Change.
All that you ChangeChanges you.
The only lasting truthIs Change.
GodIs Change.
∞ = Δ
2. Prodigy
Prodigy is, at its essence,adaptability and persistent,positive obsession. Withoutpersistence, what remains is anenthusiasm of the moment. Withoutadaptability, what remains maybe channeled into destructivefanaticism. Without positiveobsession, there is nothing at all.
∞ = Δ
3. A gift of God
A gift of GodMay sear unready fingers
∞ = Δ
4. We sha...24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Q
The hypothesis of {108} abstraction says that every living creature is characterized by a number Q which is a measure of the complexity of the creature. To measure Q, we do not need to know anything about the internal structure of the creature. Q can be measured by observing from the outside the behavior of the creature and its interaction with its environment. Q is simply the quantity of entropy produced by the creature's metabolism during the time it takes to perform an elementary respons...Folksonomies: complexity quantification
Folksonomies: complexity quantification
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Homo sapiens' Adaptability is Our Greatest Adaptation
All tools are externalizations of originally integral
functions. But in developing each tool man also extends the limits
of its usefulness, since he can make bigger cups hold liquids too
hot or chemically destructive for his hands. Tools do not introduce
new principles but they greatly extend the range of conditions
under which the discovered control principle may be effectively
employed by man. There is nothing new in world technology's
growth. It is only the vast increase of its effective r...We extend ourselves through our tools.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Specialization is Unnatural
All universities have been progressively organized for ever finer
specialization. Society assumes that specialization is natural,
inevitable, and desirable. Yet in observing a little child, we find it is
interested in everything and spontaneously apprehends,
comprehends, and co-ordinates an ever expending inventory of
experiences. Children are enthusiastic planetarium audiences.
Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its
wanting to understand all and put everything together....Homo sapiens most prominent adaptation is our adaptability.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
How Humans Resemble Rats
...[T]he natural history of the rat is tragically similar to that of man ... some of the more obvious qualities in which rats resemble men — ferocity, omnivorousness, and adaptability to all climates ... the irresponsible fecundity with which both species breed at all seasons of the year with a heedlessness of consequences, which subjects them to wholesale disaster on the inevitable, occasional failure of the food supply.... [G]radually, these two have spread across the earth, keeping pace ...Down to our racial oppression of one another.
08 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Miracle of Man is How Far He Has Risen
The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses. No creature who began as a mathematical improbability, who was selected through millions of years of unprecedented environmental hardship and change for ruggedness, ruthlessness, cunning, and adaptability, and who in the short ten thousand years of what we may call civilization has achieved such wonders as we find about us, may be regarded as a creature...How can people say that evolution detracts from Human excellence, when it demonstrates our magnificence so succinctly?
03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Competition Causes Death
Biologists have persistently overestimated the importance of physical causes of premature death rather than biological ones. In virtually any account of evolution, drought, frost, wind, or starvation looms large as the enemy of life. The great struggle, we are told, is to adapt to these conditions. Marvels of physical adaptation—the camel's hump, the polar bear's fur, the rotifer's boil-resistant tunare held to be among evolution's greatest achievements. The first ecological theories of sex...Animals die from competition with other animals, few die of natural causes.