30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Human Combinatoric Reasoning
Humans, of course, were not created in a state of Original Reason. We descended from apes, spent hundreds of millennia in small bands, and evolved our cognitive processes in the service of hunting, gathering, and socializing. Only gradually, with the appearance of literacy, cities, and long-distance travel and communication, could our ancestors cultivate the faculty of reason and apply it to a broader range of concerns, a process that is still ongoing. One would expect that as collective rati...Folksonomies: reasoning combinatorics
Folksonomies: reasoning combinatorics
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notes16 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
DNA Divergence is in How You Count
It’s a common misconception that chimp DNA
differs from Homo sapiens sapiens genes by only a
single percent, but this number is apocryphal. In actuality,
the degree of similarity of human and chimp
genetic code depends mostly on how you count.
Since all complex organisms from Earth possess
great swaths of junk DNA inherited from a distant
common ancestor, there tends to be startling similarity
between many organisms. Sure, humans are like
chimps—but they’re also like flatworms and fruit...Folksonomies: dna genetic drift
Folksonomies: dna genetic drift
1 There's much more to the differences between Chimps and Humans than counting genes.
28 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Wonderful Factoids
1. If you condense the history of the universe to a single year, humans would appear on December 31st at 10:30 PM—99.98 percent of the history of the universe happened before humans even existed.
2. Look at a gold ring. As the core collapsed in a dying star, a gravity wave collapsed inward with it. As it did so, it slammed into the thundering sound wave heading out of the collapse. In that moment, as a star died, the gold in that ring was formed.
3. We are star material that knows it exis... 1 notes
notesTo instill in a child the sense of wonder.
28 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Virtue of Humility
Humility, like so many of these virtues, is about caring what others think and feel, about giving validation to others instead of seeking it all for yourself. The best way for parents to teach this, of course, is to model humility ourselves. Monitor your next conversation. How often can you catch yourself saying, “I may be wrong about that”—no one should know more than a skeptic that everything includes an element of doubt—and how often do your kids hear you saying it? How often do yo... 1 notes
notesHumanists, who know we come from apes, are naturally humble.
18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Pride in Evolutionary Ancestry
How I hate the man who talks about the 'brute creation', with an ugly emphasis on Brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of ...Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
Cummings takes pride in descending from arboreal ancestors and distant jellyfish.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Better to be a Perfected Ape than Degraded Adam
As for me ... I would much rather be a perfected ape than a degraded Adam. Yes, if it is shown to me that my humble ancestors were quadrupedal animals, arboreal herbivores, brothers or cousins of those who were also the ancestors of monkeys and apes, far from blushing in shame for my species because of its genealogy and parentage, I will be proud of all that evolution has accomplished, of the continuous improvement which takes us up to the highest order, of the successive triumphs that have m... 1 notes
notesA quote from Paul Broca about being proud of our evolutionary advancement.
17 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Ascent of Man in Poem Form
Apes lifting hairy arms now stand
And free the wonder‐working hand.
They raise a light aërial house
On shafts of widely branching trees,
Where, harboured warily, each spouse
May feed her little ape in peace,
Green cradled in his heaven‐roofed bed,
Leaves rustling lullabies o’erhead.
And lo, ’mid reeking swarms of earth
Grim struggling in the primal wood,
A new strange creature hath its birth:
Wild—stammering—nameless—shameless—nude;
Spurred on by want, held in by fear...From apes with freed hands to muddled-thinking man in caves, up to clearer-thinking man with fire. A very nice passage about evolution.
21 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Australopithecus afarensis' Hip Bone Indicates She Could ...
When Lucy’s hundreds of fragments were assembled, she turned out
to be a female of a new species, Australopithecus afarensis, dating back
3.2 million years. She was between 20 and 30 years old, 3.5feet tall,
weighing a scant 60 pounds, and possibly afflicted with arthritis. But
most important, she walked on two legs.
How can we tell? From the way that the femur (thighbone) connects to
the pelvis at one end and to the knee at its other. In a bipedally
walking primate like ourselves, the fem... 1 notes
notesThe bone tilts to bring the knees inward, like it does in humans, but not in chimps, who waddle because they are bow-legged.
04 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Human Pairs Must Keep Each Other Interested
Likewise, the manner in which sexual selection capriciously seizes upon preexisting perceptual biases fits with the fact that apes are by nature naturally "curious, playful, easily bored, and appreciative of simulation." Miller suggests that to keep a husbanc around long enough to help in raising children, women would have needed to be as varied and creative in their behavior as possible, which he calls the Scheherazade effect after the Arabian storyteller who entranced the Sultan with 1,001 ... 1 notes
notesMen and women in marriage seek to keep each other entertained to retain interest.
