16 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
Making Smart Matter Should be the Priority
Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn't even a biosphere there. They should be working on uploading and solving the nanoassembly conformational problem instead. Then we could turn all the available dumb matter into computronium and use it for processing our thoughts. Long-term, it's the only way to go. The solar system is a dead loss right now – dumb all over! Just measure the MIPS per milligram. If it isn't thinking, it isn't working. We need to start with the l... 1 
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notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Realism in "A Song of Ice and Fire"
Game of Thrones takes place in a land that feels somewhat post-apocalyptic — there are occasional glimmers of hints that something really bad might have happened to Westeros long ago, and that's the reason for the irregular and attenuated seasons. But even more than that, we know Westeros is on the brink of a zombie apocalypse from the very first moment of the story. And part of the genius of Martin's slow-as-soil-erosion storytelling is that the zombie threat never quite arrives, but we ke... 1 notes
notesThe engaging storytelling is the result of its connection to how the world works with gray characters and glacial problems.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Web of Causation
...complex systems, such as financial markets or the Earth’s biosphere, do not seem to obey causality. For every event that occurs, there are a multitude of possible causes, and the extent to which each contributes to the event is not clear, not even after the fact! One might say that there is a web of causation. For example, on a typical day, the stock market might go up or down by some fraction of a percentage point. The Wall Street Journal might blithely report that the stock market move...
1 Nigel Goldenfeld explains why the simplistic explanations for market movements so popular in the news media are also so ridiculous.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Partially Diminished Fraction of Ecosystems
Do you know the PDF of your shampoo? A PDF refers to a “partially diminished fraction” of an ecosystem, and if your shampoo contains palm oil cultivated on clear-cut jungle in Borneo, say, that value will be high. How about your shampoo’s DALY? This measure comes from public health: “disability-adjusted life years,” or the amount of one’s life that will be lost to a disabling disease because of, say, a lifetime’s cumulative exposure to a given industrial chemical. So if your fav...Folksonomies: environmentalism entropy
Folksonomies: environmentalism entropy
1 notes
notesDaniel Goleman explains a concept for thinking about how our lives contribute to the increase of entropy in our biosphere.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Evolution and Entropy are Irreversible
Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in t... 1 notes
notesEvolution is irreversible?
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Natural Selection is Not Chance
Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection could quite unaided have drawn all the music of the biosphere. Indeed natural selection operates upon the products of chance and knows no other nourishment; but it operates in a domain of very demanding conditions, from which chance is banned. Folksonomies: natural selection chance
Folksonomies: natural selection chance
1 notes
notesIt is an algorithm, a set of rules.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Poets, Scientists and Children
When some portion of the biosphere is rather unpopular with the human race–a crocodile, a dandelion, a stony valley, a snowstorm, an odd-shaped flint–there are three sorts of human being who are particularly likely still to see point in it and befriend it. They are poets, scientists and children. Inside each of us, I suggest, representatives of all these groups can be found. Folksonomies: poetry exploration
Folksonomies: poetry exploration
1 notes
notesAll have a natural inclination to explore things unpopular with the human race.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Are Humans Parasites?
A lot of people ask, 'Do you think humans are parasites?' It's an interesting idea and one worth thinking about. People casually refer to humanity as a virus spreading across the earth. In fact, we do look like some strange kind of bio-film spreading across the landscape. A good metaphor? If the biosphere is our host, we do use it up for our own benefit. We do manipulate it. We alter the flows and fluxes of elements like carbon and nitrogen to benefit ourselves—often at the expense of the b...
1 If so, then we are very bad at it since we appear to be killing our only host.
