28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus

 Do Animals Perceive the Uncanny Valley

pathological aggression: dolphins kill porpoises for no reason, they don’t eat them, they’re not competitors. Does this suggest the uncanny valley exists for all mammals?
  1  notes

Does it explain dolphin violence against porpoises?

03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 Reproduction is the Most Important Evolutionary Trait

Those strains that reproduce persist; those that do not reproduce die out. The ability to reproduce is what makes living things different from rocks. Besides, there is nothing inconsistent with free will or even chastity in this view of life. Human beings, I believe, thrive according to their ability to take initiatives and exercise individual talent. But free will was not created for fun; there was a reason that evolution handed our ancestors the ability to take initiatives, and the reason w...
Folksonomies: evolution sex reproduction
Folksonomies: evolution sex reproduction
  1  notes

"Everything can be inherited except sterility."

03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 Evolution as a Constant Arms-Race

One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counterinvention. Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow. Every hegemony comes to an end. Evolutionary history is no different. Progress and success are always relative. When the land was unoccupied by animals, the first amphibian to emerge from the sea could get away with being slow, lumbering, and fishlike, for it had no enemies and no competitors. But if a...
  1  notes

Where the players are constantly evolving to stay in one place.