Kasparov was the John Henry of Chess
HE NINETEENTH-CENTURY African American folk legend of John Henry I pits the "steel-driving man" in a race against a new invention, a steam-powered hammer, bashing a tunnel through a mountain of rock. It was my blessing and my curse to be the John Henry of chess and artificial intelligence, as chess computers went from laughably weak to nearly unbeatable during my twenty years as the world's top chess player. As we will see, this is a pattern that has repeated over and over for centuries. Pe...The Dream Lover and the Template
For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It’s as simple as that. You differ from the maj...War is the Price of Diversity
The state of the world today is not essentially different from the state of the world in 1948. We are still faced with the same choices that we were facing in 1948. On the level of fundamental principles, we are faced with a choice between unity and diversity. The unity of mankind, or the diversity of nations and political institutions. National sovereignty is the contemporary expression of the ancient human tradition which divided us into {202} tribes, each jealously guarding its independe...Dan Nerren Secular Invocation
Let us open our hearts to the welfare of all people in our community by respecting the inherent dignity and worth of each person, and realize our differences of race, religion, and party affiliation are merely superficial. Our common humanity unites us all, and may we recognize that through our interdependence we share a common fate. In order to achieve the greatest good as citizens of Tulsa, it is important for us to maintain an open mind, and honor and respect the human rights of each othe...Dan Nerren, founder of Atheist Community of Tulsa, made history by being the first atheist to give an invocation at the Tulsa City Council Meeting on August 30, 2012.
Science is Human Power, Needing Guidance
It is against the background of conflict and confusion in the relations of science and society that we find ourselves confronted with a crisis in the history of mankind, and particularly in the history of human government. It is a crisis arising from the rapidly increasing power given to man by science. It is a crisis such as we are accustomed to leave to the arbitrement of sectional interests supported by shouts and cries. But it is one to which scientific inquiry can provide a solution. For...And science can provide the guidance through managing human beings through biological knowledge.
IDIC - Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
IDIC basically states that we should delight in the differences amongst people, not hate people because they are different. It seems that the human race has found a large number of ways to hate (different sex, color, religion, nationality, political party, social class, etc) and has emphasized hate over co-operation, caring, and compassion. The result has been a world torn by big and small wars, religious and philosophical differences, and alienation of one person from another. This has take...A good overview of the Vulcan philosophy from Star Trek.
Gender is Not Binary
he gender binary is the artificial division of the world into things that are "masculine" or "for men" and things that are "feminine" or "for women". One of the starkest ways to think of this is to consider the phrase "opposite sexes/genders" (as opposed to "different sexes/genders"), when both men and women are human beings with fundamentally many more commonalities than differences. The division is artificial in several ways: much of it is very clearly socially constructed. For example,...Interesting concept from feminist and homosexual literature. The scientific point of view on this is that human males and females are dimorphic to various degrees.
War is an Alien Threat
More than a century ago a young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited America. After that visit he predicted that the two great powers of the future world would be, on one hand, the United States, which would be built, as he said, ``by the plowshare,'' and, on the other, Russia, which would go forward, again, as he said, ``by the sword.'' Yet need it be so? Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we ...Ronald Reagan suggests we would put aside our differences if threatened by extraterrestrials, but then notes that war is an alien threat--alien to how we desire to live.
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...There's much more to the differences between Chimps and Humans than counting genes.
The Evolutionary Unit of Measurement
The starting point of Darwin's theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary, in order that any process of Natural Selection may begin among a race, or species, is the existence of differences among its members; and the first step in an enquiry into the possible effect of a selective process upon any character of a race must be an estimate ...Is the species, not individuals within the species.