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
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notes
notesDaniel Goleman explains a concept for thinking about how our lives contribute to the increase of entropy in our biosphere.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Computer is the Solutions to Over-Specialization
Getting ready for the assumed inexorable Armageddon, each
applied science and all of the great scientific specialization
capabilities only toward weaponry, thus developing the ability to
destroy themselves totally with no comprehensively organized
oppositional thinking capability and initiative powerful enough to
co-ordinate and prevent it. Thus by 1946, we were on the swift way
to extinction despite the inauguration of the United Nations, to
which none of the exclusive sovereign prerogatives... 1 notes
notesWith computers taking over the responsibility of specializing in computational and processing tasks, human minds are freed to resume our plasticity or "comprehensivlty" as Buckminster puts it.
30 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
"Run the Tape Again"
Run the tape again, and let the tiny twig of Homo sapiens expire in Africa. Other hominids may have stood on the threshold of what we know as human possibilities, but many sensible scenarios would never generate our level of mentality. Run the tape again, and this time Neanderthal perishes in Europe and Homo erectus in Asia (as they did in our world). The sole surviving human stock, Homo erectus in Africa, stumbles along for a while, even prospers, but does not speciate and therefore remains ... 1 notes
notesWe are here by luck, not fate.
17 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Sarcastic Science
Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
In her complacent ministry of fear,
How we propose to get away from here
When she has made things so we have to go
Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
To some star off there, say, a half light-year
Through temperature of absolute zero?
Why wait for Science to supply the how
When any amateur can tell it now?
The way to go away should be the same
As fifty million years ago we came—
If anyone remembers how ...
1 A poem about science arguing we need to go to the stars, but it has made it so we must leave Earth. I wonder if Frost is referring to extinction as the way to go?
28 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Baby's Brain is Interested in Surviving
Many well-meaning moms and dads think their child’s brain is interested in learning. That is not accurate. The brain is not interested in learning. The brain is interested in surviving. Every ability in our intellectual tool kit was engineered to escape extinction. Learning exists only to serve the requirements of this primal goal. It is a happy coincidence that our intellectual tools can do double duty in the classroom, conferring on us the ability to create spreadsheets and speak Fre... 1 notes
notesThis is an important thing to remember when trying to teach children: first provide them a safe environment.
