Creative and Social Intelligence are Computational Bottle...

Our model predicts that the second wave of computerisation will mainly depend on overcoming the engineering bottlenecks related to creative and social intelligence. As reported in Table III, the “fine arts”, “originality”, “negotiation”, “persuasion”, “social perceptiveness”, and “assisting and caring for others”, variables, all exhibit relatively high values in the low risk category. By contrast, we note that the “manual dexterity”, “finger dexterity” and “c...

 Borg Weaknesses

Memetic Infection One of the most worrying weaknesses is the spread of virulent information patterns such as memes. Memes thrive in environments with intense communication (Bjarneskans et al. 1997), and would likely spread extremely quickly inside a borganism, infecting both collective and unit schemata. Having a working system for memetic defence appears to be vital for the well-being of a borganism, especially in the face of memes similar to computer viruses (in the cybernetic environment ...

 Hamilton's Model

Hamilton's rule is rb - c > 0. Here c is the cost to the giver's fitness (c fewer offspring because of helping), and b is the benefit to the recipient's fitness (offspring gained by the recipient from the help). Here again, "r" is a measure of the relatedness between giver and the receiver [...] Hamilton’s rule says that for unrelated individuals (r = 0) no benefit can overcome the cost of loss of the altruist's fitness (0 - c can't be greater than 0) and aid giving is selected against...

 Life is Rebellion Against Chaos

Life is order, death is disorder. A fundamental law of Nature states that spontaneous chemical changes in the universe tend toward chaos. But life has, during milliards of years of evolution, seemingly contradicted this law. With the aid of energy derived from the sun it has built up the most complicated systems to be found in the universe—living organisms. Living matter is characterized by a high degree of chemical organisation on all levels, from the organs of large organisms to the small...

 The Earth as an "Old Warrior"

Our earth is very old, an old warrior that has lived through many battles. Nevertheless, the face of it is still changing, and science sees no certain limit of time for its stately evolution. Our solid earth, apparently so stable, inert, and finished, is changing, mobile, and still evolving. Its major quakings are largely the echoes of that divine far-off event, the building of our noble mountains. The lava floods and intriguing volcanoes tell us of the plasticity, mobility, of the deep inter...

 Cultural Moors and Sex

Different cultures today have evolved different sets of sexual mores, resulting in differences in male and female behavior. In Sweden, a social democracy where women have great economic independence, we see a high degree of sexual freedom among women. Without needing to depend on men for their security, Swedish women need not be concerned so much with testing potential mates for commitment and generosity. The result is greater promiscuity among women: a study showed Swedish men prize a potent...

 Ignorance Coupled with Intellectual Hubris

I used to think that the problem of information is that it turns homo sapiens into fools — we gain disproportionately in confidence, particularly in domains where information is wrapped in a high degree of noise (say, epidemiology, genetics, economics, etc.). So we end up thinking that we know more than we do, which, in economic life, causes foolish risk taking. When I started trading, I went on a news diet and I saw things with more clarity. I also saw how people built too many theories ba...

 The Tyranny of the Written Word

Nevertheless, almost everybody speaks better than he writes. (This also applies to authors.) Writing is a highly formalized technique which, in purely physiological terms, demands a peculiarly rigid bodily posture. To this there corresponds the high degree of social specialization that it demands. Professional writers have always tended to think in caste terms. The class character of their work is unquestionable, even in the age of universal compulsory education. The whole process is extraord...