27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Measuring Progress by the Cost of Light
Time is not the only life-enriching resource granted to us by technology. Another is light. Light is so empowering that it serves as the metaphor of choice for a superior intellectual and spiritual state: enlightenment. In the natural world we are plunged into darkness for half of our existence, but human-made light allows us to take back the night for reading, moving about, seeing people’s faces, and otherwise engaging with our surroundings. The economist William Nordhaus has cited the plu...Folksonomies: human progress quantification
Folksonomies: human progress quantification
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notes09 JAN 2017 by ideonexus
The Machine Euthanizes the Atheletic
"Well, the Book"s wrong, for I have been out on my feet."
For Kuno was possessed of a certain physical strength.
By these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed. Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine had called him; he would have yearned for trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meado...Folksonomies: distopia
Folksonomies: distopia
1 notes
notes07 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Taking Adaptation into Consideration of the Anthropocene
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons
of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment
and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it
supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Certain rocks gave out
dangerous radiation, even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there
were short-wave ... 1 notes
notes21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Hell Must be Isothermal
.. . hell must be isothermal, for otherwise the resident engineers and physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired temperature. Folksonomies: thermodynamics
Folksonomies: thermodynamics
1 notes
notesFunny.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Universe Holds the Meaning we Give It
Things happen because the laws of nature say they will—because they are the consequences of the state of the universe and the path of its evolution. Life on Earth doesn’t arise in fulfillment of a grand scheme but as a by-product of the increase of entropy in an environment very far from equilibrium. Our impressive brains don’t develop because life is guided toward greater levels of complexity and intelligence but from the mechanical interactions between genes, organisms, and their surr...
1 Sean Carroll argues that our existence and our intelligence is the product of nature's algorithms. Life holds the meaning we give it.
21 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Childhood is Naturally Mindful
As children, we are remarkably aware. We absorb and process information at a speed that we’ll never again come close to achieving. New sights, new sounds, new smells, new people, new emotions, new experiences: we are learning about our world and its possibilities. Everything is new, everything is exciting, everything engenders curiosity. And because of theinherent newness of our surroundings, we are exquisitely alert; we are absorbed; we take it all in. And what’s more, we remember: becau...
2 In our youth, we are curious and attentive to every detail surrounding us, not yet distinguishing by the usefulness of the information. As adults, we take everything for granted, ignoring the familiar and walking through life in a mindless state.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Space Flight May Mature Us as a Civilization
In all the history of mankind, there will be only one generation that will be first
to explore the Solar System, one generation for which, in childhood, the planets
are distant and indistinct discs moving through the night sky, and for which, in old
age, the planets are places, diverse new worlds in the course of exploration.
There will be a time in our future history when the Solar System will be
explored and inhabited. To them, and to all who come after us, the present
moment will be a piv... 1 notes
notesIt's the first step in realizing our place in the bigger picture.
11 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Life as the Reduction of Entropy
During the present century a few physicists have tried to define life. Bernal, Schroedinger, and Wigner all came to the same general conclusion, that life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form. This definition is not only difficult to grasp but is far too general to apply to the specific detection of...Definition of life as something that generates syntropy within itself while exporting entropy, and the problem with this definition as it would include fire and hurricanes as being living.
