02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Hawking Considers Computer Viruses Life
A living being like you or me usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to keep going and how to reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism. But it is worth emphasising that there need be nothing biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the...Folksonomies: life
Folksonomies: life
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notes12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
The Fraud of Agriculture
Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity. They told a tale of progress fuelled by human brain power.Evolution gradually produced ever more intelligent people. Eventually, people were so smart that they were able to decipher nature’s secrets, enabling them to tame sheep and cultivate wheat. As soon as this happened, they cheerfully abandoned the gruelling, dangerous, and often spartan life of hunter-gatherers, settling down to enjoy the ... 1 notes
notes30 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
The Unnecessariat
In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term “precariat” to refer to workers whose jobs were insecure, underpaid, and mobile, who had to engage in substantial “work for labor” to remain employed, whose survival could, at any time, be compromised by employers (who, for instance held their visas) and who therefore could do nothing to improve their lot. The term found favor in the Occupy movement, and was colloquially expanded to include not just farmworkers, contract workers, “gig...Folksonomies: poverty demographics
Folksonomies: poverty demographics
1 25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Brains Must Feel Safe for Education
The brain’s main job is prioritizing information relevant to our survival. Anything that suggests the possibility of danger, whether real or imagined, becomes a higher priority than anything else that is going on at that moment. This data is processed first, shifting our attention from cognitive processes down to the faster-acting limbic system, while more complex cerebral operations shut down. Survival always overrides problem-solving, analyzing, remembering, pattern-detection and other ra...Folksonomies: education whole child
Folksonomies: education whole child
1 notes
notes18 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Altruism is a Basic Human Instinct
The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollars. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother?
Well, okay. I know the answer to that. Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we’ve dreamed of for centuries. But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true.
If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a sear...Folksonomies: altruism
Folksonomies: altruism
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notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Why Black Bears Sleep in Trees
The ancestors of modern North American bears evolved in Asia during the Pleistocene, wandering over to Alaska during several appearances of the Bering land bridge, between the Bering and Kamchatka Peninsulas. Advancing and receding glaciers, fueled by evaporating sea water, caused ocean levels to alternately drop and rise, exposing and resubmerging the Bering Strait. The ancestors of black bears came across half a million years ago, and it is suspected that black bears adapted to climbing tr...Folksonomies: evolution black bears
Folksonomies: evolution black bears
1 notes
notesIt's an evolutionary adaptation to survive short-faced bears and sabertooth tigers.
27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Literate Societies Place Less Value on the Elderly
...older people in traditional societies have a huge significance that would never occur to us in our modern, literate societies, where our sources of information are books and the Internet. In contrast, in traditional societies without writing, older people are the repositories of information. It's their knowledge that spells the difference between survival and death for their whole society in a time of crisis caused by rare events for which only the oldest people alive have had experience. ... 1 notes
notesIn societies without readily-available information stored in written words, the elderly are more valuable for their knowledge and experience.
14 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Everything Won't Become Free at Once
Maybe the coolest technology could get very good and cheap, while at the same time crucial fundamentals for survival could become expensive. The calculi of digital utopias and man-made disasters don’t contradict each other. They can coexist. This is the heading of the darkest and funniest science fiction, such as the work of Philip K. Dick.
Basics like water and food could soar in cost even as intensely sophisticated gadgets, like automated nanorobotic heart surgeons, float about as dust i... 1 notes
notesThe irony of society is that digital content is growing cheaper as is technology, but food and electricity are growing more expensive.
14 JUL 2013 by mxplx
hair is an extension of nervous system
Folksonomies: long_hair conventions
Folksonomies: long_hair conventions
why is hair so rapidly replaced, after cut out ?and why is it so difficult to keep from growing ?hair is more important than we realise
Each part of the body has highly sensitive work to perform for the survival and well being of the body as a whole.The body has a reason for every part of itself
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Survival of the Fittest Doesn't Apply to Animals in a Soc...
Such biological ideas as the 'survival of the fittest,' whatever their doubtful value in natural science, are utterly useless in attempting to understand society ... The life of a man in society, while it is incidentally a biological fact, has characteristics that are not reducible to biology and must be explained in the distinctive terms of a cultural analysis ... the physical well-being of men is a result of their social organization and not vice versa ... Social improvement is a product of...Folksonomies: society social darwinism
Folksonomies: society social darwinism
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notesWhere all members rely on all other members.
