Do Not Be Governed by Chance

The periodic movements of the universe are the same, up and down from age to age. And either the universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect, and if this is so, be thou content with that which is the result of its activity; or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of sequence in a manner; or indivisible elements are the origin of all things.- In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou also be governed by it.

 Stone Tools in Europe Were Misinterpreted

For hundreds of years Europeans appear to have been oblivious to the existence of stone tools. Presumably many people saw them. At least it is hard for me to believe that no stone axes, spear points, or arrowheads turned up in plowed fields, dried streambeds, or eroded hillsides. But, as William Stiebing observes, there is no mention of them prior to the 16th century. People apparently “did not notice them. To them such things were just so many more rocks.”3 Writings from the 16th century...

 The Success of Spaceguard

For years, many scientists warned of the dangers that asteroids pose to life on Earth, but for many years they weren’t listened to. Even after it was first proposed, in 1980, that the dinosaurs were killed off by a huge asteroid striking the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico,1 there was, in the words of leading astronomer Clark R. Chapman, a “giggle factor” associated with the risk from asteroids.2 This all changed in 1994 when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 thudded into the side of Jupiter with th...

 Plasticity and Lock-In/Entrenchment of Values

Entrenchment of values creates multiple equilibria because there is a significant element of chance in which value system becomes most powerful at a particular place and time, and because, once a value system has become sufficiently powerful, it can stay that way by suppressing the competition. Moreover, the theory of cultural evolution helps to explain why the predominant cultures in society tend to entrench themselves. Simply: those cultures that do not entrench themselves in this way are, ...

 Anthropocene Traps

The concept of evolutionary traps has been used almost exclusively for studying how non-human species respond to cues in anthropogenic environments [24–34]. Key examples include artificial human lights attracting insects, island species responding naively to the presence of introduced predators, and seabirds not being able to discriminate between the cues of marine plankton and marine plastics [34–36] (figure 1a). In the context of humans, evolutionary mismatch is a much more fr...

 Understanding Cause and Effect is Based on Experience

Were a man, such as Adam, created in the full vigor of understanding, without experience, he would never be able to infer motion in the second ball from the motion and impulse of the first. It is not anything that reason sees in the cause, which make us infer the effect. Such an inference, were it possible, would amount to a demonstration, as being founded merely on the comparison of ideas. But no inference from cause to effect amounts to a demonstration, as being founded merely on the compar...

 Prime Numbers and Cryptography

Algorithms for finding prime numbers date back at least as far as ancient Greece, where mathematicians used a straightforward approach known as the Sieve of Erastothenes. The Sieve of Erastothenes works as follows: To find all the primes less than n, begin by writing down all the numbers from 1 to n in sequence. Then cross out all the numbers that are multiples of 2, besides itself (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and so on). Take the next smallest number that hasn’t been crossed out (in this case, 3), an...

 Recursive Self-Improvement in Human Civilization

Let’s consider Arabic numerals as compared with Roman numerals. With a positional notation system, such as the one created by Arabic numerals, it’s easier to perform multiplication and division; if you’re competing in a multiplication contest, Arabic numerals provide you with an advantage. But I wouldn’t say that someone using Arabic numerals is smarter than someone using Roman numerals. By analogy, if you’re trying to tighten a bolt and use a wrench, you’ll do better than someone...

 Triangles on Earth Exceed 180 Degrees

The idea that space and time can be curved or warped is fairly recent. For more than 2,000 years the axioms of Euclidean geometry were considered to be selfevident. As those of you who were forced to learn geometry at school may remember, one of the consequences of these axioms is that the angles ot a triangle add up to 180 degrees. However, in the last century people began to realise that other forms of geometry were possible in which the angles of a triangle need not add up to i8o degrees...

 The Anthropic Principle

As an example of the power of the Anthropic Principle, consider the number of directions in space. It is a matter of common experience that we live in three-dimensional space. That is to say, we can represent the position of a point in space by three numbers. For example, latitude. longitude and height above sea level. But why is space three-dimensional? Why isn't it two, or four, or some other number of dimensions, hke in science fiction? In fact, in M-theory space has ten dimensions (as wel...