Intelligent Design My Ass

Just read. Be Smart.

Home sweet home...

I always thought I was from another place far, far away... Now we know.

Scientists believe that our little region of space objects didn't come from the Milky Way. We were actually pulled from a small galaxy that we are crashing with over millions (billions) of years. The little orange dot below notes approximately where we are located. The red dots note the left overs of the galaxy we are/were a part of. The evolution of space. Just as smooth, structured and chaotic as our own planet. A microcosm with a microcosm. Its all makes such complicated, smooth sense.

My thoughts on the news this evening...

We live in space. For limited periods of time and under very defined and limiting set of rules. In time, probability willing, we might master the process and make it a commodity to be accepted as commonly as floating in a boat. A little farther down the larger number of us might live in the sky and look at land based existence as the aberration. The pictures to the left show some amazing thing. Makes me think of something else I once watched on the tube...human spirit (and maybe stupidity). We humans do random incomprehensible things in random instances. We build upon each other.

I stare at global climate change and I think about our species pushing along and trying to get into space maybe as an escape. Maybe (as many of these scientists like to think) there are a multitude of universes and our universe happens to have a set of properties which makes it very costly to get into space and as a result no other race in the universe has gotten there yet and the future is peering back hoping we are to be the first.

You see us building pretty neat things these days hoping to keep from killing ourselves. Our houses have finally become more important. They are off to a good start. These gentlemen have a carbon neutral house. Why only neutral? Why not build the house that has a negative carbon footprint? The technology, tweaked here and there (big tweaks of course, nonetheless tweeks), is already here. Solar power. Wind power. Biomass energy. All making hydrogen stored in tanks spread in small volume tanks (just in case anyone begins to worry about blowing up their neighborhood).

I have confidence. I am wary. I wonder of the true potential and what we will find once we get there. Will we skip over it as we learn to leap beyond it?

Human Evolution...

Now that we have a thought based upon research (see a previous post) about human cranial size relating to the climate. And cranial size has been associated in various studies with greater intelligence. Brain size follows along. Moving into the nether regions of the world in a colder climate will lead to a need to depend on others in harsher landscapes. Can we assume that human evolution is greatly influenced by the symbiotic relationship of a pair of people raising a child? A recent discussion with a friend now makes me believe that the emotion we term love is a by product of the need to raise and develop a human child. Social ties expand and deepen as two care for each other and the child. The child takes longer and longer to grow and learn. The care between two people gets greater. A pretty long circle. It seems chilren are staying with their parents even longer now a days. Human life is getting longer. Generations are wider. Mothers having children later. Staying in the work force longer. Children going through education for longer periods of time. Children living at home longer. Children (young adults) moving out into a world of debt.

There is a subtle shift. I guess it is continual and the observation of it is of no real significance. I leads to me wonder though...will the societies with a greater social bond and a higher degree of altruism grow larger? The Greek city states did well because of their ability to bond together when a powerful neighbor attached. Economic Socialism has yet to truly take form in the world (as neither has Capitalism). Will China rule the world because it has the largest families? Darwinism upon Socialism upon layers upon layers.

HARDware evolution

Scientists are learning about evolution on a mathematical level. I have read about other groups building software that evolves to take advantage of the hardware that it is built in. Imagine writing a piece of code that over 10,000 generations (in a computer this can be very fast) learns to re-write itself to take advantage of extra pieces and learns “new” functions. One example was the code which figured out that there was a radio signal nearby via some function and through generations learned to detect and decipher that radio signal.

Are they coding AI?

This group say they want their software to:

Discover causes in the world
Infer causes of novel input
Make predictions
Direct actions

What are we if we are not our thoughts?

Sleep is Good for Us

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=437683&in_page_id=1965

Lead researcher Bob Stickgold, professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, said: "We're not just stabilizing memories during sleep. We're extracting the meaning.

"Sleep helps us extract rules from our experiences. It's like knowing the difference between dogs and cats, even if it's hard to explain."



I think I am going to petition for a 1.5 hour lunch break so I can nap. :-)

Chimps Hunt with Spears

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6387611.stm

"In all but one of the cases, chimps broke off a living branch to make their
tool. They would then trim the side branches and leaves.

In a number of cases, chimps also trimmed the ends of the branch and
stripped it of bark. Some chimps also sharpened the tip of the tool with
their teeth."

On a continual basis I learn of the many things that "animals" can do that
we highly evolved (or created...) beings have historically laid sole claim
to. It makes more sense every day. The move from what we were to what we are
is gradual and full of socialization. Drop a human into a rainforest and
remove the wonderful learning that is received during their life and you
will have nothing greater than a highly intelligent chimp.

If we manage to let go of the high held notion of our wondrous nature we
might truly grasp how wonderful we really are.

They didn't think it far out enough...

http://www.livescience.com/history/070215_fewer_children.html

A. Children are more expensive.

B. Lifetimes are longer, thus an individual is relatively, from a simple
economic standpoint, more valuable.

C. Tied to the lifetime differences, the number of people who lived through
first birth, then infancy and teenager hood, and so on, is greater and
greater every year. This itself is merely an observation...

D. Mothers are having children later, children are reaching level of social
maturity later (getting into the work force, finishing education and then
starting their family).

E. The time alive per generation (TAG) will not drop as much as the relative
drop in the absolute number of individuals which, from a genetic standpoint,
would seem to say something very important, and that has to do with the
success of the genetics.

F. Due to the lower number of children and the greater economic needs to
develop one properly, those individual children are valued greater as the
relationships from an emotional level would become greater. The individual
child means more emotionally to lose than one of 10, none of whom you were
able to get amazingly close to (other than the eldest or youngest of
children). Each child has greater value, which would again create a greater
value per generation than would be expected with the significant drop off in
absolute numbers.

G. The economic necessity of children is lesser as individuals are able to
better to hedge against their future and are no longer dependent upon
children to support them in their old age.

As we look all the way down in nature we find that the number of young born
continually drops the more valuable the off spring is...why does this
surprise us? Come on now...

Civility among "animals"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16094301/

Bshary and his colleagues followed fish around by snorkeling. They found groupers often visited giant morays resting in their crevices and rapidly shook their heads an inch or so from the eels to recruit them in a joint hunt. At times this call took place after a grouper failed in its hunt because prey escaped into a crevice the grouper could not get into but a giant moray might.