There are ideas that sexual reproduction arose as a response to disease. The way I look at it, sexual reproduction has survived disease;-)
Another way to look at it might be that sexual reproduction is currently outperforming disease - on earth, at least. Not sure what metric to use for "performance" tho:-)
What I'm getting at is the idea that - in keeping with the principles of natural selection - many (the majority? Or the majority by mass, if not head count? I Am Not A Biologist:-) of the species that have thus far survived the effects of disease reproduce sexually.
If you think about it, sexual reproduction is a good strategy for surviving a wide range of natural disasters (in fact, reproduction is a good way of surviving natural disasters: if there is only one of you, the chance of you surviving from, say 2 billion years ago until today is pretty small:-). It requires more than one participant but this is only a handicap if numbers are extremely low after a disaster (and still requires some bad luck, i.e. not being able to find an organism to reproduce with - which wouldn't be a problem with a new species, since they would all be co-located).
Since sexual reproduction is at worst a power-of-two less efficient than asexual reproduction (gestation times, multiplcity of offspring, etc., neglected), in the long run (i.e. the lifetime of planet earth and all obstacles that life has overcome here) we can probably expect a lot of sex:-)
Ideas evolve, too. Everything evolves: "evolution" is how we describe the way in which certain patterns - ones we are interested in - change over time;-)
Slow evolution and fast evolution are equivalent for suitably large values of time!
As far as I can tell, reproduction runs at a rate whose maximum is exponential. Weather it's life or threads;-)
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong!
Maybe that wasn't the best example: the ratdog relationship has little to do with empathy, as I see it. Owners of ratdogs are not famed for their consideration either;-)
It looks more like a symbiotic relationship: as a team, they are are greater than the sum of their parts.
It did, however, educate him enough to include a reference to "mold" and another significant (and much-underestimated) biological factor in human evolution: fungi;-)
The guy's an artist!
I agree with your model for base behaviour for public service: you also indicate that - barring electoral rigging - the elected government reflects the will of the people to some extent. Politicians have learnt to get elected by appealing to our interests on "small" issues: must even politicians motivated by public interest play this game?
Really interesting viewing:-)
Yeah, it took the government a long time to catch up with the Third World.
The problem is that there were too many people in government who actually valued the welfare of the majority of citizens as opposed to only the people with money.
C'mon - you have to admit that referring to a document that alleges that the lump we live on was built by a person in a matter of days - particularly in the middle of a discussion about the formation of such lumps over more natural time-spans - at least looks like a troll;-)
It's probably quicker to structure code so that it complies with the GPL than to write an OS from scratch;-)
I know everyone's salivating at the prospect of a watershed GPL-validating court case but this probably won't be it, folks.
I very much doubt doubt that Asus's modification was made with the intention of exploiting its customers: more likely they are attempting to protect themselves from industrial espionage.
That being so, I presume that all they need to do is to link their changes differently? I don't know (I'm neither a kernel nor legal type) - but I expect that there is a technical solution to this. If so, maybe the solution can be made available for instructional purposes (and not with the purpose of condemning ASUS for something they - or some of their programmers, at least - clearly have put some thought into).
Maybe some day this kind of event will be seen as an embarrassing procedural lapse, rather than a betrayal of the faithful;-)
Yes, advertising is devious: it has been so for at least a century. We are becoming cynical and I'm sure that most readers assumed that a company that announces future trends intends to benefit from those trends, i.e. this "report" is somewhere between a product launch (aimed an media companies) and FUD.
I'm sure that IBM has learnt from Microsoft's DRM experience that they can sell a technology to another company in the full knowledge that it cannot do what they say it does and that they are largely free from liability for this failure because the "point of failure" is human.
It's like selling faulty weapons to criminals:-)
I saw a simple experiment on television that threw some light on how plastic human brains are to start with:
Children of ages 6 months and 9 months were shown a variety of ape faces in photographs
the six-month-old children enjoyed all the pictures
the nine-month-old kids got bored
This is because children lose the ability to differentiate between ape faces - simply because they don't interact with other species of apes and therefore don't need to know the difference.
I wish they had done the experiment with photos of creatures other than apes (maybe this has been done?).
The best we can do is use animals and hope that they are close enough
In case anyone is in any doubt, the reason why animals are relevant is that humans are animals;-)
Or is that just a theory? I forget - must be getting old...
While I find all the above to be true in my own life, I think there's a biological component as well: for the last few years (I'm pushing 40), I have had to fight an urge to prematurely categorise people and things. It's quite annoying, actually! My mind goes into "yeah, seen it all" mode when rationally I know that this is not the case:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Think it's "bank" as in "fighter plane". ;-)
Interesting
But if a company doesn't keep on producing new stuff, how will its stock price continue to increase?
Another way to look at it might be that sexual reproduction is currently outperforming disease - on earth, at least. Not sure what metric to use for "performance" tho
What I'm getting at is the idea that - in keeping with the principles of natural selection - many (the majority? Or the majority by mass, if not head count? I Am Not A Biologist
If you think about it, sexual reproduction is a good strategy for surviving a wide range of natural disasters (in fact, reproduction is a good way of surviving natural disasters: if there is only one of you, the chance of you surviving from, say 2 billion years ago until today is pretty small
Since sexual reproduction is at worst a power-of-two less efficient than asexual reproduction (gestation times, multiplcity of offspring, etc., neglected), in the long run (i.e. the lifetime of planet earth and all obstacles that life has overcome here) we can probably expect a lot of sex
Our duty to whom?
Our ancestorsSlow evolution and fast evolution are equivalent for suitably large values of time!
As far as I can tell, reproduction runs at a rate whose maximum is exponential. Weather it's life or threads ;-)
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong!
Maybe that wasn't the best example: the ratdog relationship has little to do with empathy, as I see it. Owners of ratdogs are not famed for their consideration either ;-)
It looks more like a symbiotic relationship: as a team, they are are greater than the sum of their parts.
Yeah - these days, oldies gotta look out for themselves. Keep your friends!
It did, however, educate him enough to include a reference to "mold" and another significant (and much-underestimated) biological factor in human evolution: fungi ;-)
The guy's an artist!
Thanks - looks really interesting! Here's another book I'm looking forward to reading.
Cool - an organism is an expression of the collective will of its parasites ;-)
I agree with your model for base behaviour for public service: you also indicate that - barring electoral rigging - the elected government reflects the will of the people to some extent. Politicians have learnt to get elected by appealing to our interests on "small" issues: must even politicians motivated by public interest play this game? :-)
Really interesting viewing
Here's a good story from 335 years ago.
Yeah, it took the government a long time to catch up with the Third World.
The problem is that there were too many people in government who actually valued the welfare of the majority of citizens as opposed to only the people with money.
C'mon - you have to admit that referring to a document that alleges that the lump we live on was built by a person in a matter of days - particularly in the middle of a discussion about the formation of such lumps over more natural time-spans - at least looks like a troll ;-)
It's probably quicker to structure code so that it complies with the GPL than to write an OS from scratch ;-)
I know everyone's salivating at the prospect of a watershed GPL-validating court case but this probably won't be it, folks.
I very much doubt doubt that Asus's modification was made with the intention of exploiting its customers: more likely they are attempting to protect themselves from industrial espionage. ;-)
That being so, I presume that all they need to do is to link their changes differently? I don't know (I'm neither a kernel nor legal type) - but I expect that there is a technical solution to this. If so, maybe the solution can be made available for instructional purposes (and not with the purpose of condemning ASUS for something they - or some of their programmers, at least - clearly have put some thought into).
Maybe some day this kind of event will be seen as an embarrassing procedural lapse, rather than a betrayal of the faithful
An example might once have been the kind of person who watched Fox News; now such an example would be someone who appears on Fox News.
I wish...
Here's a really good story from European history that could be characterised as a war of religion :-)
Yes, advertising is devious: it has been so for at least a century. We are becoming cynical and I'm sure that most readers assumed that a company that announces future trends intends to benefit from those trends, i.e. this "report" is somewhere between a product launch (aimed an media companies) and FUD. :-)
I'm sure that IBM has learnt from Microsoft's DRM experience that they can sell a technology to another company in the full knowledge that it cannot do what they say it does and that they are largely free from liability for this failure because the "point of failure" is human.
It's like selling faulty weapons to criminals
Children of ages 6 months and 9 months were shown a variety of ape faces in photographs
- the six-month-old children enjoyed all the pictures
- the nine-month-old kids got bored
This is because children lose the ability to differentiate between ape faces - simply because they don't interact with other species of apes and therefore don't need to know the difference.I wish they had done the experiment with photos of creatures other than apes (maybe this has been done?).
Or is that just a theory? I forget - must be getting old...
While I find all the above to be true in my own life, I think there's a biological component as well: for the last few years (I'm pushing 40), I have had to fight an urge to prematurely categorise people and things. It's quite annoying, actually! My mind goes into "yeah, seen it all" mode when rationally I know that this is not the case :-)