151–160 of 199 posts
There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…
On the other hand, are tribes or nations which are not intimately connected to the western world that much better off? And science evolved greatly in the highly interconnected parts of the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you wanna go around arguing the Earth is flat, you need to have something more persuasive than 'do the research.' Not that you personally believe in a flat earth, but it's a good example of why we shouldn't treat epistemological uncertainty as the starting point; there is so much evidence for Earth being round and so little offered in favor of it being flat that its roundness should be treated as a fact unless ext…
Do you believe this is an appropriate analogy, given our very limited understanding of the COVID situation? If so, I would implore you to ponder the shape of the surface that we inhabit without the hindsight of 1000 years of R&D.
There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…
There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…
This is more than backwards. Evolution does not only accelerate when you connect small populations into a larger one, it also starts happening on a higher level, selecting over collections of traits larger than what was possible before.
Group diversity (like speciation) of course depends on isolation, but individual diversity does not. It depends on a series of factors that are completely different for memetic and biologic evolution. (Personally, I don't know how either react to isolation, but since the author got wrong every single fact that I know, I don't imagine he has any idea either.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying a wide varity of echo chambers is a good thing to avoid intellectual monoculture?
I think echo chambers are part of the problem. Previously you'd love in your village and have to get along with other villagers (or move, which took a lot of effort) so people had to learn to compromise more. Now everyone can live in virtual echo chambers where everyone agrees with them and they never need to compromise. So they start viewing anyone who disagrees with them as pure evil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to see it, but does a Mars colony have any chance before we’ve tested solutions for the major issues that Biosphere 2 quickly ran into?
Maybe not, though a Mars colony might not have to run as a totally isolated system. Perhaps solar power could be used to extract oxygen from the rocks or something. It's definitely a tricky nut to crack though and I'm far from confident that it will happen.
I’m more interested in what would cause people to ignore their doctor and choose to believe whatever insane thing is on social media about, say, vaccines. There’s always been places you could go and find nonsense. But what’s different about this moment? What’s drawing people to nonsense? IMO social media gets the blame, but it’s just the vehicle for something darker happening. Something more about widespread nativism…
Our elite seem to have decided that their power and profit are more important that helping civilization last another generation.
Blaming the working class for not trusting the "elite" them goes against the old adage:
Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me.