Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
If complex cells arose via ‘standard’ natural selection, in which genetic mutations give rise to variations acted upon by natural selection, then we would expect to see a mixed bag of internal structures, as varied as the external appearance of cells. Eukaryotic cells are wonderfully varied in their size and shape, from giant leaf-like algal cells
... See moreNick Lane • The Vital Question
Step #1. Start with a tube of diameter Z (a tube because geometrically, a blood vessel branch, a dendritic branch, and a tree branch can all be thought of that way). Step #2. Extend that tube until it is, to pull a number out of a hat, four times longer than its diameter (i.e., 4Z). Step #3. At that point, the tube bifurcates, splits in two. Repeat
... See moreRobert M. Sapolsky • Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will
Is the tech moving away from atoms toward bits? The more dematerialized a technology, the more it is subject to hard-to-control hyper-evolutionary effects. Areas like materials design or drug development are going to rapidly accelerate, making the pace of progress harder to track.
Mustafa Suleyman • The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma
In the first, lowest level we find Darwinian creatures, with their competences pre-designed and fixed, created by the R&D of evolution by natural selection. They are born “knowing” all they will ever “know”; they are gifted but not learners.
Daniel C Dennett • From Bacteria to Bach and Back
Complex chemical structure is rendered into a sequence of its four defining bases—A, T, C, and G.
Mustafa Suleyman • The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma
The purpose of all that is to eliminate the possibility that human knowledge is being fed into the design of the system, and that its reach is being mistaken for the product of evolution.
David Deutsch • The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
These are all highly contestable statements.
W. Brian Arthur • Complexity Economics: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's 2019 Fall Symposium
Similarly, Darwin resolved a problem that was not a problem at all in nineteenth-century biology, because his contemporaries were convinced that they already knew the answer.
Carlo Rovelli • Anaximander: And the Birth of Science
They also realized that other coronaviruses in the same family as Sars-Cov-2 did not have a similar password, much less one positioned so well. That finding raised the question of why Sars-Cov-2 did. A few scientists speculated openly whether the virus had been designed or modified in a laboratory. But most dismissed those questions as irrelevant,
... See more