Silicon Investor - Evolution

[GPS Info] I was going to get to Joseph Campbell at some point. [youtube video]

GPS Info — 7/16/2026 1:30:08 PM

[GPS Info] Mauro Biglino has translated 19 books of the Old Testament with the publisher Ed...

GPS Info — 5/24/2026 4:57:56 PM

Mauro Biglino has translated 19 books of the Old Testament with the publisher Edizioni San Paolo, (IIRC) under contracts with the Vatican. His voice is halting due to Tourette syndrome which has gotten worse over time. This is his disclaimer that he is not speaking or writing to change anyone's faith.

Some people estimate the age of the world from the birth of Adam and Eve.
Another story from a more literal translation of the OT:
On cloning in the Bible. Mauro Biglino highlights numerous passages in the biblical text in which the possibility of extensive genetic manipulation interventions in animals, plants and, of course, in Sapiens emerges.

18 May 2023 - The original recoding is much earlier when his voice was much stronger.

Close captioning is available.

[GPS Info] Neoplatonism influence on Christianity Andrew Taggart - 26 November 2019 Cosmo...

GPS Info — 5/24/2026 3:43:18 PM

Neoplatonism influence on Christianity

Andrew Taggart - 26 November 2019
Cosmos as Living Organism
For Plotinus as for other ancients, the cosmos was a living organism.

The One, or the nameless absolute, is reality when it is laid bare of every form. It is like the void that precedes all forms, all acts of creation. Yet the One is not nothing nor is it nothingness. It is life itself accessible, Plotinus averred, only through mystical vision.

The One’s first emanation, Nous, is what provides the cosmic blueprint for the many (see here David Fideler, Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence). Next, the World Soul is an emanation of Nous. The World Soul is the site of eros; it is the “soul of the cosmos.” Finally, we discover the Sense World, or Nature, where space and time exist.

What’s important to underscore, here, is that this spiritual map is not meant to represent individual, disparate parts. Rather, the One is reality, and the One expresses itself in and through the creation of forms of the kind conceptualized as Nous, the World Soul, and the Sense World. And yet, the latter are, in truth, nothing other than the One; nothing other than that which participates in and cannot be understood as even remotely apart from the One.

andrewjtaggart.com

11 June 2023

Delve into the philosophical and theological parallels that shaped the development of early Christian thought. From the influence of Plotinus and his concepts of the One and the emanation of divine beings, to the fusion of Platonic ideas with Christian theology, this video uncovers the intellectual interplay that helped shape the foundations of Western spirituality. Explore how Neoplatonic concepts, such as the nature of the soul, the hierarchy of being, and the pursuit of the divine, found resonance within Christian doctrines.

[GPS Info] A little fun. It seems as if some mythical stories end up in sci-fi plot lines....

GPS Info — 5/24/2026 1:49:00 PM

A little fun. It seems as if some mythical stories end up in sci-fi plot lines.

1967 - Errand of Mercy, S1 E26

5 March 2026

What do you look like the second after you die? Some near-death experiencers report seeing their physical bodies, perfectly healed, while others describe themselves as nothing more than a glowing orb or a spark of light. How can both be true? In this video, we dive into the work of 19th-century educator Allan Kardec, who acted as a lead researcher for the afterlife. By using a scientific approach to spirit communication, Kardec identified a "Spirit Body"—a semi-material layer that acts as a bridge between your eternal soul and your physical "meat".

[GPS Info] Transition to monotheism from polytheism and henotheism. [youtube video] 29 Nov...

GPS Info — 5/23/2026 5:10:50 PM

Transition to monotheism from polytheism and henotheism.

29 November 2024

The Bible's evolution reveals a complex narrative shaped by theological control and power dynamics. Francesca Stavrakopoulou uncovers how shifts from polytheism to monotheism, the erasure of Asherah, and the centralization of Yahweh reflect political and patriarchal agendas. These transformations redefined spirituality, consolidating power through religious hierarchies. By exploring these suppressed narratives, we gain insights into how sacred texts shaped societies. This critical analysis challenges us to reimagine a spiritual framework embracing balance, diversity, and historical truth.

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29 December 2024
(close captioning provided)

Mauro Biglino and Gian Matteo Corrias tackle one of the most surprising books in recent years. Theologian Francesca Stavrakopoulou, professor at the University of Exeter, pushes the boundaries of traditional interpretation, analyzing the physicality of Yahweh through a literal and historical reading of the Bible.

What will you discover in this video?

The physical representation of Yahweh: a surprising and detailed analysis of every part of the body, from the most “uncomfortable” attributes to the symbolic elements. The spiritualization of the Bible: how the historical and cultural process has changed the perception of the biblical text. Comparison with extrabiblical sources: an immersion in the Levantine pantheon and the figure of Yahweh as one of the many deities of his time. Reflections on modern theological debate and parallels with Mauro Biglino's research.

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3 March 2023

How did a warrior-storm god become Yahweh, the god of world Abrahamic monotheism? By tracing the earliest history of Yahweh ("The One Exists") to his origins in the area around Mt Seir to his immigration during the Bronze Age Collapse to the Judea Highlands around Shiloh, this episode explores the early history of the Israelite God. How did Yahweh and his Yahwism transform in theater of Canaanite religion - dominated by El, Ba'al, Asherah, Anat and other myth figures? What aspects of local religion did the Yahwists assimilate, reject and contend over in that process? This episode explore the early history of Yahweh and the rise of Yahweh henotheism/monolatry and primitive monotheism.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 11 February 2026 Independent civilizations, separated by geogra...

GPS Info — 5/23/2026 4:23:41 PM

11 February 2026

Independent civilizations, separated by geography and centuries, described the same underlying structure of reality. If the pattern holds across time and culture, it stops being myth. It becomes a model.

[GPS Info] Colorado Springs charter school drops creationism lesson 17 March 2026 Axios A ...

GPS Info — 5/23/2026 4:15:38 PM

Colorado Springs charter school drops creationism lesson
17 March 2026
Axios

A Colorado Springs charter middle school teacher planned to include creationism in a science lesson this semester, the Times Recorder first reported last week — prompting a constitutional complaint.

Why it matters: Public schools cannot teach religious doctrine as science under the Constitution — and curriculum disputes have become a flashpoint in culture war battles at school districts across the country, including in the Pikes Peak region.

Driving the news: An email sent roughly two weeks ago by Donna Wagner, the science lead at James Irwin Charter Middle School in eastern Colorado Springs, told parents that eighth graders would learn about creationist and evolutionist theories in an upcoming unit on natural selection, adaptation and evolution.

A parent contacted Wagner and the Freedom From Religion Foundation with concerns.
The national nonprofit, which advocates for the separation of church and state, then accused the school of violating the Constitution.

What they're saying: The foundation sent a March 5 letter to school leaders questioning the constitutionality of the lesson.

An unidentified parent told the group they now doubt the school's trustworthiness and the quality of their child's education.
"(I) feel angry that religion is being forced on children and presented as science," the letter read.
"All students have a constitutional right to be free from religious indoctrination in their public schools," foundation attorney Samantha Lawrence wrote.

The latest: James Irwin Charter Schools CEO Rob Daugherty told The Gazette last week he just learned about the teacher's plan to reference creationism in the science lesson.

In a March 10 response to the foundation, Daugherty said intelligent design had appeared sporadically in past lessons.
"When I found out, I went down to the school and told the principal, 'We need to take this out,'" Daugherty told The Gazette.
He said creationism will not be taught at any James Irwin schools.

The intrigue: The charter network is named for Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin, an evangelical Christian who joined several expeditions in the 1970s searching for Noah's Ark.

The middle school is part of a charter system founded in 2000 that now includes a high school, technical school and three elementary schools in the Colorado Springs area.
The campuses operate under three local school districts. The middle school falls within Harrison School District 2.

What's next: Daugherty told Axios the incident was uncharacteristic for the James Irwin system, which he said does not seek to indoctrinate students or break the law.

"As a result, we are going through all of our schools' lesson plans," he said.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation told Daugherty it considers the matter resolved.

[GPS Info] For my own reference I am pasting a Google AI overview of creationism: Creation...

GPS Info — 5/23/2026 4:08:48 PM

For my own reference I am pasting a Google AI overview of creationism:

Creationism is the religious belief that the universe, Earth, and all life originated through supernatural acts of divine creation. It rejects or modifies scientific explanations of origins (like the theory of evolution) in favor of varying degrees of literal or metaphorical interpretations of sacred texts.

Core Variations

Creationist beliefs range widely depending on how strictly sacred texts are interpreted:

Young Earth Creationism (YEC): The most common literalist form. It posits that the universe and all life were created in six 24-hour days roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. It strictly rejects macro-evolution and geological deep time.
Old Earth Creationism (OEC): Accepts the scientific consensus that the Earth and universe are billions of years old, but rejects Darwinian evolution. Adherents often interpret the "days" of Genesis as long, metaphorical epochs or view creation as a process unfolding in stages (the "gap theory" or "day-age theory").
Intelligent Design (ID): A movement asserting that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by undirected, natural processes like natural selection.
Theistic Evolution (Evolutionary Creationism): Reconciles religious faith with modern science. Adherents believe in a Creator who used the natural processes of biological evolution to bring about the diversity of life.

Broader Perspectives

While the term most often evokes Christian fundamentalist views in the United States, the concept of a supreme creator is common to the monotheistic traditions of Judaism and Islam. However, mainline Christian denominations like Catholicism and Anglicanism generally embrace theistic evolution, stating that religious faith and evolutionary biology are not mutually exclusive.

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Creationism
<snips>

It was after the religious revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Britain and America – revivals that led to such sects as the Methodists – that a more full-blooded literalism became a major part of the religious scene. In America particularly literalism took hold, and especially after the Civil War, it took root in the evangelical sects – especially Baptists – of the South (Numbers 1998; Noll 2002). It became part of the defining culture of the South, having (as we shall see below) as much a role in opposing ideas and influences of the leaders and policy makers of the North as anything rooted in deeply thought-through theology.

...
Thanks to a number of factors, Creationism started to grow dramatically in the early part of the twentieth century. First, there were the first systematic attempts to work out a position that would take account of modern science as well as just a literal reading of Genesis. Particularly important in this respect were the Seventh-day Adventists, especially the Canadian-born George McCready Price, who had theological reasons for wanting literalism, not the least being the belief that the Seventh Day – the day of rest – is literally twenty-four hours in length. Also important for the Adventists and for fellow travelers, that is people who think that Armageddon is on its way, is the balancing and complementary early phenomenon of a world-wide flood.

...
This battle between evolutionists and ‘Fundamentalists’ came to a head in the mid 1920s in Dayton Tennessee, when a young school teacher John Thomas Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in class, in defiance of a state law prohibiting such teaching. Prosecuted by three-times presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and defended by noted agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow, the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ caught the attention of the world, especially thanks to the inflammatory reporting of Baltimore Sun journalist H. L. Mencken. Matters descended to the farcical when, denied the opportunity to introduce his own science witnesses, Darrow put on the stand the prosecutor Bryan. In the end, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. This conviction was overturned on a technicality on appeal, but there were no more prosecutions, even though the Tennessee law remained on the books for another forty years.

...
After the Scopes Trial, general agreement is that the Creationism movement had peaked and declined quite dramatically and quickly. Yet, it (and related anti-evolution activity) did have its lasting effects. Text-book manufacturers increasingly took evolution – Darwinism especially – out of their books, so that schoolchildren got less and less exposure to the ideas anyway. Whatever battles the evolutionists may have thought they had won in the court of popular opinion, in the trenches of the classroom they were losing the war badly. Things started to move again in the late 1950s. It was then that, thanks to Sputnik, the Russians so effectively demonstrated their superiority in rocketry (with its implications for the arms race of the Cold War), and America realized with a shudder how ineffective was its science training of its young. Characteristically, the country did something immediate and effective about this, namely pouring money into the production of new science texts. In this way, with class adoption, the Federal Government could have a strong impact and yet get around the problem that education tends to be under the tight control of individual states. The new biology texts gave full scope to evolution – to Darwinism – and with this the Creationism controversy again flared right up. Children were learning these dreadful doctrines in schools, and something had to be done (Ruse (ed.) 1988; Gilkey 1985).

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 22 May 2026 If reality is merely an interpretation of the mind,...

GPS Info — 5/22/2026 4:21:52 PM

22 May 2026

If reality is merely an interpretation of the mind, why do we all see the same world? In this video, we explore the paradox of perception, the neuroscience of consciousness, and concepts of non-duality to understand how our shared picture of the world is constructed.
Today, ideas that our physical world is a simulation or projection are very popular. Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, in his interface theory of perception, suggests that evolution has hidden the true nature of things from us, leaving only convenient "icons" for survival. But here arises a major philosophical dead end: if objective matter is an illusion generated by the brain, why do billions of people see the exact same streets and stars? How do our individual "matrices" synchronize?

In this video, we break down the nature of consciousness at the intersection of philosophy and science:

The neuroscience of the ego: how the Default Mode Network (DMN) creates a continuous story about our "I" and the illusion of separation.
Glitch in the filter: documented cases of radical shifts in perception and the stopping of internal dialogue (featuring scientist Gary Weber and John Wren-Lewis).
The solipsism trap: an elegant metaphor by idealist philosopher Bernardo Kastrup about the ocean and whirlpools, explaining how the One Source experiences itself through billions of focal points.
Radical non-duality: we discuss Tony Parsons' ideas and the paradox of spiritual seeking—why there is no one to "awaken" and nowhere to arrive.

This video challenges both strict materialists and those stuck in an endless search for themselves.

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12 April 2021

"Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery — the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets — is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together."
– Alan Watts (1915 – 1973)

[GPS Info] [youtube video] (Originally recorded circa December 1991) 16 September 2023 (Sn...

GPS Info — 5/21/2026 8:11:33 PM

(Originally recorded circa December 1991)
16 September 2023

(Snipped from elsewhere)
The holographic model allows us to conceptualize phenomena that have remained on the fringes of science -- synchronicities, psychic experiences, UFOs, poltergeists, spiritual experiences, states of higher consciousness. In part one of this two part program Michael Talbot discusses the holographic model of brain functioning and the "implicate order" model of quantum physics. He proposes that these two models combined explain many unsolved mysteries in both brain functioning (such as memory and vision) and quantum physics (such as the problem of hidden variables and quantum interconnectedness).

In part two of the DVD, Talbot discusses his own unusual experiences with poltergeist phenomena and UFOs. He suggests that the holographic model provides a means for understanding these experiences without falling into the twin traps of skeptical debunking or occult romanticism.

Michael Talbot is author of Mysticism and the New Physics, Beyond the Quantum, Your Past Lives and The Holographic Universe. He also authored four novels. This program was taped approximately six months before his untimely death in May 1992.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 4 December 2025 Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts Universit...

GPS Info — 5/21/2026 4:58:15 PM

4 December 2025

Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 26 June 2024 (viewing at 1.5 speed works well) Plato's Allegory...

GPS Info — 5/21/2026 4:31:56 PM

26 June 2024 (viewing at 1.5 speed works well)

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a powerful tale. Not only is it one of the oldest versions of what, today, we'd call the "matrix" or "simulation" scenario, it's the most practical, prescient, and esoteric. In fact, Plato's cave and the Republic at-large contain occulted layers of meaning that scholars are still discovering and debating about to this day.
In this transmission, we'll summarize the tale and do a deep dive into its more esoteric, often missed layers of wisdom.

Introduction
Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Platonic Forms and Socrates' simile of the sun
The divided line, knowledge and hidden structures in Plato's Republic
Proclus and the esoteric map of reality
The esoteric power of math
Plotinus, noesis and merging with the highest contemplation
What it really means to free yourself of the cave or simulation

[GPS Info] Red pill in a way [youtube video] LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds fr...

GPS Info — 5/21/2026 2:54:47 PM

Red pill in a way

LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven, 2019
Christopher M. Mache

A professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years

• Chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, the author’s systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence

• Makes a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience and discusses the challenge of integrating these experiences into everyday life

• Shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 20 July 2022 Today we’re going to try to save reality - or at l...

GPS Info — 5/21/2026 2:31:37 PM

20 July 2022

Today we’re going to try to save reality - or at least realism. However this rescue effort has a price; one that you may not be willing to pay. Your very soul, or at least your free will, is on the line.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 5 January 2019 In this video we explore one of Plato's most fam...

GPS Info — 5/21/2026 2:16:35 PM

5 January 2019

In this video we explore one of Plato's most famous ideas - the Theory of Forms. We will attempt to break down this theory in order to truly understand what Plato thought about the true nature of reality. We will look at what Forms are and will explore their important implications for the individual and society and finally we will explore some of the criticisms against the theory.

[GPS Info] Let us know which one works the best.

GPS Info — 5/19/2026 4:32:26 PM

[TigerPaw] I have a cabinet full of pills of various colors.

TigerPaw — 5/19/2026 4:31:48 PM

[GPS Info] Do you have one?

GPS Info — 5/19/2026 4:30:21 PM

[TigerPaw] No need to hack, just take the red pill.

TigerPaw — 5/19/2026 4:29:58 PM

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 12 June 2024 GUEST BIO: Roman Yampolskiy is an AI safety resear...

GPS Info — 5/19/2026 4:24:58 PM

12 June 2024

GUEST BIO:
Roman Yampolskiy is an AI safety researcher and author of a new book titled AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable.

9 August 2025

From Descartes to The Matrix, the idea that reality might be a simulation has long fascinated and terrified humanity. Elon Musk recently argued that the simulation hypothesis is most likely true. But if that's the case, might there be a way to escape back to the real world? Join leading computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy as he argues that if we are living in a simulation, we can also hack our way out of it.

[GPS Info] keywords: analytic idealism, Kastrup [youtube video] 5 December 2025 Idealism ...

GPS Info — 5/17/2026 9:08:02 PM

keywords: analytic idealism, Kastrup

5 December 2025

Idealism is the theory that all reality is consciousness and only consciousness, and that what we perceive to be the physical world is either a manifestation of consciousness or derived from it. Either way, fundamental reality is pure consciousness. What are the arguments for and against Idealism (like the common sense of the physical)?

Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch philosopher and computer engineer whose work centers on consciousness studies and analytic idealism, a form of metaphysical idealism developed within the analytic tradition. He questions physicalism and argues that consciousness lies at the foundation of reality.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 17 May 2026 What if the universe is not physical reality… but a...

GPS Info — 5/17/2026 8:49:24 PM

17 May 2026

What if the universe is not physical reality… but a computational system running on hidden code?
From quantum mechanics to black holes, modern physics keeps uncovering clues that reality may behave more like a simulation than a natural universe.

In this video, we explore the strongest physics-based evidence for the simulation hypothesis — including the holographic principle, quantum observation, error-correcting codes hidden in physics equations, and the mysterious constants that seem perfectly tuned for conscious life.

The Holographic Principle — Why the universe may store information like a hard drive
Bekenstein Bound — The maximum information density of spacetime
James Gates Discovery — Error-correcting codes hidden inside supersymmetry equations
Quantum Observation — Why particles require measurement to become “real”
Wheeler’s Participatory Universe — The observer effect and delayed-choice experiments
Feynman Path Integrals — Why nature always finds the most efficient computational route
Quantum Spin Quantisation — Evidence reality behaves digitally instead of continuously
Speed Of Light Limit — Why causality may function like a system bandwidth cap
Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument — The mathematics of simulated realities
Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe — The idea that reality is pure mathematics
Fine Structure Constant — The unexplained number that controls chemistry and existence
Anthropic Principle — Why the universe appears tuned for conscious observers

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6 May 2026

In this video, Leonard Susskind explores one of the most unsettling questions in modern physics: why do the laws of the universe seem so perfectly calibrated for existence?

If gravity were slightly stronger, stars would collapse too quickly. If it were slightly weaker, galaxies would never form. If the fundamental constants of physics changed by even the tiniest amount, matter itself could not exist. And yet somehow… everything works.

This is known as the fine-tuning problem — one of the deepest mysteries in cosmology and theoretical physics. The universe appears balanced on a razor’s edge, with physical laws and constants so precise that many physicists struggle to explain how this could happen by chance alone. But does this mean the universe was designed?

In this video, we explore the cosmological constant problem, entropy, quantum mechanics, black holes, the anthropic principle, and the multiverse hypothesis. We examine why some scientists believe reality may emerge from deeper informational laws, and why the structure of the cosmos appears strangely mathematical, elegant, and understandable.
This is not a religious argument. It’s a scientific and philosophical exploration of a universe that increasingly looks less accidental the deeper we study it. Because perhaps the most mysterious thing about reality… is that it works at all.

[GPS Info] Brief intro to the Esoterica channel (1.08M subscribers): [youtube video] 8 May...

GPS Info — 5/17/2026 4:00:25 PM

Brief intro to the Esoterica channel (1.08M subscribers):

8 May 2026

While Plotinus and his inheritors are often associated with western mysticism and the occult philosophy, the philosophical ferment of the centuries following the Old Academy (post 347 bce) most directly influenced Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Hellenistic Magic and Astrology, Alexandrian Judaism and early Christianity. This period of philosophy, denoted as “Middle Platonism,” is thus crucially important for the study of the development Western Esotericism and, surprisingly (or not), this period is woefully unappreciated. This seminar aims to be an introduction to Middle-Platonism (c. 100 bce - c. 200 ce), specifically with an eye toward developments in metaphysics. Along with deepening our appreciation of the development of western philosophy, my hope is that we come to better appreciate the philosophical dimensions of Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Hellenistic Magic and Astrology, Alexandrian Judaism, early Christianity, Neo-Platonism and Western Esotericism more widely.

[GPS Info] The word 'simulation' can have many meanings and one of the easiest to understan...

GPS Info — 5/17/2026 2:45:36 PM

The word 'simulation' can have many meanings and one of the easiest to understand would be something like the Microsoft Flight Simulator ( video). This type of simulator allows the user to learn and make mistakes along the way without any long-term harm. <g> Some of these simulations allow the user to replay the final segments of the simulation to tease out some additional lessons before the next game. I think one reason people find these games so addictive is that they allow the user to try crazy things without harmful consequences.

Other games have an expansive virtual reality landscape with multi-player capabilities, commonly referred to as Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Play Games (MMORPGs). For example, "Fornite: Epic Games' flagship battle royale remains a global juggernaut, drawing in over 235+ million monthly active users and frequently crossing the 10 million mark for simultaneous concurrent players during live seasonal events." These games can create their own subcultures and clan affiliations, sometimes driven by the user's country of origin.

As computational capacity improves the quality of the simulator games will eventually look photorealistic and become completely immersive.

Nick Bostrom posits the possibility that we are statistically very likely to be in a simulated environment.
(AI snips)

The most famous framework for this idea was proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. His "Simulation Argument" presents a trilemma, stating that at least one of the following propositions is highly likely to be true:

The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (capable of running highly complex simulations of their ancestors) is virtually zero.
The fraction of posthuman civilizations interested in running ancestor-simulations is zero.
The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences who are living in a simulation is nearly one.

Critics and physicists argue that the hypothesis borders on pseudoscience because it is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to falsify.

6 October 2023

After movies like "The Matrix" (1999) posited the existence of a superficial world layered over our own, human imagination has run abound with theories about the nature of our reality. To a small but passionate minority, the red pill that can awaken us to this illusion is right at our fingertips.

World-renowned physicist Michio Kaku isn’t quite ready to take that pill. In fact, he’s skeptical that the pills even exist. He explains why.

Tossing this in before fully watched - I've heard Virk's argument before.

17 December 2025

[GPS Info] Am I a Boltzmann Brain or just delusional? I can't argue one way or the other, b...

GPS Info — 5/16/2026 3:55:04 PM

Am I a Boltzmann Brain or just delusional? I can't argue one way or the other, but there is a kernel of an idea that will be explored at some point. This video is deep into the idea, just to get your head spinning.

7 November 2023

Robinson’s Podcast #106 - David Albert & Sean Carroll: Quantum Theory, Boltzmann Brains, & The Fine-Tuned Universe

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and Director of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics program at Columbia. David is a prior guest of the Robinson’s Podcast multiverse, having appeared on episodes #23 (with Justin Clarke-Doane), #30, and #67 (with Tim Maudlin). Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also host of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, a terrific show (that influenced the birth of Robinson’s Podcast) about science, society, philosophy, culture, arts, and ideas. Sean also had a great conversation with David on Mindscape, linked below. Both David and Sean are rare breeds—philosophers who are physicists, and physicists who are philosophers—and in this episode Robinson, David, and Sean speak about some of the philosophical concerns at the foundations of physics. They first discuss the Many-Worlds theory of quantum mechanics before turning to the apparent fine-tuning of our universe for life and the possibility of Boltzmann Brains, or complex observers in the universe that arise spontaneously due to quantum fluctuations or the random motion of matter.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 22 November 2025 "milliards" means "billions" btw. Here is Eme...

GPS Info — 5/16/2026 3:27:11 PM

22 November 2025

"milliards" means "billions" btw.

Here is Emergent Garden's thoughts on emergent complexity. I go through a tour of simple systems that produce unexpected complexity, and try to break down emergence into more general and useful ideas. We talk about snowflakes and ant colonies, cellular automata and universe simulations, and the many weird ideas of Stephen Wolfram. I also offer some advice for creating and encouraging emergent behavior. This video is important to me. Emergence is the most interesting thing in the universe.

[GPS Info] How can complexity emerge from randomness? Conway's Game of Life uses four simpl...

GPS Info — 5/16/2026 3:04:04 PM

How can complexity emerge from randomness? Conway's Game of Life uses four simple rules to create more complex objects, including logic gates and a universal Turing machine.

I watched this recent video as I was thinking about quantum fluctuations and computations along the lines of Stephen Wolfram's idea that the universe is a computer which I will touch on later ( video link).

15 May 2026

Four rules — underpopulation, survival, overcrowding, reproduction — applied to a grid of cells. From those four rules you get gliders, oscillators, the Gosper glider gun (the configuration that won Bill Gosper a fifty-dollar bet against Conway in 1970), logic gates, a CPU, and a working copy of Tetris running on eleven million cells. Then there is Rule 30: a one-dimensional automaton specified by eight bits, producing a stream of randomness so good that Mathematica uses it as the default RNG.

The video covers:

Conway's four rules and what they actually say, cell by cell
The blinker: the simplest oscillator, period two
The glider — Richard Guy, Cambridge, 1970 — the indestructible five-cell traveler
A zoo of patterns: still lifes, oscillators, spaceships, Methuselahs
The R-pentomino, the acorn, and bunnies — small seeds that explode for thousands of generations
Bill Gosper's glider gun, MIT 1970, and Conway paying out the fifty dollars
From two glider streams to AND, OR, NOT, flip-flops, registers, a CPU
The OTCA Metapixel: Game of Life running inside Game of Life
Tetris in Life, eleven million cells, on a custom Life-CPU
Wolfram's one-dimensional setup and the 256 elementary rules
Rule 30, the center column, and statistical-grade randomness from eight bits
Wolfram's four-class taxonomy and Rule 110's Turing completeness (Matthew Cook, 2004)

Here is an article from Quanta Magazine from 18 January 2024 with more info.

Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns
John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length.
Quantamagazine

<snip>

“We have discovered so much deep behavior over the last 10 years,” Karpovich said. “Everyone’s celebrating for a week — and then moving on to other things. There are so many other problems to solve.” Can oscillators of a given period be made smaller? Can oscillators be found in which every single cell oscillates? Can guns be made with particular periods? Can spaceships be made to travel at particular speeds?

As Buckingham put it, “It’s like being a kid in an infinite toy store.”

[GPS Info] My memory was a little fuzzy about the contents of the previously mentioned vide...

GPS Info — 5/15/2026 5:10:31 PM

My memory was a little fuzzy about the contents of the previously mentioned video by Donald Hoffman. He only hints about a disconnect between the body and consciousness.

A quick and dirty AI over of this book, The Case Against Reality:

The Case Against Reality by Donald D. Hoffman argues that our perception of reality is not a literal window to the world, but a "user interface" constructed by evolution to help us survive, much like desktop icons hide complex code. Hoffman, a cognitive scientist, proposes that our senses present simplified, symbolic versions of reality (like space, time, and objects) that guide adaptive behavior, rather than revealing objective truth, which remains hidden. The book uses evolutionary biology, game theory, and neuroscience to support the idea that our perceptions are shaped for fitness, not accuracy, and that a deeper, more complex reality exists beyond our senses.

Core concepts

Perception as a user interface: Our senses create a simplified, useful interface (like icons on a computer desktop) to help us interact with the world, hiding the complex underlying reality.
Evolutionary advantage: Evolution favors perceptions that enhance survival and reproduction, not those that provide a true picture of reality. Seeing a "red tomato" icon is more useful for survival than seeing the complex wavelengths of light and molecules.
"Conscious Realism": Hoffman's proposed theory that consciousness, not matter, is fundamental, and that the world is a network of conscious agents.
Challenging scientific realism: The book questions the assumption that science reveals objective reality, suggesting that even scientific models are part of our perceptual interface.

Key arguments

Space and time are not fundamental: Hoffman argues that space and time are not objective features of reality but are part of the user interface our minds construct.
Objects are icons: Physical objects are not what they seem; they are symbols that represent fitness payoffs, similar to how a folder icon represents a complex file.
Fitness over truth: The "fitness-beats-truth" theorem suggests that evolution selects for strategies that are useful for survival, even if they are not true.

Reception

Thought-provoking: The book is praised for challenging fundamental assumptions and sparking debate.
Philosophical: Critics note that while it uses scientific concepts, its conclusions lean heavily into philosophy and metaphysics, making it difficult to test scientifically.

[GPS Info] I will go with the odds. That's always smart. but only one way it could be a d...

GPS Info — 5/15/2026 1:55:42 PM

I will go with the odds.

That's always smart.

but only one way it could be a deterministic simulation.

A deterministic simulation would not be very interesting, since that would be more like a replay. There certainly wouldn't be any room for freewill in a deterministic reality. Donald Hoffman likens it to more of a VR headset with an independent consciousness driving it about. See the video previously posted, here.

There are an infinite number of ways that the universe could be influenced by randomness

I completely agree. There is some natural force that allows evolution to make more and more complex entities out of the initial randomness and chaos. That's what I will be considering in subsequent posts.

[TigerPaw] There are an infinite number of ways that the universe could be influenced by ra...

TigerPaw — 5/14/2026 11:24:22 PM

There are an infinite number of ways that the universe could be influenced by randomness, but only one way it could be a deterministic simulation. I will go with the odds.

[GPS Info] Apparently, from my posting history, two years ago I was thinking about an alter...

GPS Info — 5/14/2026 4:30:16 PM

Apparently, from my posting history, two years ago I was thinking about an alternative view of reality that seems to be coming into focus and is related to the simulation hypothesis, going back for thousands of years in one form or another. Work got in the way of pursuing this.

I want to take a blank-slate approach that does not assume the existence of any historical facts or basis of reality, given our tenuous grip on space-time. There are many physicist who discuss the nature of matter as information and reality as a collapsing wave function.

My intent is to avoid my own belief traps about evolution or any of the design aspects of creationism. In this context, I won't rule out that our reality is some sort of designed simulation.

I will be posting some videos to explore these elements and provide whatever context I can manage. This is intended as a philosophical pursuit such as Platonic realism.

[GPS Info] [youtube video]

GPS Info — 5/14/2026 2:01:43 PM

[GPS Info] A recommend to encourage further posts.

GPS Info — 9/2/2024 1:26:29 PM

[Snowshoe] Rainwater: Scientists Discover Unexpected Missing Link in the Origin of Life sci...

Snowshoe — 9/2/2024 8:19:22 AM

Rainwater: Scientists Discover Unexpected Missing Link in the Origin of Life
scitechdaily.com

By Paul Dailing, University of Chicago
August 30, 2024

A fundamental question about the origin of life is how droplets of RNA floating around the primordial soup turned into the membrane-protected packets of life we call cells.

Now, a team of researchers from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), the University of Houston’s Chemical Engineering Department, and the UChicago Chemistry Department have proposed a solution.

In a new study published Science Advances, UChicago PME postdoctoral researcher Aman Agrawal and his co-authors – including UChicago PME Dean Emeritus Matthew Tirrell and Nobel Prize-winning biologist Jack Szostak – show how rainwater could have helped create a meshy wall around protocells 3.8 billion years ago, a critical step in the transition from tiny beads of RNA to every bacterium, plant, animal, and human that ever lived.

“This is a distinctive and novel observation,” Tirrell said.

Reference: “Did the exposure of coacervate droplets to rain make them the first stable protocells?” by Aman Agrawal, Aleksandar Radakovic, Anusha Vonteddu, Syed Rizvi, Vivian N. Huynh, Jack F. Douglas, Matthew V. Tirrell, Alamgir Karim and Jack W. Szostak, 21 August 2024, Science Advances.

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn9657

[GPS Info] This channel gives very good reviews of basic and more advanced physics. [youtu...

GPS Info — 1/7/2024 6:09:02 PM

This channel gives very good reviews of basic and more advanced physics.

1 June 2022

Tossing out a new video from a physicist from Fermilab:

These are generally helpful.

[GPS Info] This channel is more for entertainment with good storytelling, and some of these...

GPS Info — 1/7/2024 6:06:00 PM

This channel is more for entertainment with good storytelling, and some of these are reviews of urban legends, but there is some critical reviews of the stories. Some facts are sprinkled in.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] 9 November 2023 "Is consciousness a miracle?” Join Sadhguru and ...

GPS Info — 1/7/2024 6:00:36 PM

9 November 2023
"Is consciousness a miracle?” Join Sadhguru and Harvard cognitive scientist Prof. Steven Pinker as they explore this profound question at a fascinating discussion on science and spirituality, hosted by the Sadhguru Center for a Conscious Planet, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Moderated by Harvard Medical School's Dr. Bala Subramaniam, this thought-provoking conversation explores consciousness through the lenses of ancient wisdom and modern science.

Sadhguru Center for a Conscious Planet at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center investigates methods to define, expand and measure individual human consciousness, cognition, and compassion. The Center employs rigorous research, education and public outreach guided by the teachings of Sadhguru.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] [youtube video] [youtube video] [youtube video]

GPS Info — 1/7/2024 5:58:37 PM

[GPS Info] [youtube video] May 17, 2017 Of all the strange things that humans have come up ...

GPS Info — 10/12/2018 8:01:09 PM

May 17, 2017
Of all the strange things that humans have come up with, almost none is stranger—nor more pervasive across separate cultures—than religion. Why this meta-magical thinking evolved is easy to understand in hindsight: Robert Sapolsky calls it a "wonderful mechanism" that our ancestors used to cope with forces of nature, tragedies, and good luck that they couldn't explain. And even in the presence of explanations today, it continues to be useful for the majority of humans, to the point that asking "Why do so many people still believe?" is not the most interesting question in the vicinity. Sapolsky would rather ask: "What’s up with the five percent of atheists who don’t?" The only thing crazier than religion might be atheism, he suggests. There's a solid catalog of literature that shows the health benefits of religiosity. It's nature's antidepressant for what is often a brutal and awful world, and offers a protective quality that atheists forfeit—which explains why incidences of depression are much higher in that group. To Sapolsky, what's more curious than the bizarre need to believe, is the choice not to.

[2MAR$] A New Physics Theory of Life https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-ph...

2MAR$ — 10/10/2018 9:10:40 PM

A New Physics Theory of Life
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-life/

A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties

A computer simulation by Jeremy England and colleagues shows a system of particles confined inside a viscous fluid in which the turquoise particles are driven by an oscillating force. Over time, the force triggers the formation of more bonds among the particles. Credit: Courtesy of Jeremy England

From Quanta Magazine ( find original story here).

Why does life exist?

Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”

From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.

“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England said.

England’s theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a powerful description of life at the level of genes and populations. “I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong,” he explained. “On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.”

His idea, detailed in a recent paper and further elaborated in a talk he is delivering at universities around the world, has sparked controversy among his colleagues, who see it as either tenuous or a potential breakthrough, or both.

England has taken “a very brave and very important step,” said Alexander Grosberg, a professor of physics at New York University who has followed England’s work since its early stages. The “big hope” is that he has identified the underlying physical principle driving the origin and evolution of life, Grosberg said.

“Jeremy is just about the brightest young scientist I ever came across,” said Attila Szabo, a biophysicist in the Laboratory of Chemical Physics at the National Institutes of Health who corresponded with England about his theory after meeting him at a conference. “I was struck by the originality of the ideas.”

Others, such as Eugene Shakhnovich, a professor of chemistry, chemical biology and biophysics at Harvard University, are not convinced. “Jeremy’s ideas are interesting and potentially promising, but at this point are extremely speculative, especially as applied to life phenomena,” Shakhnovich said.

England’s theoretical results are generally considered valid. It is his interpretation — that his formula represents the driving force behind a class of phenomena in nature that includes life — that remains unproven. But already, there are ideas about how to test that interpretation in the lab.

“He’s trying something radically different,” said Mara Prentiss, a professor of physics at Harvard who is contemplating such an experiment after learning about England’s work. “As an organizing lens, I think he has a fabulous idea. Right or wrong, it’s going to be very much worth the investigation.”

At the heart of England’s idea is the second law of thermodynamics, also known as the law of increasing entropy or the “arrow of time.” Hot things cool down, gas diffuses through air, eggs scramble but never spontaneously unscramble; in short, energy tends to disperse or spread out as time progresses. Entropy is a measure of this tendency, quantifying how dispersed the energy is among the particles in a system, and how diffuse those particles are throughout space. It increases as a simple matter of probability: There are more ways for energy to be spread out than for it to be concentrated. Thus, as particles in a system move around and interact, they will, through sheer chance, tend to adopt configurations in which the energy is spread out. Eventually, the system arrives at a state of maximum entropy called “thermodynamic equilibrium,” in which energy is uniformly distributed. A cup of coffee and the room it sits in become the same temperature, for example. As long as the cup and the room are left alone, this process is irreversible. The coffee never spontaneously heats up again because the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against so much of the room’s energy randomly concentrating in its atoms.

Although entropy must increase over time in an isolated or “closed” system, an “open” system can keep its entropy low — that is, divide energy unevenly among its atoms — by greatly increasing the entropy of its surroundings. In his influential 1944 monograph “What Is Life?” the eminent quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger argued that this is what living things must do. A plant, for example, absorbs extremely energetic sunlight, uses it to build sugars, and ejects infrared light, a much less concentrated form of energy. The overall entropy of the universe increases during photosynthesis as the sunlight dissipates, even as the plant prevents itself from decaying by maintaining an orderly internal structure.

Life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, but until recently, physicists were unable to use thermodynamics to explain why it should arise in the first place. In Schrödinger’s day, they could solve the equations of thermodynamics only for closed systems in equilibrium. In the 1960s, the Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine made progress on predicting the behavior of open systems weakly driven by external energy sources (for which he won the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry). But the behavior of systems that are far from equilibrium, which are connected to the outside environment and strongly driven by external sources of energy, could not be predicted.

This situation changed in the late 1990s, due primarily to the work of Chris Jarzynski, now at the University of Maryland, and Gavin Crooks, now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Jarzynski and Crooks showed that the entropy produced by a thermodynamic process, such as the cooling of a cup of coffee, corresponds to a simple ratio: the probability that the atoms will undergo that process divided by their probability of undergoing the reverse process (that is, spontaneously interacting in such a way that the coffee warms up). As entropy production increases, so does this ratio: A system’s behavior becomes more and more “irreversible.” The simple yet rigorous formula could in principle be applied to any thermodynamic process, no matter how fast or far from equilibrium. “Our understanding of far-from-equilibrium statistical mechanics greatly improved,” Grosberg said. England, who is trained in both biochemistry and physics, started his own lab at MIT two years ago and decided to apply the new knowledge of statistical physics to biology.

Using Jarzynski and Crooks’ formulation, he derived a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics that holds for systems of particles with certain characteristics: The systems are strongly driven by an external energy source such as an electromagnetic wave, and they can dump heat into a surrounding bath. This class of systems includes all living things. England then determined how such systems tend to evolve over time as they increase their irreversibility. “We can show very simply from the formula that the more likely evolutionary outcomes are going to be the ones that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to getting there,” he said. The finding makes intuitive sense: Particles tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate with a driving force, or move in the direction it is pushing them, and they are more likely to move in that direction than any other at any given moment.

“This means clumps of atoms surrounded by a bath at some temperature, like the atmosphere or the ocean, should tend over time to arrange themselves to resonate better and better with the sources of mechanical, electromagnetic or chemical work in their environments,” England explained.

Self-replication (or reproduction, in biological terms), the process that drives the evolution of life on Earth, is one such mechanism by which a system might dissipate an increasing amount of energy over time. As England put it, “A great way of dissipating more is to make more copies of yourself.” In a September paper in the Journal of Chemical Physics, he reported the theoretical minimum amount of dissipation that can occur during the self-replication of RNA molecules and bacterial cells, and showed that it is very close to the actual amounts these systems dissipate when replicating. He also showed that RNA, the nucleic acid that many scientists believe served as the precursor to DNA-based life, is a particularly cheap building material. Once RNA arose, he argues, its “Darwinian takeover” was perhaps not surprising.

The chemistry of the primordial soup, random mutations, geography, catastrophic events and countless other factors have contributed to the fine details of Earth’s diverse flora and fauna. But according to England’s theory, the underlying principle driving the whole process is dissipation-driven adaptation of matter.

This principle would apply to inanimate matter as well. “It is very tempting to speculate about what phenomena in nature we can now fit under this big tent of dissipation-driven adaptive organization,” England said. “Many examples could just be right under our nose, but because we haven’t been looking for them we haven’t noticed them.”

Scientists have already observed self-replication in nonliving systems. According to new research led by Philip Marcus of the University of California, Berkeley, and reported in Physical Review Letters in August, vortices in turbulent fluids spontaneously replicate themselves by drawing energy from shear in the surrounding fluid. And in a paper appearing online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michael Brenner, a professor of applied mathematics and physics at Harvard, and his collaborators present theoretical models and simulations of microstructures that self-replicate. These clusters of specially coated microspheres dissipate energy by roping nearby spheres into forming identical clusters. “This connects very much to what Jeremy is saying,” Brenner said.

Besides self-replication, greater structural organization is another means by which strongly driven systems ramp up their ability to dissipate energy. A plant, for example, is much better at capturing and routing solar energy through itself than an unstructured heap of carbon atoms. Thus, England argues that under certain conditions, matter will spontaneously self-organize. This tendency could account for the internal order of living things and of many inanimate structures as well. “Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all have in common that they are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by some dissipative process,” he said. Condensation, wind and viscous drag are the relevant processes in these particular cases.

“He is making me think that the distinction between living and nonliving matter is not sharp,” said Carl Franck, a biological physicist at Cornell University, in an email. “I’m particularly impressed by this notion when one considers systems as small as chemical circuits involving a few biomolecules.”

England’s bold idea will likely face close scrutiny in the coming years. He is currently running computer simulations to test his theory that systems of particles adapt their structures to become better at dissipating energy. The next step will be to run experiments on living systems.

Prentiss, who runs an experimental biophysics lab at Harvard, says England’s theory could be tested by comparing cells with different mutations and looking for a correlation between the amount of energy the cells dissipate and their replication rates. “One has to be careful because any mutation might do many things,” she said. “But if one kept doing many of these experiments on different systems and if [dissipation and replication success] are indeed correlated, that would suggest this is the correct organizing principle.”

Brenner said he hopes to connect England’s theory to his own microsphere constructions and determine whether the theory correctly predicts which self-replication and self-assembly processes can occur — “a fundamental question in science,” he said.

Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural selection doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has recently studied.

If England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that “the reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,” Louis said.

“People often get stuck in thinking about individual problems,” Prentiss said. Whether or not England’s ideas turn out to be exactly right, she said, “thinking more broadly is where many scientific breakthroughs are made.”

[2MAR$] A little Social Evolution: "Ireland Votes to End Abortion Ban, in Rebuke to Cath...

2MAR$ — 9/9/2018 11:25:38 AM

A little Social Evolution: "Ireland Votes to End Abortion Ban, in Rebuke to Catholic Conservatism"
nytimes.com

" The surprising landslide, reflected in the results announced on Saturday, cemented the nation’s liberal shift at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise in Europe and the Trump administration is imposing curbs on abortion rights in the United States. In the past three years alone, Ireland has installed a gay man as prime minister and has voted in another referendum to allow same-sex marriage."

[GPS Info] That is a very interesting concept to think about... [youtube video] January 23,...

GPS Info — 1/30/2018 8:36:49 PM

That is a very interesting concept to think about...

January 23, 2018
If there are intelligent alien civilizations out there, would they look like us? To answer that question, we first have to ask another: Is our species about to take an evolutionary leap? "I think that the definition of being human is about to change a lot in the next century," says Michelle Thaller, astronomer and Assistant Director for Science Communication at NASA. Over the next few decades, Thaller speculates that humanity's augmented evolution will begin as we start to merge with A.I.s. Our biological bodies might just be a first step in human evolution, says Thaller, and high-tech implants and neural interfaces may make it possible for us to design our own bodies. "When you design your own body to suit any environment you want, why look like a human? Maybe you want to—[or] maybe you want to be a piece of foil that spreads itself across square kilometers to fly on solar winds and actually move around through solar systems. Maybe you look nothing like a human. Maybe you have nothing like a human life." So what does this have to do with aliens? Thaller posits that any advanced civilization that is more evolved than us would also have left its biological evolution behind. Expecting humanoid extraterrestrials might be too narrow minded. Maybe aliens are algorithms. Maybe we shouldn't even be looking for DNA and microbial life. Perhaps ET is a flat sheet of foil cruising through the universe on solar winds.

[TigerPaw] The future of life on this planet, is to goto space. This will be easier for me...

TigerPaw — 1/30/2018 8:31:41 PM

The future of life on this planet, is to goto space.
This will be easier for mechanical life, and therefore they will prosper while the biological ancestors will be limited.

[GPS Info] [youtube video] World Economic Forum - January 25, 2018 If machines are the futu...

GPS Info — 1/30/2018 8:11:17 PM

World Economic Forum - January 25, 2018
If machines are the future of work and algorithms have the answers we seek, where do humans fit in?

[GPS Info] Seven and a half hour audio book. [youtube video] One hour summary [youtube vide...

GPS Info — 1/25/2018 8:29:49 PM

Seven and a half hour audio book.

One hour summary

Historian Yuval Noah Harari has taken the world on a tour through the span of humanity, from apes to rulers of the world. Harari became an international sensation when he argued in his best-selling book Sapiens that humans conquered the world through our ability to believe in collective myths about gods, money and freedom. In the highly-anticipated sequel Homo Deus, Harari looks to the future, exploring how godlike technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering will define what we become.

[2MAR$] Neither did the genes for frizzy hair... :o) [graphic] The Genes for White ...

2MAR$ — 10/20/2017 3:32:56 AM

Neither did the genes for frizzy hair... :o)

The Genes for White Skin Didn’t Develop in Europe, UPenn Study Finds
Before this, little was known about the genetic basis for the variety in human skin tone.

BIGTHINK.COM

[koan] The next stage in evolution: I believe the singularity is the manifest destiny...

koan — 9/16/2017 9:00:39 PM

The next stage in evolution:

I believe the singularity is the manifest destiny of all biological systems in the universe if they can survive to that point. All biological roads lead to the singularity. It is how the universe works. So there is no sense in doing anything other than prepare ourselves to survive it.

And what will that require. Put simply knowledge. The future is all about knowledge. Those who understand that and proceed accordingly will survive much better than those who don't. I am now reading a book called Homo Deus which addresses this exact issue.

This is in the authors introduction:

A Brief History of Tomorrow. by Yuval Noah Harari

I have only just stated it, but this caused me to sit up straight and take note:

"Democracy and the free market will both collapse once Google and Facebook know us better than we know ourselves, and authority will shift from individual humans to networked algorithms. Humans wont fight machines, they will merge with them. We are heading toward a marriage rather than a war.

This is the shape of the new world, and the gap between those who get on board and those left behind will be larger than the gap between industrial empires and agrarian tribes. larger even that the gap between Sapiens and Neanderthals.

[GPS Info] Knowing and not knowing [youtube video] First annual LogiCal-LA conference in ...

GPS Info — 9/10/2017 10:24:02 PM

Knowing and not knowing

First annual LogiCal-LA conference in January of 2017

[2MAR$] 400-million-year-old fish fossil reveals jaw structure linked to humans......“Th...

2MAR$ — 8/17/2017 11:39:52 PM

400-million-year-old fish fossil reveals jaw structure linked to humans......“The fossil reveals, in intricate detail, the jaw structure of this ancient fish, which is part of the evolutionary lineage that ultimately led to humans,” said Ms Hu from the ANU Research School of Earth Science. The jaw joint in this ancient fish is still in the human skull, but is now part of the middle ear.”

Read more : geologypage.com
Follow us: @geologypage on Twitter | geologypage on Facebook

[2MAR$] This 100-Million-Year-Old Bird Trapped in Amber Is The Best We've Ever Seen (no ...

2MAR$ — 6/9/2017 2:20:21 AM

This 100-Million-Year-Old Bird Trapped in Amber Is The Best We've Ever Seen (no Fossil Record, brummy or Greg-e-poo? :o) )

"It's the most complete and detailed view we've ever had," one of the team behind the discovery, Ryan McKellar from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada, told New Scientist.

"Seeing something this complete is amazing. It's just stunning."

The team suspects that the little bird fell into a pool of conifer sap soon after it hatched, and got trapped in the tar-like liquid.

Interestingly enough, despite being such an important part of our understanding of the prehistoric world, scientists still aren't entirely sure of the exact chemistry at play in the amber preservation process.

Full amber sample. Credit: Lida Xing, Jingmai K. O'Connor, Ryan C. McKellar, Luis M. Chiappe, Kuowei Tseng, Gang Li, Ming Bai

Close-up of the wing. Credit: Ming Bai

What we do know is that after animals get stuck in tree resin, it starts to harden, and if you have the right levels of pressure and temperature, it will transform into a semi-fossilised substance called copal.

"The speed of this process varies tremendously depending on the conditions," Brian Palmer explains for The Washington Post.

"Scientists don't agree on when resin officially becomes copal, or when copal officially becomes amber. Some say that amber must be at least 2 million years old, but that cutoff is arbitrary."

Unfortunately, while it looks almost good as new, sitting in that amber, the bird's flesh will have likely broken down into pure carbon, which means its DNA is probably long gone.

But what we can glean from this specimen is the fact that it was probably a member of the so-called opposite birds, or Enantiornithes - a group of prehistoric birds, thought to have evolved at the same time as the ancestors of modern birds, but for some reason died off with the non-avian dinosaurs.

"In appearance, opposite birds likely resembled modern birds, but they had a socket-and-ball joint in their shoulders where modern birds have a ball-and-socket joint - hence the name," Michael Le Page reports for New Scientist.

"They also had claws on their wings, and jaws and teeth rather than beaks - but at the time the hatchling lived, the ancestors of modern birds had not yet evolved beaks either.

You can see the rest of the images of the amber below:

Close-up of foot. Credit: Xing Lida

Close-up of claw. Credit: Xing Lida

Reconstruction. Credit: Cheung Chung Tat

The find has been published in Gondwana Research.