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Man and computer evolution  http://imfunny.net/man-and-computer-evolution/

CU-Boulder Research Associate John Hoffecker said there is abundant fossil and archaeological evidence for the evolution of the human mind, including its unique power to create a potentially infinite variety of thoughts expressed in the form of sentences, art and technologies. He attributes the evolving power of the mind to the formation of what he calls the "super-brain," or collective mind, an event that took place in Africa no later than 75,000 years ago.

In an illustration more typical of Pinker's cultural taste, he quotes the opening scene of Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall, when the young Alvy Singer tells a psychiatrist that he won't do his homework because the universe is expanding. If the universe is going to fall apart, he says, what is the point of human existence? "What has the universe got to do with it?" his mother wails at him. "You' re here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!" That kind of reductionism is confusing two levels of analysis," Pinker says. "We have meaning and purpose here inside our heads, being the organisms that we are. We have brains that make it impossible for us to live our lives except in terms of meaning and purpose. The fact that you can look at meaning and purpose in one way, as a neuro-psychological phenomenon, doesn' t mean you can' t look at it in another way, in terms of how we live our lives." The collection of genes known as Steven Pinker made the point most forcibly in How The Mind Works, where he explained his own decision not to have children - which apparently runs counter to the demands of evolution - and says that if his genes don't like it, "they can take a running jump." http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3926387,00.html Steven Pinker

"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac

"human exceptionalism"

"Theoretisch ist nicht klar, welche Effekte überwiegen. Und die empirischen Befunde sind widersprüchlich. Während einige Studien positive Effekte ermitteln, sehen andere negative Effekte durch zu heterogene Belegschaften und Führungsteams. Die Kommunikation und Kooperation wird schwieriger, das Vertrauen schwindet, wenn die Mitarbeiter zu unterschiedlich sind oder sich zu unterschiedlich fühlen. Forscher sprechen von einer „sozialen Kategorisierung". Es können Konflikte aufbrechen. Hauptgrund für die Verschlechterung ist wohl die Unerfahrenheit der neuen weiblichen Topmanager. Im Durchschnitt waren sie acht Jahre jünger als die bisherigen männlichen Mitglieder in den Verwaltungsräten. Sie waren zwar höher gebildet, hatten aber weit seltener ein Unternehmen geführt.."

"mmerhin konnten Verhaltensökonomen auch zeigen, dass Menschen entgegen dem klassischen Menschenbild der Ökonomie auch von sich aus zum altruistischen Bestrafen neigen: Sie investieren Zeit, Mühe und Ressourcen, um das soziale Fehlverhalten anderer Menschen zu ahnden. Sie tun es sogar dann, wenn sie selber kein bisschen davon profitieren. Allerdings verzichten sie gerne auf diese Aufgabe, wenn sich andere Akteure anbieten, die diese unangenehme Arbeit für sie verrichten können, Wissenschaftler nennen dieses Verhalten "social loafing" - soziale Faulheit. Dieses urmenschliche Streben nach Arbeitserleichterung ist nach Ansicht einiger Evolutionstheoretiker zugleich ein wesentlicher Grund für die Entstehung der großen monotheistischen Religionen: Wer könnte die Aufgabe des obersten Polizisten und Richters besser erledigen als ein Gott, der praktischerweise allwissend ist, allmächtig und außerdem immer am besten weiß, wo es moralisch gerade langgeht? Für diese originelle These gibt es erste empirische Belege, etwa aus der ethnologischen Feldforschung. In einer neuen Studie konnte nun ein Forscherteam um die Psychologin Kristin Laurin von der kanadischen University of Waterloo nachweisen, dass sich auch Menschen im Labor mehr oder weniger gemäß der evolutionstheoretischen Hypothese verhalten (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, online)."

"In the August issue of the journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Park shares the results of a series of studies with college-age women in which she finds that when women think about romance, they become less interested in studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. College-age men, however, can get interested in romance without any impact on their engagement with math and science..."

Richer, fatter, living longer, more indebted, drunker, better connected, politically disillusioned: there's no metric that can describe whether we are happier or living better lives after 13 years of Labour. But there are plenty to show how we have changed during a period of fulsome spending, borrowing and technological transformation;

Richard Brodie's essay describing the origins and evolution of consciousness. Level 1 - people are not aware - Level 2 - people understand - Level 3 - people understand, act and add value

This is a place to learn more about values and cultural changes in societies all over the world. No surprise that American comes out badly on evolution and the Big Bang, but what always strikes me when Russia is included in the list is how skeptical citizens are to conventional science. If you poke around the World Values Survey you don't find the Russians to be a particularly religious nation, at least compared to Poland or the United States, despite a general shift back toward nominal Orthodox Christian affiliation after the fall of Communism.

I think game theory can help explain our epidemic of distrust - and how we can fix it! So, to understand all this...

During World War I, peace broke out. It was Christmas 1914 on the Western Front. Despite strict orders not to chillax with the enemy, British and German soldiers left their trenches, crossed No Man's Land, and gathered to bury their dead, exchange gifts, and play games. Meanwhile: it's 2017, the West has been at peace for decades, and wow, we suck at trust. Surveys show that, over the past forty years, fewer and fewer people say they trust each other. So here's our puzzle: Why, even in peacetime, do friends become enemies? And why, even in wartime, do enemies become friends?