Category Archives: Evolution

Links and Comments: The Game of Life; Authoritarianism; Conservatives and the Feudal System

Posted on 2 January 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT, from last week’s Tuesday Science section: The Lasting Lessons of John Conway’s Game of Life. (Print title: “Life, In All Its Glory” with subtitle “Fifty year on, a game still offers lessons about simplicity, complexity and uncertain.”) The article … Continue reading →

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The Afterlives, Part 2

Posted on 8 November 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

I read a striking insight somewhere recently, but don’t remember where it was or who said it. The insight flips inside out the standard belief (at least among Christian faiths) that living a good life gets you into heaven, so … Continue reading →

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Notes for the Book: Magical Thinking, Cognitive Dissonance, Group-Thinking

Posted on 30 September 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Extending thoughts from previous posts about the future of enlightenment and similar matters. About group-thinking and how people get along in their lives just fine without understanding how the world actually works (as well-established by physics, chemistry, biology including evolution, … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Loners, Law and Religion, Our Anti-Science Leaders, the Roots of Science Denial

Posted on 23 May 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Atlantic: How Loners Are an Evolutionary Insurance Policy This echoes my comments about how diversity is needed in the human race because different attitudes and skills may be needed in situations that require different ways to survive. Though the article … Continue reading →

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Yuval Noah Harari, HOMO DEUS: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017; 2015 in Israel)

Posted on 7 February 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This is, in effect, a sequel to SAPIENS. Top level summary: It opens with a long prologue: now that humanity has largely overcome famine, plague, and war, what next? Three possibilities: immortality, happiness, divinity. However these are predictions; this book … Continue reading →

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Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015)

Posted on 2 February 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) This is a history of the human species in the context of “Big History” – the first page sketches the history of the entire universe as a backdrop – and … Continue reading →

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Peter Watts essay: “Understanding Sarah Palin, or, God Is In the Wattles”: Summary and Comments

Posted on 21 December 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

From the book Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays (Tachyon, November 2019), a selection of posts from the blog of Peter Watts, which has been running since 2007. Watts is the noted author of high … Continue reading →

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Carel Van Schaik & Kai Michel, THE GOOD BOOK OF HUMAN NATURE: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible (2016): Introduction

Posted on 19 December 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a fascinating book because it describes how there really is some rationale (if not reason or logic) to the stories in the Bible. It’s a set of answers to the general question, a sort of meta-question that one … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Trump vs California; Rural America vs the big cities

Posted on 19 October 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s another. Paul Krugman, Sept. 20th: Trump Declares War on California. Subtitled: “It’s a liberal state, so it must be punished.” I’m on a number of right-wing mailing lists, and I try to at least skim what they’re going on … Continue reading →

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Dawkins v Wilson on Group Selection

Posted on 17 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

A minor irritant in Dawkins’ book just discussed is that he several times describes claims by other scientists and then patiently explains why they are wrong. In one case it’s a recently published paper in a journal. In another he … Continue reading →

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