Dark Skin, Blue Eyes – the Original Europeans. Very different from 19th century racist notions.
Human Altruism and Psycopathy. Both are found in our genes.
Gaia, daughter of Pangloss. Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis as Rehashed Religion
Humans Work Best in Cooperative Groups. We have what’s probably the highest developed group identity. We also have what may be unique, the ability to reflect on membership of a group and maybe change it.
Why Only Some Children Bounce Back From Bad Childhoods. Kids as ‘orchids’ or ‘dandelions’: and the ‘orchids’ are often superior if properly raised.
Evolution Prevented By Competition. Most of the history of life is about changelessness, not evolution. A relentless struggle for existence produces creatures good at winning that particular struggle, not creatures that can open up new possibilities.
Should We Fear Alien Civilisations? Suggesting that if they are there, they would have seen us through telescopes much better than we have used to find thousands of exoplanets.
And So Say All of Me. Unlike a computer, our brains seem to work as an ensemble, several separate centres working together, or occasionally working at cross purposes.
Gifts Close to Madness? The odd way in which we became human, and the ancestral features we still retain. Giftedness as a mental abnormality, and closely tied to things we class as maladjustment or madness. And ‘Behind every Great Man there’s a Great Ape’.
The Unnatural Nature of Commerce. Far from arising from human nature, it is a gross distortion of what we mostly are.
Is Giftedness Tied to Cultural Values? What’s mistaken and what’s useful in Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment (a geographic / historic survey of famous names, mostly dead white males.) How he fails to mention evidence that most US creativity comes from recent arrivals, while being fully assimilated appears to depress creativity.
Frankenstein – how the original story was very different from later presentations.
Mice more evolved than humans. DNA studies show that mice have had the strongest Natural Selection pressures. Apes (including humans) are less evolved than the average mammal in terms of their DNA..
Humans and Chimps. In terms of DNA, chimps have had the most evolution.
Superorganisms – Ant Nests and Human Religions. Some more parallels.
Big fierce animals are losers. The monsters of the past mostly perished without issue.
Mammals that ate dinosaurs. (But still went extinct, with smaller mammals being our shared ancestors.)
The Decline of US Science. Bell Labs did good work which led on to useful products. But modern business thinks short-term and neglects such things.
The Large Hadron Collider in 2008. One Tetravolt is about the same energy as a flying mosquito. But if you can squeeze that sort of energy into a space about a million million times smaller than a mosquito, interesting things happen.
More Science Articles here and here.
Long Revolution 