"You don't see radio changing gradually and suddenly become radar. #Darwin's theory doesn't work for #technology, and we have to make a new observation."

- W Brian Arthur at SFI today

#evolution #innovation #invention

"Novel technologies are constructed from existing technologies. These offer themselves as components for the construction of further technologies."

- W Brian Arthur at SFI today

#evolution #innovation #invention #technology #engineering #design
Unlike the two-parent #inheritance typical to (but not ubiquitous among) #complex organisms, #technology inherits features from n parents - a "vast ancestral #network" more like horizontal gene transfer networks in #bacteria.

W Brian Arthur on sumulating #invention on a chip:
Does #Archaeology support the Theory of the #AdjacentPossible - that #innovation is combinatorial, persistent, cumulative?

In short, yes. SFI's Tim Kohler on the #Paleolithic data of #technology #evolution & the #prehistory of the infamous "hockeystick" curve:

😉 @SAPIENS_org
#Economist Roger Koppl of @SyracuseU presents a model for the #AdjacentPossible at SFI.

Output = "a combinatorial explosion" or #singularity, albeit one that arguably occurred millions of years ago, or in the distant future (since the model doesn't specify t = 0):
"We can't have universal models if organisms differ. But most of our models are universal. So how do our models need to differ for species-specific #search?"

- @toppofelin (@UniofOxford) reminds listeners at SFI today that we live in worlds, plural:
#umwelt #suchbild #affordance

More from Science

Hugh Everett's birthday! Pioneer of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Let us celebrate by thinking about ontological extravagance. I will do so by way of analogy, because I have found that everyone loves analogies and nobody ever willfully misconstrues them.


We look at the night sky and see photons arriving to us, emitted by distant stars. Let's contrast two different theories about how stars emit photons.

One theory says, we know how stars shine, and our equations predict that they emit photons roughly uniformly in all directions. Call this the "Many-Photons Interpretation" (MPI).

But! Others object. That is *so many photons*. Most of which we don't observe, and can't observe, since they're moving away at the speed of light. It's too ontologically extravagant to posit a huge number of unobservable things!

So they suggest a "Photon Collapse Interpretation." According to this theory, the photons emitted toward us actually exist. But photons that would be emitted in directions we will never observe simply collapse into utter non-existence.

You May Also Like

This is NONSENSE. The people who take photos with their books on instagram are known to be voracious readers who graciously take time to review books and recommend them to their followers. Part of their medium is to take elaborate, beautiful photos of books. Die mad, Guardian.


THEY DO READ THEM, YOU JUDGY, RACOON-PICKED TRASH BIN


If you come for Bookstagram, i will fight you.

In appreciation, here are some of my favourite bookstagrams of my books: (photos by lit_nerd37, mybookacademy, bookswrotemystory, and scorpio_books)
“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]