Bill @wjbeaver@qoto.org

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#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths #qotojournal #biology #evolution #economy #incomedistribution #anthropology #culturalevolution

Stephen Jay Gould once stated that human cultural evolution is Lamarkian rather than Darwinian. Lamarkian can be a trigger word for some biologists so I will refrain from defending it. There are differences. Cultural transmission is much different than genetic transmission and the method of transmission is different, not discrete like genes, there is no evidence of memes like Dawkins has suggested. In addition, there are no lineages as such. Darwin had no idea of transmission either. Dawkins's attempt at memes is based on the fact that humans are biological entities subject to Darwinian evolution and culture is a human phenotype and thus is subject to Darwinian evolution. This idea has been accepted and rejected at different times by the social sciences, mainly because of the stigma of Social Darwinism and the failure of Darwinian Evolution to provide coherent answers. Yet, culture is still a biological artifact, like an ant hill is a biological artifact so somehow this conceptual gap needs to be closed.

Lewens, Tim. “Cultural Evolution.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/evolution-cultural/.

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#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths #qotojournal #biology #evolution #dawnchorus

https://wjbeaver.wixsite.com/mysite/post/what-is-the-dawn-chorus

#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths #qotojournal #biology #evolution #economy #incomedistribution #simpleeconomy

In biology, there is the concept of constraint, what physical and chemical laws impose on the possible direction of evolutionary change. Adam Smith came up with the idea of “the invisible hand of the market.” Using ideas from statistical mechanics, models have shown simple rules of exchange to be a possible valid constraint in economics. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with a so-called “free market.” A simple model always reaches an equilibrium of inequality in income distribution. One can argue that this is a toy model of a very complex system. Yet toy models can reveal underlying structure. The current and historic wealth distribution data show a similar structure but even worse inequality. One takeaway from this is that an individual will win or lose in a market not because of any latent talent but just dumb luck. This is an equilibrium model and any complex system will be far from equilibrium and complexity can perhaps mediate this dismal condition. A fair market would require a fair distribution of income which also favors individual human autonomy and heterogeneity. How to build this fair market? I have found nothing that touches on this, perhaps the writings of the late David Graeber are a start.

Chakrabarti, Bikas K., Anirban Chakraborti, Satya R. Chakravarty, and Arnab Chatterjee. Econophysics of Income and Wealth Distributions. 1st edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Shout out to https://mastodon.social/@marshall_0i for turning me onto Dan McShea.

Rosenberg, Alexander, and Daniel W. McShea. Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008.

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@marshall_0i thanks will check this out.

#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths #qotojournal #biology #evolution

I continue to hear from scientists and non scientists alike that biological life evolves through more complex forms. I would argue that the bacterial assemblages in a biogel are at least as complex as any organism. An alternative is not to think about how life has changed but what it has done. Life survives, it continues, 4 billion years and counting. It does this by constantly expanding into and modifying new environments. This is accomplished by budding out new states of complexity, the major transitions of life are real but there is no goal of more, there is no goal, the result, however, has been survival.

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Found this from NPR "Hidden Brain." Foundational paper on weak ties

Granovetter, Mark S. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78, no. 6, 1973, pp. 1360–1380. SNAP: Stanford.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/225469

#ornithology #birds #informationtheory #network #dawnchorus #networkdynamics #gotojournal #complexsystems

Hye my next article will be about the Dawn Chorus. Does anyone study this?

@seldoncrisis Panspermia cannot be ruled out but it would kick the question of the origin of life way down the road. I do bet that life is a feature of the Universe, not just the earth. Panspermia is sort of the 180 degree opposite of life originating on Earth, still a single genisi but somewhere else. i would argue for a multiple genesis, gas clouds birth stars, stars birth planets, planets birth life, life leaves the planet, etc. This would allow for the variation to allow Darwinian evolution to happen.

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There is an idea in biology called folk biology. Ordinary people know what things are. They know what a dog is although dogs come in a wide range of sizes, colors, and shapes. Hunter gatherer societies know what a species is to the level of any trained naturalist yet defining the term species in biology is an ongoing struggle. So to with other terms like gene or even individual. There is a problem with meaning, we know what objects are but when we delve into meaning all sorts of issues appear. So we drop meaning and look at knowledge. How do we have knowledge of an object?

https://wjbeaver.wixsite.com/mysite/post/what-is-a-chair

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@ambihelical @freemo thanks

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I can't seem to get the Latex to work in Markdown. Is is that I can't see it with my browser? How do I fix this? (I use Chrome or Brave)

example: \ (x+y=z\ )