text:
Life principles
Lifelogging
Trips to take
CV / résumé
Sapiens (Kindle highlights)
Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother. (p. 5)
Humans first evolved in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago from an earlier genus of apes called Australopithecus. (p. 5)
From about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home, at one and the same time, to several human species. (p. 8)
The fact is that a jumbo brain is a jumbo drain on the body. It's not easy to carry around, especially when encased inside a massive skull. It's even harder to fuel. In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts for about 2–3 per cent of total body weight, but it consumes 25 per cent of the body's energy when the body is at rest. (p. 9)
Standing up, it's easier to scan the savannah for game or enemies, and arms that are unnecessary for locomotion are freed for other purposes, like throwing stones or signalling. (p. 9)
It takes a tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favoured those capable of forming strong social ties. (p. 10)
Genus Homo's position in the food chain was, until quite recently, solidly in the middle. For millions of years, humans hunted smaller creatures and gathered what they could, all the while being hunted by larger predators. (p. 11)
In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. (p. 11)
The advent of cooking enabled humans to eat more kinds of food, to devote less time to eating, and to make do with smaller teeth and shorter intestines. Some scholars believe there is a direct link between the advent of cooking, the shortening of the human intestinal track, and the growth of the human brain. Since long intestines and large brains are both massive energy consumers, it's hard to have both. (p. 12)
1–4 per cent of the unique human DNA of modern populations in the Middle East and Europe is Neanderthal DNA. (p. 16)
The last remains of Homo soloensis are dated to about 50,000 years ago. Homo denisova disappeared shortly thereafter. Neanderthals made their exit roughly 30,000 years ago. The last dwarf-like humans vanished from Flores Island about 12,000 years ago. (p. 18)
The period from about 70,000 years ago to about 30,000 years ago witnessed the invention of boats, oil lamps, bows and arrows and needles (essential for sewing warm clothing). (p. 21)
The appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, constitutes the Cognitive Revolution. (p. 21)
As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled. (p. 24)
Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. (p. 25)
Sociological research has shown that the maximum 'natural' size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. (p. 26)
Over the last few centuries such companies have become the main players in the economic arena, and we have grown so used to them that we forget they exist only in our imagination. (p. 30)
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. (p. 32)
The Cognitive Revolution is accordingly the point when history declared its independence from biology. (p. 37)
Our eating habits, our conflicts and our sexuality are all the result of the way our hunter-gatherer minds interact with our current post-industrial environment, with its mega-cities, aeroplanes, telephones and computers. This environment gives us more material resources and longer lives than those enjoyed by any previous generation, but it often makes us feel alienated, depressed and pressured. (p. 40)
Today we may be living in high-rise apartments with over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah. (p. 41)
Any reconstruction of the lives of ancient hunter-gatherers from the surviving artefacts is extremely problematic. (p. 42)
We hardly notice how ubiquitous our stuff is until we have to move it to a new house. Foragers moved house every month, every week, and sometimes even every day, toting whatever they had on their backs. (p. 43)
Dogs were used for hunting and fighting, and as an alarm system against wild beasts and human intruders. With the passing of generations, the two species co-evolved to communicate well with each other. Dogs that were most attentive to the needs and feelings of their human companions got extra care and food, and were more likely to survive. Simultaneously, dogs learned to manipulate people for their own needs. A 15,000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal.4 In some cases dead dogs were even buried ceremoniously, much like humans. (p. 46)
Members of a band knew each other very intimately, and were surrounded throughout their lives by friends and relatives. Loneliness and privacy were rare. (p. 46)
The average person lived many months without seeing or hearing a human from outside of her own band, and she encountered throughout her life no more than a few hundred humans. (p. 46)
On top of that, foragers enjoyed a lighter load of household chores. They had no dishes to wash, no carpets to vacuum, no floors to polish, no nappies to change and no bills to pay. (p. 50)
Hunter-gatherers living today in the most inhospitable of habitats – such as the Kalahari Desert – work on average for just thirty-five to forty-five hours a week. They hunt only one day out of three, and gathering takes up just three to six hours daily. (p. 50)
Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. (p. 51)
Without the discovery of as yet unavailable research tools, we will probably never know what the ancient foragers believed or what political dramas they experienced. Yet it is vital to ask questions for which no answers are available, otherwise we might be tempted to dismiss 60,000 of 70,000 years of human history with the excuse that 'the people who lived back then did nothing of importance'. (p. 61)
Trekkers visiting the Siberian tundra, the deserts of central Australia and the Amazonian rainforest believe that they have entered pristine landscapes, virtually untouched by human hands. But that's an illusion. The foragers were there before us and they brought about dramatic changes even in the densest jungles and the most desolate wildernesses. (p. 62)
Their first achievement was the colonisation of Australia some 45,000 years ago. (p. 63)
Were the Australian extinction an isolated event, we could grant humans the benefit of the doubt. But the historical record makes Homo sapiens look like an ecological serial killer. (p. 67)
By 10,000 BC, humans already inhabited the most southern point in America, the island of Tierra del Fuego at the continent's southern tip. (p. 70)
Around 14,000 BC, the chase took some of them from north-eastern Siberia to Alaska. Of course, they didn't know they were discovering a new world. For mammoth and man alike, Alaska was a mere extension of Siberia. (p. 70)
The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation, a place where animals and plants unknown in Africa and Asia had evolved and thrived. (p. 71)
Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens arrival, most of these unique species were gone. According to current estimates, within that short interval, North America lost thirty-four out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals. South America lost fifty out of sixty. (p. 71)
The inevitable conclusion is that the first wave of Sapiens colonisation was one of the biggest and swiftest ecological disasters to befall the animal kingdom. (p. 72)
Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. (p. 74)
All this changed about 10,000 years ago, when Sapiens began to devote almost all their time and effort to manipulating the lives of a few animal and plant species. From sunrise to sunset humans sowed seeds, watered plants, plucked weeds from the ground and led sheep to prime pastures. This work, they thought, would provide them with more fruit, grain and meat. It was a revolution in the way humans lived – the Agricultural Revolution. (p. 77)
Today, scholars agree that agriculture sprang up in other parts of the world not by the action of Middle Eastern farmers exporting their revolution but entirely independently. (p. 78)
Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. (p. 79)
The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa. (p. 80)
The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. (p. 80)
The currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes. Just as the economic success of a company is measured only by the number of dollars in its bank account, not by the happiness of its employees, so the evolutionary success of a species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA. If no more DNA copies remain, the species is extinct, just as a company without money is bankrupt. If a species boasts many DNA copies, it is a success, and the species flourishes. From such a perspective, 1,000 copies are always better than a hundred copies. This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions. Yet why should individuals care about this evolutionary calculus? Why would any sane person lower his or her standard of living just to multiply the number of copies of the Homo sapiens genome? Nobody agreed to this deal: the Agricultural Revolution was a trap. (p. 83)
The currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes. Just as the economic success of a company is measured only by the number of dollars in its bank account, not by the happiness of its employees, so the evolutionary success of a species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA. (p. 83)
This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions. (p. 83)
As more effort was directed towards cereal cultivation, there was less time to gather and hunt wild species. The foragers became farmers. (p. 85)
Then why didn't humans abandon farming when the plan backfired? Partly because it took generations for the small changes to accumulate and transform society and, by then, nobody remembered that they had ever lived differently. (p. 87)
One of history's few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. (p. 87)
It's likely that the cultural centre of Göbekli Tepe was somehow connected to the initial domestication of wheat by humankind and of humankind by wheat. (p. 91)
This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution. (p. 97)
Agricultural Revolution made the future far more important than it had ever been before. Farmers must always keep the future in mind and must work in its service. The agricultural economy was based on a seasonal cycle of production, comprising long months of cultivation followed by short peak periods of harvest. (p. 100)
The Agricultural Revolution made the future far more important than it had ever been before. Farmers must always keep the future in mind and must work in its service. The agricultural economy was based on a seasonal cycle of production, comprising long months of cultivation followed by short peak periods of harvest. (p. 100)
History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets. (p. 101)
The handful of millennia separating the Agricultural Revolution from the appearance of cities, kingdoms and empires was not enough time to allow an instinct for mass cooperation to evolve. (p. 102)
While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail's pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth. (p. 103)
There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. (p. 111)
Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. (p. 115)
Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. (p. 115)
The inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. If a single individual changes his or her beliefs, or even dies, it is of little importance. However, if most individuals in the network die or change their beliefs, the inter-subjective phenomenon will mutate or disappear. (p. 117)
It follows that in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order. (p. 118)
Between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, some unknown Sumerian geniuses invented a system for storing and processing information outside their brains, one that was custom-built to handle large amounts of mathematical data. The Sumerians thereby released their social order from the limitations of the human brain, opening the way for the appearance of cities, kingdoms and empires. The data-processing system invented by the Sumerians is called 'writing'. (p. 122)
The earliest Sumerian script, like modern mathematical symbols and musical notation, are partial scripts. You can use mathematical script to make calculations, but you cannot use it to write love poems. (p. 124)
Between 3000 BC and 2500 BC more and more signs were added to the Sumerian system, gradually transforming it into a full script that we today call cuneiform. By 2500 BC, kings were using cuneiform to issue decrees, priests were using it to record oracles, and less exalted citizens were using it to write personal letters. (p. 126)
The most important impact of script on human history is precisely this: it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world. Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy. (p. 130)
Every piece of information that can be translated into mathematical script is stored, spread and processed with mind-boggling speed and efficiency. (p. 130)
It's a proven fact that most rich people are rich for the simple reason that they were born into a rich family, while most poor people will remain poor throughout their lives simply because they were born into a poor family. (p. 136)
Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths. That is one good reason to study history. (p. 144)
Most of the laws, norms, rights and obligations that define manhood and womanhood reflect human imagination more than biological reality. (p. 148)
It is far more likely that even though the precise definition of 'man' and 'woman' varies between cultures, there is some universal biological reason why almost all cultures valued manhood over womanhood. We do not know what this reason is. There are plenty of theories, none of them convincing. (p. 153)
Another theory explains that masculine dominance results not from strength but from aggression. Millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent than women. Women can match men as far as hatred, greed and abuse are concerned, but when push comes to shove, the theory goes, men are more willing to engage in raw physical violence. (p. 155)
The result of these different survival strategies – so the theory goes – is that men have been programmed to be ambitious and competitive, and to excel in politics and business, whereas women have tended to move out of the way and dedicate their lives to raising children. (p. 158)
This network of artificial instincts is called 'culture'. (p. 163)
Just as medieval culture did not manage to square chivalry with Christianity, so the modern world fails to square liberty with equality. (p. 165)
From such a vantage point it becomes crystal clear that history is moving relentlessly towards unity. The sectioning of Christianity and the collapse of the Mongol Empire are just speed bumps on history's highway. (p. 166)
Merchants, conquerors and prophets were the first people who managed to transcend the binary evolutionary division, 'us vs them', and to foresee the potential unity of humankind. (p. 172)
Some societies tried to solve the problem by establishing a central barter system that collected products from specialist growers and manufacturers and distributed them to those who needed them. The largest and most famous such experiment was conducted in the Soviet Union, and it failed miserably. 'Everyone would work according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs' turned out in practice into 'everyone would work as little as they can get away with, and receive as much as they could grab'. (p. 176)
Money is not coins and banknotes. Money is anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services. (p. 177)
Cowry shells were used as money for about 4,000 years all over (p. 178)
In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. (p. 178)
Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. (p. 180)
People continued to speak mutually incomprehensible languages, obey different rulers and worship distinct gods, but all believed in gold and silver and in gold and silver coins. (p. 184)
Even if Indians still had no real use for gold, the fact that Mediterranean people wanted it would be enough to make the Indians value it. (p. 185)
Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. (p. 186)
When everything is convertible, and when trust depends on anonymous coins and cowry shells, it corrodes local traditions, intimate relations and human values, replacing them with the cold laws of supply and demand. (p. 186)
People rely on money to facilitate cooperation with strangers, but they're afraid it will corrupt human values and intimate relations. (p. 187)
The economic history of humankind is a delicate dance. People rely on money to facilitate cooperation with strangers, but they're afraid it will corrupt human values and intimate relations. (p. 187)
Empires were one of the main reasons for the drastic reduction in human diversity. The imperial steamroller gradually obliterated the unique characteristics of numerous peoples (such as the Numantians), forging out of them new and much larger groups. (p. 191)
Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, 'we' and 'they'. (p. 195)
As of 2014, the world is still politically fragmented, but states are fast losing their independence. Not one of them is really able to execute independent economic policies, to declare and wage wars as it pleases. (p. 207)
Today religion is often considered a source of discrimination, disagreement and disunion. Yet, in fact, religion has been the third great unifier of humankind, alongside money and empires. (p. 210)
Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. (p. 213)
Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. (p. 218)
Over the last two millennia, monotheists repeatedly tried to strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition. (p. 218)
The monotheist religions expelled the gods through the front door with a lot of fanfare, only to take them back in through the side window. Christianity, for example, developed its own pantheon of saints, whose cults differed little from those of the polytheistic gods. (p. 219)
The Christian saints did not merely resemble the old polytheistic gods. Often they were these very same gods in disguise. For example, the chief goddess of Celtic Ireland prior to the coming of Christianity was Brigid. When Ireland was Christianised, Brigid too was baptised. She became St Brigit, who to this day is the most revered saint in Catholic Ireland. (p. 220)
Monotheists have to practise intellectual gymnastics to explain how an all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good God allows so much suffering in the world. (p. 220)
Theologians have written countless books to answer such questions. Some find the answers convincing. Some don't. What's undeniable is that monotheists have a hard time dealing with the Problem of Evil. (p. 221)
So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief. (p. 221)
Logically, it is impossible. Either you believe in a single omnipotent God or you believe in two opposing powers, neither of which is omnipotent. Still, humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions. (p. 222)
In fact, monotheism, as it has played out in history, is a kaleidoscope of monotheist, dualist, polytheist and animist legacies, jumbling together under a single divine umbrella. The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. (p. 223)
Even the rich and famous are rarely satisfied. They too are haunted by ceaseless cares and worries, until sickness, old age and death put a bitter end to them. Everything that one has accumulated vanishes like smoke. Life is a pointless rat race. But how to escape it? (p. 224)
The first principle of monotheist religions is 'God exists. What does He want from me?' The first principle of Buddhism is 'Suffering exists. How do I escape it?' (p. 227)
Whereas liberal humanism seeks as much freedom as possible for individual humans, socialist humanism seeks equality between all humans. (p. 231)
Biologists have since debunked Nazi racial theory. In particular, genetic research conducted after 1945 has demonstrated that the differences between the various human lineages are far smaller than the Nazis postulated. But these conclusions are relatively new. Given the state of scientific knowledge in 1933, Nazi beliefs were hardly outside the pale. The existence of different human races, the superiority of the white race, and the need to protect and cultivate this superior race were widely held beliefs among most Western elites. (p. 232)
Afterwards, precisely because Nazi ideology was so racist, racism became discredited in the West. But the change took time. White supremacy remained a mainstream ideology in American politics at least until the 1960s. (p. 234)
This is one of the distinguishing marks of history as an academic discipline – the better you know a particular historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. (p. 238)
This approach is sometimes called memetics. It assumes that, just as organic evolution is based on the replication of organic information units called 'genes', so cultural evolution is based on the replication of cultural information units called 'memes'. (p. 242)
No matter what you call it – game theory, postmodernism or memetics – the dynamics of history are not directed towards enhancing human well-being. (p. 243)
Like evolution, history disregards the happiness of individual organisms. And individual humans, for their part, are usually far too ignorant and weak to influence the course of history to their own advantage. (p. 243)
The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. (p. 251)
After centuries of extensive scientific research, biologists admit that they still don't have any good explanation for how brains produce consciousness. Physicists admit that they don't know what caused the Big Bang, or how to reconcile quantum mechanics with the theory of general relativity. (p. 252)
The willingness to admit ignorance has made modern science more dynamic, supple and inquisitive than any previous tradition of knowledge. (p. 253)
Scientists themselves are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control the flow of money; many scientists do, in fact, act out of pure intellectual curiosity. However, only rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda. (p. 273)
The feedback loop between science, empire and capital has arguably been history's chief engine for the past 500 years. (p. 274)
In 1775 Asia accounted for 80 per cent of the world economy. The combined economies of India and China alone represented two-thirds of global production. In comparison, Europe was an economic dwarf. (p. 280)
Today all humans are, to a much greater extent than they usually want to admit, European in dress, thought and taste. They may be fiercely anti-European in their rhetoric, but almost everyone on the planet views politics, medicine, war and economics through European eyes, and listens to music written in European modes with words in European languages. Even today's burgeoning Chinese economy, which may soon regain its global primacy, is built on a European model of production and finance. (p. 280)
What potential did Europe develop in the early modern period that enabled it to dominate the late modern world? There are two complementary answers to this question: modern science and capitalism. (p. 282)
The Far East and the Islamic world produced minds as intelligent and curious as those of Europe. However, between 1500 and 1950 they did not produce anything that comes even close to Newtonian physics or Darwinian biology. (p. 283)
In his refusal to admit ignorance, Columbus was still a medieval man. He was convinced he knew the whole world, and even his momentous discovery failed to convince him otherwise. (p. 287)
Their superior knowledge had obvious practical advantages. Without such knowledge, it is unlikely that a ridiculously small number of Britons could have succeeded in governing, oppressing and exploiting so many hundreds of millions of Indians for two centuries. (p. 300)
There are very few scientific disciplines that did not begin their lives as servants to imperial growth and that do not owe a large proportion of their discoveries, collections, buildings and scholarships to the generous help of army officers, navy captains and imperial governors. (p. 304)
Banks are allowed to loan $10 for every dollar they actually possess, which means that 90 per cent of all the money in our bank accounts is not covered by actual coins and notes. (p. 306)
What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world. (p. 307)
Credit enables us to build the present at the expense of the future. It's founded on the assumption that our future resources are sure to be far more abundant than our present resources. A host of new and wonderful opportunities open up if we can build things in the present using future income. (p. 308)
Over the last 500 years the idea of progress convinced people to put more and more trust in the future. This trust created credit; credit brought real economic growth; and growth strengthened the trust in the future and opened the way for even more credit. (p. 310)
Smith's claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. (p. 311)
Egoism is altruism. (p. 311)
The idea that 'The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production' sounds trivial. Yet it was alien to most people throughout history. (p. 312)
Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill. (p. 315)
Today some people warn that twenty-first-century corporations are accumulating too much power. Early modern history shows just how far that can go if businesses are allowed to pursue their self-interest unchecked. (p. 322)
VOC ruled Indonesia for close to 200 years. Only in 1800 did the Dutch state assume control of Indonesia, making it a Dutch national colony for the following 150 years. Today some people warn that twenty-first-century corporations are accumulating too much power. Early modern history shows just how far that can go if businesses are allowed to pursue their self-interest unchecked. (p. 322)
The nationalisation of Indonesia by the Dutch crown (1800) and of India by the British crown (1858) hardly ended the embrace of capitalism and empire. On the contrary, the connection only grew stronger during the nineteenth century. (p. 325)
Furthermore, the British demanded and received control of Hong Kong, which they proceeded to use as a secure base for drug trafficking (Hong Kong remained in British hands until 1997). In the late nineteenth century, about 40 million Chinese, a tenth of the country's population, were opium addicts. (p. 326)
The most enthusiastic advocates of the free market criticise military adventures abroad with as much zeal as welfare programmes at home. They offer governments the same advice that Zen masters offer initiates: just do nothing. (p. 328)
When kings fail to do their jobs and regulate the markets properly, it leads to loss of trust, dwindling credit and economic depression. That was the lesson taught by the Mississippi Bubble of 1719, and anyone who forgot it was reminded by the US housing bubble of 2007, and the ensuing credit crunch and recession. (p. 329)
The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organised and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. (p. 331)
VOC's military campaigns in Indonesia were financed by upstanding Dutch burghers who loved their children, gave to charity, and enjoyed good music and fine art, but had no regard for the suffering of the inhabitants of Java, Sumatra and Malacca. Countless other crimes and misdemeanours accompanied the growth of the modern economy in other parts of the planet. (p. 332)
Much like the Agricultural Revolution, so too the growth of the modern economy might turn out to be a colossal fraud. The human species and the global economy may well keep growing, but many more individuals may live in hunger and want. (p. 333)
At heart, the Industrial Revolution has been a revolution in energy conversion. It has demonstrated again and again that there is no limit to the amount of energy at our disposal. Or, more precisely, that the only limit is set by our ignorance. (p. 339)
Today these animals are often mass-produced in factory-like facilities, their bodies shaped in accordance with industrial needs. They pass their entire lives as cogs in a giant production line, and the length and quality of their existence is determined by the profits and losses of business corporations. Even when the industry takes care to keep them alive, reasonably healthy and well fed, it has no intrinsic interest in the animals' social and psychological needs (except when these have a direct impact on production). (p. 342)
Treating living creatures possessing complex emotional worlds as if they were machines is likely to cause them not only physical discomfort, but also much social stress and psychological frustration. (p. 342)
Just as the Atlantic slave trade did not stem from hatred towards Africans, so the modern animal industry is not motivated by animosity. Again, it is fuelled by indifference. Most people who produce and consume eggs, milk and meat rarely stop to think about the fate of the chickens, cows or pigs whose flesh and emissions they are eating. (p. 343)
The tragedy of industrial agriculture is that it takes great care of the objective needs of animals, while neglecting their subjective needs. (p. 344)
The modern capitalist economy must constantly increase production if it is to survive, like a shark that must swim or suffocate. Yet it's not enough just to produce. Somebody must also buy the products, or industrialists and investors alike will go bust. (p. 347)
Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology ('Just do it!') to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression. (p. 348)
In medieval Europe, aristocrats spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries, whereas peasants lived frugally, minding every penny. Today, the tables have turned. The rich take great care managing their assets and investments, while the less well heeled go into debt buying cars and televisions they don't really need. (p. 348)
The late modern era has seen unprecedented levels not only of violence and horror, but also of peace and tranquillity. Charles Dickens wrote of the French Revolution that 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' This may be true not only of the French Revolution, but of the entire era it heralded. (p. 365)
Most people don't appreciate just how peaceful an era we live in. None of us was alive a thousand years ago, so we easily forget how much more violent the world used to be. (p. 366)
The decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state. Throughout history, most violence resulted from local feuds between families and communities. (p. 367)
There have been periods of relative calm before, as, for example, in Europe between 1871 and 1914, and they always ended badly. But this time it is different. For real peace is not the mere absence of war. Real peace is the implausibility of war. (p. 371)
There is a positive feedback loop between all these four factors. The threat of nuclear holocaust fosters pacifism; when pacifism spreads, war recedes and trade flourishes; and trade increases both the profits of peace and the costs of war. (p. 374)
Most countries no longer engage in full-scale war for the simple reason that they are no longer independent. Though citizens in Israel, Italy, Mexico or Thailand may harbour illusions of independence, the fact is that their governments cannot conduct independent economic or foreign policies, and they are certainly incapable of initiating and conducting full-scale war on their own. (p. 374)
One interesting conclusion is that money does indeed bring happiness. But only up to a point, and beyond that point it has little significance. (p. 381)
Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health. (p. 382)
This raises the possibility that the immense improvement in material conditions over the last two centuries was offset by the collapse of the family and the community. (p. 382)
We thus live in an increasingly lonely world of unravelling communities and families. (p. 382)
But the most important finding of all is that happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations. (p. 382)
When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently even dramatic improvements in objective conditions can leave us dissatisfied. When things deteriorate, expectations shrink, and consequently even a severe illness might leave you pretty much as happy as you were before. (p. 382)
Prophets, poets and philosophers realised thousands of years ago that being satisfied with what you already have is far more important than getting more of what you want. (p. 383)
When we try to guess or imagine how happy other people are now, or how people in the past were, we inevitably imagine ourselves in their shoes. (p. 383)
So maybe Third World discontent is fomented not merely by poverty, disease, corruption and political oppression but also by mere exposure to First World standards. (p. 384)
Suppose science comes up with cures for all diseases, effective anti-ageing therapies and regenerative treatments that keep people indefinitely young. In all likelihood, the immediate result will be an unprecedented epidemic of anger and anxiety. (p. 384)
Potentially a-mortal people are likely to grow averse to taking even the slightest risk, and the agony of losing a spouse, child or close friend will be unbearable. (p. 385)
Some air-conditioning systems are set at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. (p. 387)
He discovered what seems to be a paradox in most people's view of their lives. Take the work involved in raising a child. Kahneman found that when counting moments of joy and moments of drudgery, bringing up a child turns out to be a rather unpleasant affair. It consists largely of changing nappies, washing dishes and dealing with temper tantrums, which nobody likes to do. Yet most parents declare that their children are their chief source of happiness. Does it mean that people don't really know what's good for them? (p. 390)
That's one option. Another is that the findings demonstrate that happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments. Rather, happiness consists in seeing one's life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. (p. 391)
Assessing life minute by minute, medieval people certainly had it rough. However, if they believed the promise of everlasting bliss in the afterlife, they may well have viewed their lives as far more meaningful and worthwhile than modern secular people, who in the long term can expect nothing but complete and meaningless oblivion. (p. 391)
According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experiencing pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might soon disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify. (p. 394)
In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them. (p. 395)
People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them. (p. 395)
Buddha's recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings. (p. 396)
The biologists are right about the past, but the proponents of intelligent design might, ironically, be right about the future. (p. 399)
Tinkering with our genes won't necessarily kill us. But we might fiddle with Homo sapiens to such an extent that we would no longer be Homo sapiens. (p. 404)
We may be fast approaching a new singularity, when all the concepts that give meaning to our world – me, you, men, women, love and hate – will become irrelevant. Anything happening beyond that point is meaningless to us. (p. 411)
We seek comfort in the fantasy that Dr Frankenstein can create only terrible monsters, whom we would have to destroy in order to save the world. We like to tell the story that way because it implies that we are the best of all beings, that there never was and never will be something better than us. (p. 412)
When sputnik and Apollo 11 fired the imagination of the world, everyone began predicting that by the end of the century, people would be living in space colonies on Mars and Pluto. Few of these forecasts came true. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet. (p. 412)
Most people prefer not to think about it. Even the field of bioethics prefers to address another question, 'What is it forbidden to do?' Is it acceptable to carry out genetic experiments on living human beings? On aborted fetuses? On stem cells? Is it ethical to clone sheep? And chimpanzees? And what about humans? All of these are important questions, but it is naïve to imagine that we might simply hit the brakes and stop the scientific projects that are upgrading Homo sapiens into a different kind of being. (p. 413)
But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought. (p. 414)
Unfortunately, the Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of. We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world? (p. 415)
We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. (p. 415)
© 2015-2019 Olivier Bruchez


Marion Walsham was born on the Tweed in 1946 and has spent her life in this beautiful part of Australia.
A double lung transplant in 2009 saved her life from the ravages of the brutal lung disease, Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). It had already taken the lives of her father and brother and the scourge of the disease continued in the family, killing her surviving brother in 2014.
This profound event started her on a journey of gratitude for her donor and his or her family, her own family and the Queensland Lung Transplant Service, based in Brisbane.
Marion has written her story in an effort to reach out to victims of IPF, and as an advocate, to raise awareness of the disease and her concerns about the lack of funding for research.
She is able to share her experiences with the disease as one of the original core of five volunteers involved in the Australian IPF Peer Support Program, conducted through the Lung Foundation Australia.
Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a devastating disease with average survival rates less than most cancers. It afflicts sufferers with disabling shortness of breath and cough.
The only effective treatment is an organ transplant although donor matching is difficult as the lungs of a patient with IPF are so small and contracted.
Patients often die waiting for a transplant or are removed from the waiting list as they become too sick to survive the operation.
Furthermore, the disease may accelerate unpredictably with patients entering a dangerous spiral into complete lung failure.
The following book chronicles one such patient's journey from diagnosis with IPF and subsequent transplant process – an operation which would literally occur just hours before death.
This book is a tribute to all donor families across Australia who donate a loved one's organs or tissues during a time of terrible sadness - the ultimate Gift of Life.
As my life ebbed from the effects of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), my then six-year-old grandson Remy came across the dried bloom of a dandelion.
His little face contorted with anxiety. Would his wish come true now that he had talked about it?
Three hours later, we received news that donor lungs had become available.
Miraculously, the lungs matched and I was subsequently transplanted with two healthy lungs.
My gratitude for my new life lies with my donor and his or her family, the team at the Queensland Lung Transplant Service at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, and my family, including a little boy who wanted so desperately for his Nanny to have healthy new lungs.
Organ and tissue donors and their families make the ultimate gift when they give permission for their organs to be transplanted into another human being.
It was towards the end of 2009. I was on the precipice of life.
With only hours left to live after an acute exacerbation of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), I received news that the donated lungs, which had miraculously become available at the 11th hour, were a match and surgery would proceed.
My donor's life could not be saved, but mine could be with healthy lungs.
It seems incredible that after what was literally a life-saving operation, I was fully conscious nine hours later and ate my first meal 11 hours after that.
I had my first walk while still in the Intensive Care Unit. Two days after my lung transplant surgery I was transferred to a ward.
On day 11, the sun was never brighter, the sky bluer or the grass greener than when I was discharged from hospital and arrived home to start a journey of recovery and renewal.
I celebrated my 63rd birthday 18 days later.
I am inextricably linked to my donor, and his or her family is in my heart.
Recovery to date has been wonderful. It has been a most humbling yet enriching experience.
The process of confronting my mortality has strengthened me.
I was fortunate enough to escape this time around and it has made me very aware of the fragility of life.
The notion of organ donation embracing the extremes of the human condition – life and death – was not new to my family and me.
My father and brother also suffered from IPF and died three months apart in 1990.
Our family all registered as organ donors following their deaths.
Five years later, in 1995, a friend's daughter received a double lung transplant to save her life from the ravages of Cystic Fibrosis. Happily, she continues to be an inspiration to all who know her.
Ironically, you make the decision to register as a donor on the basis that one day you may be able to give the gift of life.
Perhaps one day, I thought, I would be in a position where my organs could save a family from suffering the grief and anguish we had been through over the loss of my father and my brother.
It never occurred to me that I would be on the receiving end of a donated organ.
It is perhaps fortunate that the issue of organ and tissue transplantation does not cross many people's radar. It is evidence that they are alive and well.
But tragedies happen, and without having discussed organ donation your family could be placed in the difficult situation of trying to make a decision at a time when they are not able to think clearly.
Apparently, there is a far greater chance of requiring an organ for transplantation than there ever is of becoming a donor.
With this in mind, the Australian Government initiative, DonateLife, and the non-government Transplant Australia are doing a superb job promoting the cause of organ and tissue donation.
You can discover the facts about organ and tissue donation and the need to discuss your choice with your family at www.donatelife.gov.au or www.transplant.org.au.
I look on my lovely new lungs as being not just for myself. They are for my late brother, who ran out of time while waiting for his transplant.
They are also for my two daughters if, God forbid, they get caught up in the familial condition of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis before treatment or a cure is found.
They have been at the coalface of successful organ transplantation and they have seen the gift of life in its true sense. For them there will always be hope.
In the early days of recovery at home, I would touch my shoulders pretending to reach out to the angels who had saved my life.
In reality I knew who the angels were: my donor and his or her family and the lung transplant team directed by Dr Peter Hopkins at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane.
I recall telling my daughters during philosophical discussions around the family dinner table before they left home to go to university that at the end of the day a woman has to row her own boat.
My father used to put it more eloquently, "Always be a master of your own destiny." Taking control of my health was a natural flow-on from this philosophy.
I was in a familial cluster of this dreadful disease.
There was still no known cause, no cure or treatment for this disease nearly 20 years on from the deaths of my father and brother. To help medical research and find some peace of mind, I took part in a worldwide clinical trial, at The Prince Charles Hospital, for more than two years.
Although results found that I was on the placebo drug, the program helped me psychologically.
From diagnosis in 2006, with the love and support of my family, I stuck to a plan to prepare for any possible future transplant.
Firstly, I sought the best medical treatment available.
I listened to my body, seconded physical and emotional help with Pilates, a dietitian and a masseuse, talked to a psychiatrist and had a surgical procedure called a fundoplication (for severe reflux) that would stand me in good stead for possible transplant surgery.
I know I am lucky to be alive. But I have also been humbled to hear my husband sometimes tell people that I created my own luck.
And despite struggling for oxygen on that fateful night enroute to The Prince Charles Hospital, via ambulance with a paramedic holding one hand and a small teddy bear in the other, I can assure you I was spiritually rowing very strongly.
Everyone who had supported me in this journey was with me in spirit in that ambulance.
We still talk about luck and miracles, but at the end of the day, I thank the Lord for answering our prayers.


This 1979 Firebird Esprit is an original and well maintained 2 owner example that shows just over 31,000 original miles. The paint and interior are largely original, spending its entire life in Colorado. Recent work includes new exhaust, tires, and a conversion of the A/C system to R134.
Message: Thought you might be interested in this 1979 Pontiac Firebird.


text:
Aitech's Flexible COTS Integrated Subsystem Functions Out of the Box
Rugged unit designed to TRL 9 eliminates all NRE and customization costs
Chatsworth, Calif. April 2012 – Aitech Defense Systems Inc., a pioneer in true embedded and mission critical computing technologies for environmentally-demanding military, defense and aerospace applications, now offers the highly-integrated, compact RediBuiltTM rugged COTS computer that boots and executes your real-time operating system right out of the box. This flexible computer can accommodate either Intel or Freescale processors as well as a CompactPCI or OpenVPX backplane in a condensed package measuring less than 0.22 ft3, comparable in volume to a 1/4 ATR Short enclosure.
Designed to TRL 9 (Technical Readiness Level) as defined by the DoD, NASA and other government agencies, RediBuilt eliminates all NRE (non-recurring engineering) and customization costs. It is a highly capable, fully functioning embedded computing subsystem proven through successful operation, complete with built-in, real-world I/O and HD (high definition) graphics and video capabilities.
Equipped with standard, circular MIL-DTL-38999 I/O connectors on the front panel and a two-slot 3U CompactPCI or OpenVPX backplane, RediBuilt provides all system interconnections, internal power distribution and filtering circuitry pre-assembled in the unit.
The computer's integrated functionality, combined with its lightweight, rugged aluminum enclosure, makes the RediBuilt ideal for demanding applications where SWaP (size, weight and power) is important, as found extensively in military and airborne computing environments.
Both unmanned airborne systems (UAS) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) benefit from the RediBuilt's compact size as well as the full environmental sealing that protects the unit from water, sand, dust, humidity, immersion and condensation. The unit measures 202 mm (W) x 260 mm (D) x 126 mm (H) and weighs less than 13 lbs complete.
Systems can be built to different power levels depending on the application and reliability needed. The various high-performance Freescale and Intel processor options in single, dual or multi-core configurations are available with a host of standard I/O, including Gigabit Ethernet, serial ports, discrete I/O, USB, SATA and CANbus and more.
Additional real-world sensor and effector I/O, including A/D, D/A, Servo, Resolver and RTDs can be added via industry standard PMC/XMC mezzanine sites.
The modular, MIL-STD-704, high-efficiency 28 VDC power supply unit and power input filter ensures reliable operation over a wide 18 VDC to 36 DC input voltage range and provides EMI/EMC compliance.
This new, sealed, rugged COTS computer utilizes internal conduction cooling. External cooling is achieved through convection cooling using fins to dissipate heat or by conduction cooling via a coldplate interface. RediBuilt supports industry
standard PMC and XMC mezzanines for easy expansion of function and I/O. Supported operating systems include VxWorks, INTEGRITY, Windows and Linux.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Let us return to the opening joke and explain all the funny away: in what way did the mathematician use 'reduce'? She certainly didn't eliminate anything. Instead, what she did was transform the problem to show that it relates to something else that is already known. The joke was that this was clearly an equally difficult problem and nothing of use came from the transformation. The reason she was a mathematician — although computer scientists or programmers would have worked almost equivalently — was in part due to mathematics' perceived detachment from reality, but more-so due to the fact that this reflects has mathematicians use the term 'reduce'.
In theoretical computer science, a yes-no problem X is (many-one) reduced to a yes-no problem Y by reduction R if for every input x to X, the reduction produces an input y = R(x) to Y such that the answer to x in X is the same as the answer to y in Y for all possible x. We are usually interested in the case where the algorithm for R is particularly simple, such that if we used the reduction to solve our problem X, it would actually be the algorithm for Y that does the 'heavy lifting'. In this way, for computer scientists, if X is reduced to Y then Y is the 'harder' problem.
From this perspective, the reduction was the easy task of lifting the bin onto the table.
Of course, we don't have to limit ourselves to yes-no problems or many-one reductions. We could also consider general problems X and Y with an algorithm B for Y, and say that X is reduced to Y if we can solve X by doing some simple computations with occasional calls to B as a subroutine. This is a bit more obscure since on the surface it makes it a bit more difficult to spot the part of the computation due to the reduction and the part due to B. But the two notions are not fundamentally different.
Note that this notion of reduction did not make any claims about X or Y being more or less real than the other. Just as with the Church-Turing thesis, we can choose to make these claims in any direction that we want: idealist, physicalist, or cognitivist. But that discussion is for another post.
In not making claims about the real, the reductions of computer science could be interpreted as a precise statement of theoretical reductionism: given a physical theory X and Y, if all the phenomena of X can be expressed and explained by Y then X reduces to Y. In general, this means that we would expect Y to be 'more complicated' than X and even though X reduces to Y, Y can "do more" than X. So right there we've thrown out the reduce-concept and focused on just the reducere-concept. Nothing is being eliminated by this view of reductionism.
At least eliminativism is not an essential feature. To see this, let us consider a trivial reduction.
The boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) considers a domain of variables that can each be assigned as true or false and a particular problem instance is represented by a boolean expression that is built from (potentially repeated instances of the) variables, operators AND, OR, NOT, and parentheses. Given such a boolean expression, the answer to SAT is 'yes' if there exists some assignment of True/False to each of the variables such that the expression evaluates to True. The answer to SAT is 'no' if there does not exist any assignment of True/False to the variables such that the expression evaluates to True (i.e. either the expression is malformed or all assignments evaluate to False).
Now consider a different problem called 3-SAT. It is just like SAT except that the boolean expressions are limited to only those that are in conjuctive normal form with at most 3 literals per clause. Since this is a subset of boolean expressions, we can simply consider them as instances of our original SAT problem. Thus 3-SAT is reducible to SAT.
This would be considered a trivial reduction. Trivial to the point that most people wouldn't bother to mention it. Mostly because you clearly just 'added more things' to get from 3-SAT to SAT.
A much more interesting, and surprising, reduction is in the other direction: every problem of SAT can be relatively easily parsed for being malformed or not and if not malformed then expressed as an instance of 3-SAT. In proper math form, I'll leave finding this reduction as an exercise to the reader.
This reduction uses both the reducere-concept and (since it has a more restrictive language of instances) the reduce-concept. It is also non-trivial and I think why people associate reductionism with eliminating things (since reductions are usually trivial when you add things).
To make this more closely related to the philosophy of science, let's turn to biology. At some point, living things were explained in terms of vitalistic theories. Theories that posited that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things" (Bechtel & Richardson, 1998) — an elan vital. These vitalistic theories can be a reasonable reductive theory since they aim to explain all biological phenomena in terms of material properties and the properties of elan vital. In fact, we could take our existing theories of biology, add elan vital to them, and thus reduce them to a vitalistic theory. Material biology reduces to vitalistic biology in the same kind of (boring) way as 3-SAT reduces to SAT.
But if you're interacting with a non-mathematician then you might expect them to put the burning rubbish bin out instead of on the table. You would expect to see vitalism as a classic example of what reductionism lets us avoid. The classic presentation is that vitalistic biology reduces to material biology in the same kind of (more interesting) way as SAT reduces to 3-SAT. This is very interesting, but it doesn't establish material biology as more reductive than vitalistic biology; rather it establishes that the two are theoretically equivalent. But we should prefer materialistic biology to vitalistic biology because the extra expressiveness of vitalistic biology is superficial and not useful for our investigations.
But this Occam's razor aspect is, I think, less important than the will to generality or the imperialistic tendency in thought. We want to explain many things by the same sort of thing. We want science to be omnicompetent: able to answer every kind of question. Finding that many apparently different theories reduce to the same theory is more satisfying than having a special theory for every special science.
We can see this in theoretical computer science, too.
Even if you're not a cstheorist, you might have heard that 3-SAT is an important problem before this post. However, you might not have heard of all (but surely some) of the following: protein folding, traveling-salesman problem, vertex colouring, max clique, quadratic programming, integer linear optimization, flight scheduling, etc. The reason that 3-SAT is exciting is that all of these problems are reducible to it (and it to them). Thus, if you gain a deep understanding of 3-SAT then you can also gain a deep understanding of these other problems. If you find an algorithm to solve 3-SAT instances significantly faster then you can also solve these other problems much faster.
With physicalism, science has a similar aim. The hope is that if we can find workable theoretical reductions from all aspects of science to physics then a deep understanding of physics (which we like to assume that we have) will translate to a deep understanding of all of these other fields. But in science, this is an ontological claim, not a formal demonstration.
Now, if you aren't familiar with the reduction from SAT (or the various other problems I name-dropped) to 3-SAT, you might have felt cheated by my assertion that the former can be reduced to the latter. Fortunately in computer science, there are actually proofs of that reduction that you can look up and analyze. It isn't just a vague ontological claim. This is not so in most sciences where the reduction is unknown but assumed to exist by fiat, analogy or limits of imagination ("everything else is super-natural"). This is the motte-and-bailey of reductionism: praising the strengths of formal reductions but only having ontological reductions.
To return back to the philosophy of mind, we can look at a reduction like: all thought is reducible to electric currents in the nerves that constitute the brain. This might seem as exciting as SAT being reduced to 3-SAT, but we should dig deeper. All activation of refrigerators and air conditioners around the county can also be reduced to electric currents in the wires that constitute the electric network. Yet, most of us, imagine ourselves as conscious and the electric grid as not. So just knowing that thought is reducible to neural activity doesn't really get us anything on its own.
To get good reductions, we can turn to algorithm design. In algorithm design, we care about efficient reductions to problems where we already have good general algorithms. Further, we want these reductions to be concrete and not doing too much work; not just 'expected to exist'. In the context of theories in science instead of problems in CS, we would expect 'good general algorithms' to mean something like good ways of doing experiments and making measurements. In this way, reducing health to molecular biology rather than elan vital is a good choice since we have more ways to run experiments and manipulate molecular biology than we do for elan vital. Reducing psychology to neuroscience, on the other hand, can be hit or miss when we don't have better ways to run neuroscience experiments than we do to run psychology experiments.
Also, and this is essential to the power of reductions in computer science, we need to know how handle arbitrary instances of the theory we are reducing to. Not just simple cases. This is where reductionism fails most often in science. When we attempt to reduce something to physics and end up with a complex adaptive system that we can't understand or analyze. This is where the urge to simplify appears, and we start throwing away essential details to get workable reductive theories. In the process we embrace reduce and throw away reducere. We switch from reductionism to eliminativism.
Of course, there are many gaps in my computer science account of philosophical reductivism. I will have to deal with these gaps in the new year. The important things to understand is how the complexity of phenomena is distributed between the reduction and the subroutine calls, and where people most often make simplifications (I assume in the interactions, as with game theoretic models). A fun thing to understand would be what the flipped perspective of computational complexity (rather than algorithm design) would mean in the context of science. What does a reduction from an intractable problem to the problem under analysis mean when we replace problems by theories? So, dear reader, come back next year and we can explore these points.


text:
https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/cyfair/real-estate/article/Calenti-Court-Cypress-neighborhood-modern-homes-14904560.php
Renderings show inside an ultra-modern, cutting-edge community planned for Cypress
By Rebecca Hennes
Updated 8:57 am CST, Monday, December 16, 2019
A new exclusive community being built in Cypress will feature ultra-modern, European homes that offer a Hollywood Hills lifestyle in the heart of the suburbs.
Photo: Houston Association Of Realtors
The Residences at Calenti Court will boast seven luxurious homes with a minimum starting price of $2 million, according to Paulette Blackwood Tate with Martha Turner Sotheby's International Realty. Renderings of the first home to be built, which is located at 0 Calenti Court Road, offer a first look at the unique neighborhood Tate promises is unlike any other in Cypress.
At $1,080,000, the neighborhood's debut home is currently listed for 40 percent less than the other homes will go for. Once completed, the sleek estate will boast 6,634 square feet with four bedrooms, five full bathrooms and one-half bathroom. Other amenities include a gourmet kitchen, four-car garage, a "green living wall" located in front of the living room and floor-to-ceiling glass windows that span the entire back of the home. The backyard oasis features an infinity pool with suntan deck, spa and an outdoor kitchen. A 560-square-foot apartment is also included on the property and features a full kitchen, master bath and family room.
Each of the homes will sit on 1-acre lots and boast a minimum size of 4,000 square feet, Tate said. Future owners will have the option to customize their homes with features such as multiple garages and outdoor structures. Interested buyers may also be able to customize the style of the home, but Tate said the company behind the project, Calenti Homes, is looking to build most of the properties in a modern, sophisticated style.
The homes will boast hi-tech features promising the utmost security. Windows will be outfitted with eight locking points and can be remotely operated from the outside; entry doors will feature multiple locking points with optional fingerprint technology.
The neighborhood will include a detention pond and park for residents and many of the homes will be energy-efficient thanks to solar-powered panels. Tate estimates construction on the homes could last three to four months, allowing for move-in dates as early as April.
Take a sneak peek at the exclusive community's first home in the photos above...
PRIME PROPERTY: Get your updates on Houston real estate deals and developments
Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com
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text:
US investigates Tennessee shooter's travels abroad
Jason Davis/Getty Images/AFP | Ed Reinhold , FBI special agent in charge, speaks during a press conference on July 17, 2015 in Chattanooga, Tennessee
Text by: FRANCE 24 Follow
A fifth marine died Saturday of injuries sustained in an attack Thursday on two military bases in Chattanooga, the US Navy said, as investigators were examining the shooter's travel abroad to try to determine a motive.
Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez sprayed dozens of bullets at a military recruiting center at a strip mall in Chattanooga, then drove to a Navy-Marine training center a few miles away and shot up the installation. The bullets smashed through windows and sent service members scrambling for cover before Abdulazeez was fatally shot by police.
The FBI said Friday that Abdulazeez had at least two long guns and one handgun. Some of the gun purchases were legal and some were not, FBI agent Ed Reinhold said at a news conference.
Reinhold said investigators were also looking into his overseas travel.
The official Kuwait News Agency on Friday quoted the interior ministry as saying that while Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait, he was of Jordanian origin. The report also said he traveled to Kuwait and Jordan in the spring of 2010.
A close friend of his told Reuters on Saturday that he returned from another trip to Jordan in 2014 angry about the conflicts in the Middle East and the reluctance of regional governments and the United States to intervene.
Hours before the attack, Abdulazeez sent a text message to the friend, seen by Reuters, which links to a Koranic verse that includes the text, "Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of Mine, then I have declared war against him."
Abdulazeez did not appear to have been on the radar of federal authorities before the attack at a Marine-Navy reserve facility, officials said.
A relative of Abdulazeez said his parents are both from the West Bank and described him as a "nice, educated guy". Abdulazeez met the relative for the first time during his visit to Jordan last year and the two spoke for about an hour.
The relative said the family are mainstream Muslims, and not fundamentalists. "They fast, they pray, and that is it."
The FBI, which is leading the investigation, said Abdulazeez was wearing a load-bearing vest during the attack that allowed him to move about while carrying additional ammunition. Now counterterrorism investigators are taking a closer look at his online activities as well as his foreign travel, searching for further clues as to his political views or influences.
The US Attorney in eastern Tennessee Bill Killian said Thursday that the attacks were being treated as a terrorism investigation and that investigators will "let the facts and the evidence lead us where it may".
Residents in the quiet neighbourhood in Hixson, Tennessee, where Abdulazeez lived in a two-story home, said they would see him walking along the wide streets or doing yard work. One neighbour recalled Abdulazeez giving him a ride home when he became stranded in a snowstorm.
"It's kind of a general consensus from people that interacted with him that he was just your average citizen there in the neighbourhood. There was no reason to suspect anything otherwise," said Ken Smith, a city councilman who met with neighbours the night of the attacks.
Arrested for drunk driving
Abdulazeez's mother, Rasmia Ibrahim Abdulazeez, filed a divorce complaint in 2009 accusing her husband, Youssuf Saed Abdulazeez, of beating her repeatedly in front of their children and of sexually assaulting her. She also accused him of "striking and berating" the children without provocation.
Weeks later, the couple agreed to reconcile, with the father consenting to go to counseling.
Abdulazeez graduated from Red Bank High School in Chattanooga, where he was on the wrestling team. He subsequently earned an engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 and worked as an intern a few years ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally owned utility that operates power plants and dams across the South.
He was conditionally hired as an engineer at the Perry nuclear power plant near Cleveland and spent 10 days there before he was let go in May 2013 because he failed a background check, said Todd Schneider, a FirstEnergy Corp. spokesman. Schneider would not say why he failed the screening.
Later on Friday, a federal official who had been briefed on the matter told The Associated Press that Abdulazeez was dismissed because he failed a drug test. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
For the last three months, Abdulazeez had been working at Superior Essex Inc., which designs and makes wire and cable products.
In April he was arrested on a drunk driving charge, and a mugshot showed him with a bushy beard.
'As Americanised as anyone else'
Karen Jones, who lived next to the family for 14 years, said she was somewhat surprised by his appearance last weekend when she saw him walking with another man in woods behind the house, where he liked to shoot pellet guns at a red target suspended in a tree.
"He had this big beard, which was not how he used to be," Jones said. She said he was typically clean-shaven.
The women of the family always wore head coverings in accordance with their Muslim faith, Jones said, and the father works for the city of Chattanooga. Two women led away from the home after the shootings Thursday were also in headscarves.
Sam Plank graduated from Red Bank High two years before Abdulazeez but hadn't crossed paths with him since 2006. "Obviously something has happened since then," he said. "He was as Americanised as anyone else. At least that's what it seemed like to me."
Another Red Bank High graduate who knew him, Hussnain Javid, said Abdulazeez was "very outgoing", adding: "Everyone knew of him."
Javid, a 21-year-old student at the University of Tennessee, said he occasionally saw Abdulazeez at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, but the last time was roughly a year ago.
Fears of lone-wolf attacks
For months, US counterterrorism authorities have been warning of the danger of attacks by individuals inspired but not necessarily directed by the Islamic State group. Officials have said they have disrupted several such lone-wolf plots.
A federal law enforcement official said authorities were searching Abdulazeez's computer but had not found an extensive online presence and had not uncovered any evidence he was directly influenced by the Islamic State group. The official was not authorised to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The dead were identified Friday by the Marines as Gunnery Sergeant Thomas J. Sullivan of Hampden, Massachusetts; Staff Sergeant David A. Wyatt of Burke, North Carolina; Sergeant Carson A. Holmquist of Polk, Wisconsin; and Lance Corporal Squire K. "Skip" Wells of Cobb County, Georgia. Sullivan, Wyatt and Holmquist had served in Iraq, Afghanistan or both.
General Ray Odierno, the US Army's top officer, said that security at military recruiting and reserve centres will be reviewed, but that it is too early to say whether they should have security guards or other increased protection.
Odierno said there are legal issues involved in allowing recruiters to carry guns. And he said the centres need to be open and accessible to the public.
(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)
Four Marines and gunman killed in US shootings
Nine killed in S. Carolina church 'hate crime'
Charleston church shooting suspect captured
Brazil's culture secretary fired after 'coincidentally' quoting Goebbels
US Senators sworn in for impeachment trial as watchdog group accuses Trump of breaking the law
By overwhelming margin, US senators approve new North American trade deal
Guatemalan president says Mexico 'will do everything in its power' to halt migrant caravan
US and China sign 'phase one' trade deal, ending dramatic 18-month tit-for-tat
US House delivers Trump impeachment articles to Senate
US Democrats spar on foreign policy, trade and electability in seventh debate
New report accuses China of 'intense' global attack on human rights
Delta flight dumps fuel on California school, 26 treated for minor injuries
Pelosi sets Wednesday vote on sending Trump impeachment charges to Senate
Warren confirms Sanders told her a woman could not win the White House


Appliance light bulbs have specially reinforced filaments to prevent premature failure from frequent slamming of refrigerator or oven doors. The Satco S3810 A15 bulb is equipped with a heavy-duty 130 volt filament, allowing it to last longer when operated at 120 volts. This bulb emits 290 lumens and will last 1500 hours.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


You can request a temporary disconnection or reconnection of your Cytavision.
Temporary disconnection of the Cytavision Public Pack is provided only if the service was connected and operational for 15 consecutive days before the requested date of disconnection.
The temporary disconnection of the service is offered for a maximum of 6 months. If you wish, you may disconnect your service for more than 6 months but for any longer period you will be charged the regular monthly subscription, even though your service will remain disconnected.


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Tapestry Condo
315 units sold on launch day 24 March 2018!
Enjoy The Video of The Tapestry condo @ Tampines:
All Eyes on Tampines in March!
Tampines has transformed over the years from a sparsely populated town into 1 of the 4 regional centres in Singapore. Being a hive of activity in the East, Tampines comprising a good mix of high-rise public and private apartments, a new mega lifestyle hub and 4 MRT stations, making it an ideal neighbourhood for young families.
Located in between The Santorini and The Alps Residences along Tampines Avenue 10, The Tapestry is near to Tampines Quarry Park.
The Tapestry condo will yield 7 high rise residential towers comprising 861 apartments, ranging from 1-Bedroom to 5-Bedroom Unit Type.
THE TAPESTRY
Developer City Development Limited (CDL)
Address Tampines Ave 10
District D18 Tampines
Unit Mix 1 Bedroom (448sqft)
1+Study (484sqft)
2 Bedroom (615sqft)
2 Premium (717sqft)
3 Premium (1153sqft)
4 Bedroom (1455sqft)
4 Dual Key (1519sqft)
Developed by the top developer in Singapore, City Development (CDL), The Tapestry is the most anticipating condo in 2018.
CDL is one of Singapore's largest real estate companies in Singapore with its track record of over 50 years in real estate development.
Watch the video of CDL's Portfolio
The advantages of The Tapestry condo over the neighbourhoods are better facilities, the smarter layout and next to a park.
The Tapestry condo offers more than 50 facilities with 100m continuous lap pool & another 50m size lap pool.
Location of The Tapestry
The site is conveniently linked to the city and rest of the island via major arterial roads and expressways such as Tampines Expressway (TPE) and Pan Island Expressway (PIE).
Ismail Gafoor, CEO of PropNex Realty, said: "Tampines is an all-encompassing estate which houses an array of amenities such as established shopping malls, sports and recreation facilities, offices and more. One can live, work, shop and dine in their own estate conveniently without leaving for the other areas of Singapore."
New Amenities and Facilities to Better Serve Residents
Tampines will have a spread of amenities including a commercial centre, community club and primary and secondary schools.
Tampines will boast an extensive suite of supporting amenities including schools, healthcare, community, sports and recreation facilities.
Amenities in the existing towns will continue to be enhanced. For example, the much anticipated Tampines Town Hub will breathe fresh life into Tampines Regional Centre.
New MRT Lines for Better Connectivity
The East-West MRT line (EWL) serving the East Region is set to be joined by three new MRT lines in the future, the Downtown Line (DTL), the Eastern Regional Line (ERL) and the Cross Island Line (CRL).
Together the three new MRT lines will ensure that the majority of East Region residents will have access to MRT Stations within walking distance from their homes.
The EWL signalling system will also be upgraded by 2018 to allow 6 trains every 10 minutes instead of 5 (which is a 20% increase in capacity).
Schools Nearby The Tapestry
The future residential development is an ideal home for families with
school-going children.
Numerous schools located in the vicinity include Temasek Polytechnic,
United World College of South East Asia (East Campus) and St. Hilda's Primary and Secondary Schools.
The primary schools abound include:
St. Hilda's Primary
Junyuan Primary
Tampines Primary
Damai Primary
Shopping Mall Nearby The Tapestry
Despite the many malls, community spaces and facilities, one of the area's biggest claims to fame in recent years has been the opening of IKEA Tampines in 2006.
The store is a behemoth that is visible from the expressway, and a mandatory stop for the many young families building a home in this neighbourhood.
Tampines Mall
Supermarket Nearby The Tapestry condo
Prime Supermarket Limited @ 823 Tampines Street 81
Fair Price @ 866A Tampines Street 83
Madison's The Super Sandwich Place @866A Tampines Street 83
Watsons @ 828 Tampines Street 81
What You may not know about Tampines?
Tampines is also poised to benefit from new nearby centres of growth like Changi Business Park, Loyang Industrial Park and the newly-expanded Changi Airport.
Free shuttle buses are available from Tampines MRT station to IKEA Tampines every day. On weekdays, the shuttle bus also picks passengers up at Bedok MRT, and on weekends and public holidays from Sengkang MRT and Pasir Ris MRT.
Tampines has its very own nature park. Named Tampines Eco Green, the beautiful park features hiking trails and a range of habitats including open grasslands, a secondary rainforest and freshwater wetlands.
Tampines Regional Library houses the largest collection of Chinese books of all the branches in the National Library network.
The Tapestry Condo Floor Plan
The Tapestry Condo Price Guide
In this bullish property market trend, CDL won the land bid by pricing at 17.2% ($565 psf per plot ratio) higher than the Alps Residence site.
The Alps Residence site (next to The Tapestry site) won by MCC Land in May 2015 at $483 psf per plot ratio.
By factoring in the total cost such as construction, land financing, professional/legal/tax advisory, marketing and other contingency fees, the breakeven price shall be around $1,000psf.
With the profit margin plus the bullish market factor, CDL is expected to price The Tapestry condo at $1,280-$1,350psf.
Tapestry Price Guide:
1BR from $596K
1+S from $648K
2BR (603sqft) from $796K
2BR Premium from $920K
3BR from $1.15M
3BR Premium Flexi from $1.35M
4DK from $1.71M
5DK from $2.1M


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January 22, 2016 Eavesdropping
Amber Sparks' Bittersweet Almost-Relationship Tale
The writer shares an excerpt from her latest collection, "The Unfinished World And Other Stories," which she calls "a cabinet of curiosities."
(Photo Credit: Christopher Backley)
Writer Amber Sparks has earned two Pushcart Prize nominations for her fantastical, offbeat stories. The New York Times just praised her "singular voice." She has a new collection of short stories called, "The Unfinished World And Other Stories," which hits bookshelves on January 25.
"I would kind of almost compare it to a cabinet of curiosities, if that doesn't sound too hideously pretentious," Amber explained. "It really encapsulates a lot of different things including history, mythology, love stories… but, I think not the usual type of love stories."
She shares a piece with us from the collection called, "And The World Was Crowded With Things That Meant Love."
They met only once, at a piano recital in her hometown. Both of them were there for other people's children. He caught her yawning while a blonde in pigtails murdered The Blue Danube, and they exchanged grins. After drinks and dinner they were delighted to find they shared a hobby: both were sculptors of sorts, though she worked in clay and he worked in wood. Both had jobs that sent them round the world, and it was a way to kill the long, late hours that haunt the solitary traveler.
She started the exchanges, the reminders they sent to one another as they aged in different cities, countries, hemispheres. But that would come later. At first it was the dinner, and the drinks, and the porch outside where her laughing relatives lingered. At first it was her childhood bedroom, the quilt flung to the floor, the way she moved like a dancer and the way she flung her arms about and the way he surprised them both by bursting into tears. At first it was finding their faces fit perfectly, a jigsaw. A locket severed and the halves hung round the neck of the world they would cross many times over the years, always looking for one another.
The first piece was a bust, a child's head and shoulders. The pigtailed pianist. A drawer at the nape of her neck, with a little heart inside. A paper heart, coin-sized and inked in scarlet. He kept it in his pocket until it fell to pieces.
His eventual response: a small wooden copy of den lille havfrue, Andersen's little mermaid on her rock. But instead of the sea woman's visage, it was her own features carved into the soft basswood. She smiled when she saw how well he remembered her face.
Down the years they sent their strange missives. She sent maps made of clay, locks with no key, books with words cut out, fantastical animals and landscapes. He sent puzzle boxes, lacquered bangles engraved with kanji, bright yellow Dutch clogs. They sent maps of where they'd been and circled where they were going. And the world was crowded with things that meant love.
Once she received a plain cedar box with a wooden knife inside, and she was disappointed for a long time. She felt the sentiment fell too far from love and into something much darker. She was not sure they could be sustained by such cruel gestures.
But then at the Paris flea market she found a beautifully carved antique music box. She brought it home and sculpted a little ballerina, lovely and lithe and wearing, of course, her smiling face. She snipped the plastic ballerina out of the box and put her own inside. She wouldn't dance, but he would recognize a clumsy sort of hope here, the echo of his very first gift to her.
And so the gifts continued, from Brussels to Tokyo, from Lodz to Buenos Aires, from Ankara to Johannesburg. Wood and clay went by boat, by air, by train. Each gift arrived with a slip, printed with only a new address. Messages slower but more powerful than those carried in the digital noise of the world. They never spoke, never wrote, never texted, never exchanged a photograph, though they sculpted and carved each other many times. They could not help but notice each grew lovelier in memory, even as they grew older and older in life.
Eventually, he went to sleep one night in a hotel bed in Heidelburg, and he never awoke again. The room was full of beautiful objects, the hotel maid saw; souvenirs, she supposed. She found a curious item next to his body: a plaster arm–a woman's arm with fingers curled as if around some object. No one on the hotel staff could tell if the hand was giving or receiving–or if it was beckoning something or someone to finally come home.
From THE UNFINISHED WORLD: And Other Stories by Amber Sparks, published on January 26 by Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company. Copyright 2016 Amber Sparks. This story was first published by Matter Press.
Tags: books
A 'Mortified' Tale Just in Time for Halloween
On the "Mortified" podcast, brave adults read aloud the most embarrassing moments from their childhood journals. The show's inspired a new book called "My Mortified Life." Listen to this favorite from the show, perfect for Halloween, about a middle school girl who desperately wanted to be a vampire in the 1990s.
David Litt Takes Us Through His Worst Nightmare (Involving Obama's Ferns)
David Litt penned some of former President Obama's most memorable speeches, including his comic turns at White House Correspondents' Dinners. The stories behind those speeches are the stuff of his new memoir, "Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years." Listen as he shares a tale that didn't make it into the book… maybe because it involves him stealing.


A rapid, non-abrasive and easy to apply waterline and transom stain remover.
Formulated to remove the yellow/brown stains found on boat waterlines and transoms through absorption, no rubbing is necessary.
A gel based substance containing oxalic acid that can be brushed onto affected areas. Uniquely, the gel adheres to vertical surfaces yet is easily spread-able; after 10 minutes from application the stains vanish once washed off.
The chemical reaction that takes place will not damage fibreglass gelcoat and may be used on painted boats.


1 year anniversary – Absoblogginlutely!
Monday was my one year anniversary of working in the United States. A lot of things have happened since then and I now have the fun task of filling out a review. This blog should help me remember what I've been up to in the past year, after all there are 40 posts in the work category but only 17 in the past year. There are a lot more things that I'd have liked to have blogged about but due to confidentiality reasons (or that I just want to keep my job!) I've not been able to blog about them.