Agreed

ZachQuote:I'd be willing to say that's a faulty analogy, based on the fact that mutation is a random process, and so "available alleles" aren't really constrained in any way other than that you can only have x many. While it is true that evolution is constrained by available alleles (if yo...

Quote:Designed creative processes? Amazing stuff! This could have huge consequences for evolution - I wonder what the biology experts here make of this...I make of it that we're dealing with nuts who make Behe look mainstream. Hackles went up when I referred to Global Brain as religion rather than s...

Yes... I was thinking more in terms of analogy, however, than correllation. To be more specific: Available plant species are to agriculture as available alleles are to adaptation. Edited by: Jeremy1952 at: 2/9/03 8:08:19 am

Diamond defines an animal that is a "candidate for domestication" as any terrestrial herbivorous or omnivorous animal species (one not predominantly a carnivore) weighing on the average over 100 pounds (45 kilograms). Of 148 "candidate" species, only 14 have actually been domesti...

Part of Diamond's case is that humans have demonstrated in numerous ways that we will exploit the material available to us. When one group of humans goes thousands of years longer than another domesticating local crops, the greater agriculture success of one group as compared to the other could be a...

I'm about halfway through Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Not the easiest read, but fascinating. I have three barely related comments so I'm going to give each its own thread and see if anyone bites.The style and approach of GGS remind me of another author/book, and I realized today who/what it is....

Xilog:Quote: This book group is about religion, science, philosophy etc. By restricting ourselves consistently to one type of book, we both limit our own experience, and possibly keep a group of people from joining or taking part. I'm sorry you think it's a "poor choice", and you aren't in...

I think this is a very odd list. It doesn't seem to correlate well with any of the discussions we've had about what everyone would like to read. For myself, I'm reading three right now: Pinker, The Blank Slate; Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation. I'm having a...

ChrisQuote: Belief in gods is not innate to the human being; one is not born knowing of the existence of any gods. Some would say humans are born with no innate knowledge, but this is untrue. Language, for instance, or at least communication, is innate. Reproductive urges are likewise innate. Fear, ...