39 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2023
      • for: MET, MST, MCT, FET, MET - information, MST - information, Amanda N. Robin, major evolutionary transition, major system transition, facilitating evolutionary transition

      • Title:Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations

      • Author: Robin et al.
      • Date: 2021

      • Abstract

        • A small number of extraordinary “Major Evolutionary Transitions” (METs) have attracted attention among biologists.
        • They comprise novel forms of
          • individuality and
          • information,
        • and are defined in relation to organismal complexity, irrespective of broader ecosystem-level effects.

        • This divorce between

          • evolutionary and
          • ecological consequences
        • qualifies unicellular eukaryotes, for example, as a MET although they alone failed to significantly alter ecosystems.

        • Additionally, this definition excludes revolutionary innovations not fitting into either MET type

          • (e.g., photosynthesis).
        • We recombine
          • evolution with
          • ecology
        • to explore how and why entire ecosystems were
          • newly created or
          • radically altered
        • as Major System Transitions (MSTs).

        • In doing so, we highlight important morphological adaptations that spread through populations because of

          • their immediate, direct-fitness advantages for individuals.
        • These are Major Competitive Transitions, or MCTs.

        • We argue that often
          • multiple
            • METs and
            • MCTs
        • must be present to produce MSTs.

        • For example, sexually-reproducing, multicellular eukaryotes (METs) with

          • anisogamy and
          • exoskeletons (MCTs)
        • significantly altered ecosystems during the Cambrian.

        • Therefore, we introduce the concepts of Facilitating Evolutionary Transitions (FETs) and Catalysts as

          • key events or agents that are insufficient themselves to set a MST into motion,
          • but are essential parts of synergies that do.
        • We further elucidate the role of information in MSTs as transitions across five levels:

          • (I) Encoded (Genetic);
          • (II) Epigenomic;
          • (III) Learned;
          • (IV) Inscribed; and
          • (V) Dark Information.
        • The latter is ‘authored’ by abiotic entities rather than biological organisms.

        • Level

          • IV has arguably allowed humans to produce a MST, and
          • V perhaps makes us a FET for a future transition that melds
            • biotic and
            • abiotic life
          • into one entity.
        • Understanding the interactive processes involved in past major transitions will illuminate both
          • current events and
          • the surprising possibilities that abiotically-created information may produce.

      Indyweb / Indranet citations - Michael Levin, Roy Baumeister, Adam Omary youtube conversation - specifically, the question about whether a social superorganism of global human civilization / society / culture constitutes a new Major Evolutionary Transition of Individuality - https://hyp.is/rQgvZn2hEe6-TF8HFSS9mg/docdrop.org/video/UfoVTA0ilsY/

  2. Aug 2023
  3. Apr 2023
    1. Eine neue Studie ergibt, dass der Verlust der Biodiversität noch dramatischer und Gegenmaßnahmen noch dringender sind als bisher angenommen. Untersuchungen zu großen Säugetieren und Vögeln zeigen, dass bisher zu wenig berücksichtigt wurde, dass sich wichtige Treiber des Artensterbens erst mit jahrzehntelanger Verzögerung auswirken. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65315823

  4. Mar 2023
  5. Feb 2023
    1. But a good short story is always basically a memento mori.

      An interesting theory...

      An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce comes to mind as an excellent example.

    2. I have to report that the AI did not make a useful or pleasant writing partner. Even a state-of-the-art language model cannot presently “understand” what a fiction writer is trying to accomplish in an evolving draft. That’s not unreasonable; often, the writer doesn’t know exactly what they’re trying to accom­plish! Often, they are writing to find out.
  6. Sep 2022
  7. Jul 2022
    1. FollowingSimondon’s social theory [37] and our previous work [10 ], social systems are themselves individualsthat harbour in them preindividual forces of transformation. Therefore we do not see in the currentorganization of personhood, inasmuch as it seems unassailable, a final unchangeable state of affairs.

      !- references : evolutionary biology * Evolutionary biologists have developed similar ideas to explain how throughout history, groups of individual organisms that clustered together and discovered better fitness as a result of symbiotic relationships began to reproduce as a whole new entity. Hence the collective became the new individual * Robin et al. paper: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556%2Ffull&group=world * Robin et al. video presentation: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F6J-J72GoqhY%2F&group=world * Stuart West video: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FVUfNEHl44hc%2F&group=world

    1. the conquest of the Americas was also a second human transition: an escape from agriculture to profit-driven enterprise: “Western Europeans began colonizing large areas of the rest of the world, creating the first globalized economy.” Lewis and Maslin call this the “Columbian exchange,” when humans, animals, plants, and microbes established themselves in places they had never been before. Energy from new foods, and information from printing, helped drive this new transition. Farming resumed in the Americas to feed and clothe the Europeans, using the labour of African slaves.

      Second Transition: Columbian Exchange

      In evolutionary biology, there are also another type of transition, Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET). Robin et. al propose that the introduction of writing (inscribed language) was a major information improvement that played an important role leading to a major system transition (MST).

      Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556%2Ffull&group=world https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F6J-J72GoqhY%2F&group=world

  8. Jun 2022
    1. It was the expe­ri­ence of draft­ing the spec that changed my view, and my pace. Writing! Gets you every time!
    2. I will just observe that there is some­thing about this tech­nol­ogy that has seemed, over the years, to scold rather than invite; enclose rather than expand; and strip away rather than layer upon.
    1. As my colleague Robin Paige likes to say, we are also social beings in a social world. So if we shift things just a bit to think instead about the environments we design and cultivate to help maximize learning, then psychology and sociology are vital for understanding these elements as well.

      Because we're "social beings in a social world", we need to think about the psychology and sociology of the environments we design to help improve learning.

      Link this to: - Design of spaces like Stonehenge for learning in Indigenous cultures, particularly the "stage", acoustics (recall the ditch), and intimacy of the presentation. - research that children need face-to-face interactions for language acquisition

  9. May 2022
    1. This is the vision of OP Sapiens Star—that human’s evolution is not finished, and that the hyperthreat provides the impetus for a quantum leap into a new way of being. Through achieving a galactically significant mission—saving Earth’s ecological integrity—the Homo sapiens species “stars” within the universe. Humans go from being a menace and fighting one another to being heroic, creative, and tolerant.    

      This can be interpreted as an instantiation of the hero's journey, in the context of research that combines evolution with ecology as in the research paper: Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations (Robin et al., 2021).From this lens, cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) was first made possible through spoken language, then accelerated through written language. The authors claim that another Major System Transition (MST).is emerging, which they posit to be abiotic in nature involving Artificial Intelligence.

      Faced with a self-induced civilization-scale threat, we may ask whether a major cultural evolution may be necessary to avoid catastrophe and whether it may constitute another MST. Could a rapid higher level global understanding of the epistemological dualism of self and other which undergirds normative alienation, othering and conflict, both with others of our own species, of other species and with the planetary system itself play a major role in the transition?

    1. Robin Sloan, a writer and media inventor, asks reviewers of his forthcoming book, Mr. Penumbra's Twenty Four Hour Book Store, to share their "mental state" via marginalia. Developing a visual language for real-time annotations, he welcomes people to go through his text at a reader's pace, marking their reactions in real time.
  10. Mar 2022
  11. Feb 2022
    1. We need to getour thoughts on paper first and improve them there, where we canlook at them. Especially complex ideas are difficult to turn into alinear text in the head alone. If we try to please the critical readerinstantly, our workflow would come to a standstill. We tend to callextremely slow writers, who always try to write as if for print,perfectionists. Even though it sounds like praise for extremeprofessionalism, it is not: A real professional would wait until it wastime for proofreading, so he or she can focus on one thing at a time.While proofreading requires more focused attention, finding the rightwords during writing requires much more floating attention.

      Proofreading while rewriting, structuring, or doing the thinking or creative parts of writing is a form of bikeshedding. It is easy to focus on the small and picayune fixes when writing, but this distracts from the more important parts of the work which really need one's attention to be successful.

      Get your ideas down on paper and only afterwards work on proofreading at the end. Switching contexts from thinking and creativity to spelling, small bits of grammar, and typography can be taxing from the perspective of trying to multi-task.


      Link: Draft #4 and using Webster's 1913 dictionary for choosing better words/verbiage as a discrete step within the rewrite.


      Linked to above: Are there other dictionaries, thesauruses, books of quotations, or individual commonplace books, waste books that can serve as resources for finding better words, phrases, or phrasing when writing? Imagine searching through Thoreau's commonplace book for finding interesting turns of phrase. Naturally searching through one's own commonplace book is a great place to start, if you're saving those sorts of things, especially from fiction.

      Link this to Robin Sloan's AI talk and using artificial intelligence and corpuses of literature to generate writing.

    1. https://every.to/superorganizers/tasting-notes-with-robin-sloan-25629085

      A discussion with Robin Sloan about the creativity portion of his writing practice which is heavily driven by his store of creative notes which he takes in a Field Notes waste book and keeps in nvAlt.

    2. I've observed for myself that not all weeks of writing are made equal. When I do try to impose a schedule on myself – like resolving that ‘I'll write for three hours every day and hit 1200 words’ – it can work out OK, but it’s usually not that great.But I have learned that when I’m really on a roll – when I’ve found a voice that’s really working and that I’m excited about – I need to just clear the decks and go with it. I will empty my schedule, dive in, and stay up late in order to be as productive as I can. I would say this is how I got both of my novels written.

      Robin Sloan's writing process sounds similar to that of Niklas Luhmann where he chose to work on things that seemed exciting and fun. This is, in part, helped by having a large quantity of interesting notes to work off of. They both used them as stores to fire their internal motivation to get work done.

    3. The third way I interact with my notes is a mechanism I’ve engineered whereby they are slowly presented to me randomly, and on a steady drip, every day.I’ve created a system so random notes appear every time I open a browser tabI like the idea of being presented and re-presented with my notations of things that were interesting to me at some point, but that in many cases I had forgotten about. The effect of surprise creates interesting and productive new connections in my brain.

      Robin Sloan has built a system that will present him with random notes from his archive every time he opens a browser tab.

    4. That ‘taste’ is a very personal thing, and I don’t think I can really explain it. But I’m pretty sure it means that, for me, note-taking is a very long-term, gradual process of finding my way towards something; I just can’t quite articulate what that something is.

      I like the idea of taking notes as a means of finding one's way towards something which can't be articulated.

      This is an interesting way that one could define insight.

    5. Transferring my notes from notebooks into nvALT is a process that I always enjoy. When I fill up a physical notebook, I'll go through it, acting as a sort of loose, first filter for the material I’ve accumulated. I’ll cross out a few things that are obviously garbage, but most of my notes make the cut, and I transcribe them into nvALT.When that’s done, I throw away the notebook.

      Robin Sloan has a waste book practice where he takes his notes in small Field Note notebooks and transcribes them into nvAlt. When he's done, he throws away the notebook.

  12. Jan 2022
    1. https://vimeo.com/232545219

      from: Eyeo Conference 2017

      Description

      Robin Sloan at Eyeo 2017 | Writing with the Machine | Language models built with recurrent neural networks are advancing the state of the art on what feels like a weekly basis; off-the-shelf code is capable of astonishing mimicry and composition. What happens, though, when we take those models off the command line and put them into an interactive writing environment? In this talk Robin presents demos of several tools, including one presented here for the first time. He discusses motivations and process, shares some technical tips, proposes a course for the future — and along the way, write at least one short story together with the audience: all of us, and the machine.

      Notes

      Robin created a corpus using If Magazine and Galaxy Magazine from the Internet Archive and used it as a writing tool. He talks about using a few other models for generating text.

      Some of the idea here is reminiscent of the way John McPhee used the 1913 Webster Dictionary for finding words (or le mot juste) for his work, as tangentially suggested in Draft #4 in The New Yorker (2013-04-22)

      Cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/t2a9_pTQEeuNSDf16lq3qw and https://hypothes.is/a/vUG82pTOEeu6Z99lBsrRrg from https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary


      Croatian acapella singing: klapa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sciwtWcfdH4


      Writing using the adjacent possible.


      Corpus building as an art [~37:00]

      Forgetting what one trained their model on and then seeing the unexpected come out of it. This is similar to Luhmann's use of the zettelkasten as a serendipitous writing partner.

      Open questions

      How might we use information theory to do this more easily?

      What does a person or machine's "hand" look like in the long term with these tools?

      Can we use corpus linguistics in reverse for this?

      What sources would you use to train your model?

      References:

      • Andrej Karpathy. 2015. "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks"
      • Samuel R. Bowman, Luke Vilnis, Oriol Vinyals, et al. "Generating sentences from a continuous space." 2015. arXiv: 1511.06349
      • Stanislau Semeniuta, Aliaksei Severyn, and Erhardt Barth. 2017. "A Hybrid Convolutional Variational Autoencoder for Text generation." arXiv:1702.02390
      • Soroush Mehri, et al. 2017. "SampleRNN: An Unconditional End-to-End Neural Audio Generation Model." arXiv:1612.07837 applies neural networks to sound and sound production
  13. Dec 2021
    1. With secondary sources, I like to check and see what the author is doing with the information. It's standard to refer to interpretations that agree with yours, but often even more interesting when the new interpretation is arguing with, modifying, or "complicating" the previous one.

      I have noticed in some anthropological literature that it appears that the authors completely missed the boat as the result of the lack of ability to communicate with their subjects or better understand their broader basic contexts.

      Particular examples of this: -1930s: A. Irving Hallowell conversations with William Berens, Chief of the Berens River Anishinaabe about rocks

      • Robin Wall Kimmerer mentions in Braiding Sweetgrass that the new American immigrants looked down on the indigenous people for not "giving thanks" for their food, when in fact it was so embedded into their general culture that it should never have been in question. The immigrants just didn't possess the ability to see the how the thanks had been given.
  14. Oct 2020
  15. Sep 2020
    1. “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;(W) 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,(X) for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

      God instructed Adam and Eve to eat whatever they desired, though prohibited them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Skywoman Falling", she explained how in Indigenous culture, they follow Original Instructions. These "instructions" are not rules but rather guidelines for each person. Kimmerer explains how during Skywoman's time, the first people's understanding of the Original Instructions were to care for the and have respect for hunted animals, value family, and hold respectful ceremonies for their beliefs.

    1. “Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it.”

      It's a fun game to follow up on these intertexts, even a bit. If you read the page or so that this quote is extracted from, you'll see that it's when Crusoe is regretting the way he'd started to build a boat, before thinking about how to get it to shore. Betteredge's analogy, then, is that he's bitten off more than he can chew: he's agreed to write this narrative, but soon finds it a very serious undertaking, since there are a lot of details to relate.

  16. May 2020
  17. Dec 2019
    1. Robin Hood

      The first definite reference to "Robin Hood" appeared in the poem Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) by William Langland, circa 1370. Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw and a highly skilled archer and swordsman depicted in English folklore. In some versions of the legend, he is depicted as being of noble birth. Having fought in the Crusades, he returns to England to find the Sheriff has taken his lands. In other versions, he is instead born into the yeoman class. In both versions, is said to have robbed from the rich to give to the poor.

  18. Mar 2018
  19. Nov 2017
    1. Open Pedagogy, which for us means working at the intersection of OER, accessibility and access, student empowerment, and connected learning.
  20. Aug 2017
    1. University of Southern New Hampshire's academic steering technology committee

      Edit: University System of New Hampshire's Academic Technology Steering Committee

  21. Jul 2017
  22. Mar 2017