Energy Future

Read: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/10/06/small-is-useless/

So no matter how futuristics and responsible or conscious we are, curb our crave for solar pannels and micro wind turbines. Rather, write letters to politicitions. :)

However, all reports and essays are building on the assumption that our energe use won't decreas in developed country and certainly will grow in third world country. In fact, I am quite certain, our habit of use of energe will change, if we don't have a good solution in time (looks more like it).

I am actually quite optimistic about the future when we run out of earth's stock energy and we can't come up geneious solution fast enough and we are forced to shrink our demand of energy. We are going to walk more, we are going to take bath in cool water, and we are going to stand the cold winter and hot summer. Nothing that our ancestors haven't been go through and I am looking forward to a much healthier life styles.

My only concern is would us have enough food in the future? We are wasting food all the time and complaining on extra food input all the time, and although micro solution is not enough to sustain our current style of energy use, it seems promising to be enough for our future revolutionized life style.

I can hardly wait :)

Be Nice and To Forgive in a Long Term Battle

I usually only gets one point from one book, but a seemingly second point in "Selfish Gene" has been very sticking in my mind.

The essense of it is: in a long term relationship, the seemingly optimum strategy is like a tic-for-tac strategy -- it starts with a "nice" behavior toward an "opponent", then repeats the behavior of its opponents (toward it). The author summarize 3 properties of tic-for-tac strategy: 1. Be nice. we start being nice to others. 2. Be forgivable. We don't remember others "bad" for long. As soon as other start being nice to us, we are nice to others. 3. There is no end to the relationship. We don't see when we will never see the others.

As a result, the majority of the people on earth are nice. And as a result, I should be nice and forgivable to ultimately win our life.

Conscious

Conscious is very intersting to think about :).

On one hand, conscious is a result of biological evolution. Down the path of evolution, it just came to the conclusion that, an entity with conscious is more likely to survive than one without.

On the other hand, conscious is the origin to the cultural evolution. Culture is a conscious product. We creates culture just like the way God creates biology evolution :).

I am not quite sure what cultural evolution will do to our biological forms, but it is interesting to think that the impact of curltural evolution to us probably is very similar to the impact of biological evolution to God. :)

Cultural Evolution and Biological Evolution

Since I now recoginze both cultural evolution and biological evolution as "evolution", certainly they share some properties, such as the property of reprecations. But apparently, they are very different.

Biological evolution is more like a hardware programing for us. It gives us natural feelings, such as craving for food, appeal from opposite sex, and curiosity in exploring unknowns. Cultural evolution is more like a software programing for us. It gives us experience and much of emotions. We love peace and hate the war, isn't that an example of cultural programming?

Software programing are based on hardwares. Cultural evolution only took off after the hardware for it -- human beings -- took shape. Curltural evolution requires its carrier the ability of learning and the desire of learning. Then, once the hardware achieves this fundmental ability to certain degree, the software part matters significantly more. Surely a pentium 4 runs faster than pentium III, but an algorithm difference can easily offset the performance by orders!

Given the same software environment, the hardware matters. So within a cultural locale, the biological evolution may be in charge. And as a end result of evolution,, the resulting survived individules more or less are inheriting the same hardware ability.

Give the same hardware environment, the software matters. So even all the humans in the world have the exact same hardware capability, their could be extremely powerful nations due to their cultural advantages.

The selection of hardware is about the same regardless of what level of software it runs. With windows 3.1 or windows XP, pentium IV always performs better than pentium III. So no matter which software the ensemble runs, the evolution selects the best hardware. Does it conclude -- all humans around the globe, as long as their life style is dominated by a culture -- roudimentaly culture or futuristic civilization -- they are the equaly smart people ( or equally dumn :).

But it may be possible that a vast different form of culture may have great impact on biological hardwares. So far, our culture in 21century doesn't fundmentally differ from the culture 5 thousand years ago in that, I expect a man from 5 thousand year ago can live well in 21st century if he were exposed to 21st century from birth. But maybe, in the future, there will be a culture that can be learned much faster with a different lifeform, say the one that communicates with electro-magnetic waves rather than voices, then may our biological evolution slowly change our hardware toward that?

I think the cultural evolution has already changed our natural hardware feelings in examples such as caring for poor nations on the opposite side of the globe, and caring for the global warming; Will the cultural evolution eventually shut off our feeling for food and opposite sex. It is amusing to imagine how the nowadays love theory would sound if that happens :).

Biological evolution favors those genes that ensures greater probabiliy of inheriting onto next generations. Does cultural evolution favors those genes that have a greater probablity of carrying on the piece of culture? We sometime favour deciples of our belief more than our own blood, is that cultural evolution in working?