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EvoLit 2011: Evolution in progress

Evolution in progress, here and elsewhere

22 March 2011 (PG)

Elsewhere (a sample)

James Gleick's History of Information (NYTimes Sunday magazine, 20 March 2011)

"Information, he argues, is more than just the contents of our overflowing libraries and Web servers. It is “the blood and the fuel, the vital principle” of the world. Human consciousness, society, life on earth, the cosmos — it’s bits all the way down."

Tortoise and hare, in a laboratory flas k (NY Science Times, 21 March 2011)

"some organisms are better at evolving than others"?

Do you have free will?

"Free will hasn’t been disproved scientifically or philosophically. The more that researchers investigate free will, the more good reasons there are to believe in it."

The evolving class

"I keep going back to the part in the novel where they say that there are only 24 possible plots to write, and they debate whether that is true or not."

"So I wondered to myself, what on Earth could have been Power's purpose in structuring this book this way."

"I’ve come to see story-writing as a limitless, eternal opportunity for creativity, communication, and catharsis."

"Throughout the novel, Candace and Thassa both assert that happiness is attainable regardless of the hand you've been dealt. But can we all escape the clutches of negativity, and is negative affect a result of choices in cognition? ... Thassa and Candace are right in their assertion that happiness is a choice? And, then, what would it mean to give us agency over our own emotionality?"

"The Japanese people continue on, strong, faithful, commendably polite, and civil."

Return to Anne on Generosity, and the evolution of literature