Expanding on the previous post...
I forgot to reference the TED talk that spawned that whole train of thought (aka pipeline):
Henry Markram and his Blue Brain
Anyways... moving on...
The ever increasing complexity in the Universe seems to stem from evolutionary systems. Clearly not just biological evolution... by evolutionary system I mean a system that has 1) a means of storing information, 2) a means of mutating that information and 3) a set of rules that determines which information is lost and which information is retained. In the context of biological evolution, you have genes that encode information, sex (for the most part) that mutates that information, and natural selection to determine which information is retained or lost.
At a lower level, you have molecules that store information with bonds (kind of trivial I know but bear with me now,) this information is mutated by interaction with other molecules, and the laws of physics govern whether bonds are retained. I'm not very familiar with chemistry, but from what I understand, there are various forces that determine whether bonds are retained. In covalent bonds, the attraction of the electrons of two atoms to the nuclei of both atoms holds the nuclei in equilibrium, overcoming the repulsion between nuclei and between the electron clouds. This type of bond clearly only works for certain atoms and some bonds are better retained, allowing larger structures to be built up, like carbohydrates, amino acids, etc. Some information survives... like the bond structure of a protein, while other information is lost or never created... like the formula for awkward pills (UAr7C2Si14.)
At a higher level, we can look at human culture. Information in this system is stored by brains in the short term, but is transferred (at great risk of mutation) and "stored" in the long term by language. As societies have progressed, we've invented less lossy ways of transferring information (books, for the most part, and more recently a series of tubes.) Certain information survives, largely determined by what's interesting and useful. Physics is very useful, so it survives. Phrenology was not useful. One problem human society faces today is that the cost of storing information is so cheap that there is no longer any way of separating the chronic from the schwag.
I am very interested to see what the solution to this information overload is. It could very well be the jump in abstraction level from one evolutionary system to the other. Or, more likely, human beings will be unable to handle this quantity of data and will have to bow out to the next apex predator: SkyNet. *cue Terminator foot crushing skull and sinister music.*
Long story short: what the universe is about is not the survival of matter or energy. All that is fixed and will be dispersed at some point in the distant future. The universe is a big game of survival of the fittest information.
Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
My most offensive theory yet!
Before I begin, let me throw this mandatory disclaimer out there: I do not actually believe this. This is a joke. An adult joke. For us adults.
It's been said that Asian people are more intelligent and studious than other races (mostly by Asians and our gaijin friends when they want to copy our homework.) Asians, always fans of social Darwinism, seem to think that this is a genetic thing. Well I'm Asian and I think I can sort of explain why at least Chinese people are genetically superior to you... errrr.... people.
Pre-Communist Chinese culture (like most cultures at the time) was pretty misogynistic. The primary role of women was child-bearing, indicative of a society that really wanted a high rate of population growth. Of course, misogyny goes hand in hand with polygamy (incidentally, the motto of the American porn industry.) Typically, a man would have several concubines in addition to his wife.
Before the cries of "totally awesome dude... I want to live there!" get too loud, let me say that "typically" may be a bit misleading here as having concubines was far from typical. To support multiple concubines and the children they would bear, you had to be rich. The richer you were, the more concubines you could have. In a polygynous culture, there are winners and there are losers (as opposed to a monogamous culture where there are only losers.) The proportion of men to women in roughly 1:1 and if I'm paired with two women, someone else is not getting laid. So in Imperial China, you had this spectrum of pimpdom, starting with the Emperor, who would have dozens of consorts and concubines (Emperor Kangxi of the Qing dynasty had 64,) and ending up with broke-ass scrubs who would have no wives.
This created an environment with a huge amount of sexual selection. If you had the ends then you could hit the skins and you would pass your genes on to a significant number of offspring. If you didn't, your genes would die off. Over the course of a few thousand years, this could have a significant effect on the gene pool. Of course, the presence of selection is only one part of the picture. Also important are the characteristics that are selected for. Fortunately, being rich is not a genetic characteristic.
While the economy of Imperial China was fundamentally agricultural, there was a great demand for two things: merchants and bureaucrats. Incidentally, these were the people that got rich. It's not hard to see why you have to be smart to be a successful merchant so I won't really go into that. However, in America, it may be difficult to associate intelligence with bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of Imperial China was, strangely enough, a meritocracy, but not in the traditional sense of being based on actual merit. To become a bureaucrat, you had to undergo a series of examinations, which tended to be tough as nails.
More importantly, Imperial Chinese society (and arguably even modern Chinese society) did not value uniqueness or innovation (kind of weird for a country responsible for a vast array of important inventions, right?) Innovation breeds change and change breeds instability. Social stability is an important feature of a nation that was usually stretching its resources to the breaking point, and the easiest way to get social stability is to blend people into a soupy homogenous mass (don't believe the CSI hype.) Unfortunately, success in any society depends on standing out; doubly so when your society has consistently been the most populous in the world. So the way to stand out isn't to do things differently or do different things, it's to just do things better. Chinese culture values skill above all things and in that social framework, skilled people rise above others.
So the situation in China was like an alternate universe version of the movie Idiocracy. People with a great deal of skill get the money and get the girls. And they get a lot of girls. And have a lot of kids. Repeat for thousands of years and you get some smart people. By smart I mean really good at taking exams.
Of course, there are some problems with this theory. 2000 years is only about 100 generations or so. It would take a very efficient selection mechanism to cause significant genetic change in that time span. There's also the question of distribution. China has always been a nation with a huge proportion of its population hovering between destitute and impecunious. The profligacy of a few rich assholes would hardly create an efficient selection mechanism. Selection needs to be vicious and China's puppy dog polygamy was probably mostly monogamy anyways.
So yeah ignore everything I just wrote. It's just a bit of an introduction to what will hopefully be a series of entries on China.
It's been said that Asian people are more intelligent and studious than other races (mostly by Asians and our gaijin friends when they want to copy our homework.) Asians, always fans of social Darwinism, seem to think that this is a genetic thing. Well I'm Asian and I think I can sort of explain why at least Chinese people are genetically superior to you... errrr.... people.
Pre-Communist Chinese culture (like most cultures at the time) was pretty misogynistic. The primary role of women was child-bearing, indicative of a society that really wanted a high rate of population growth. Of course, misogyny goes hand in hand with polygamy (incidentally, the motto of the American porn industry.) Typically, a man would have several concubines in addition to his wife.
Before the cries of "totally awesome dude... I want to live there!" get too loud, let me say that "typically" may be a bit misleading here as having concubines was far from typical. To support multiple concubines and the children they would bear, you had to be rich. The richer you were, the more concubines you could have. In a polygynous culture, there are winners and there are losers (as opposed to a monogamous culture where there are only losers.) The proportion of men to women in roughly 1:1 and if I'm paired with two women, someone else is not getting laid. So in Imperial China, you had this spectrum of pimpdom, starting with the Emperor, who would have dozens of consorts and concubines (Emperor Kangxi of the Qing dynasty had 64,) and ending up with broke-ass scrubs who would have no wives.
This created an environment with a huge amount of sexual selection. If you had the ends then you could hit the skins and you would pass your genes on to a significant number of offspring. If you didn't, your genes would die off. Over the course of a few thousand years, this could have a significant effect on the gene pool. Of course, the presence of selection is only one part of the picture. Also important are the characteristics that are selected for. Fortunately, being rich is not a genetic characteristic.
While the economy of Imperial China was fundamentally agricultural, there was a great demand for two things: merchants and bureaucrats. Incidentally, these were the people that got rich. It's not hard to see why you have to be smart to be a successful merchant so I won't really go into that. However, in America, it may be difficult to associate intelligence with bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of Imperial China was, strangely enough, a meritocracy, but not in the traditional sense of being based on actual merit. To become a bureaucrat, you had to undergo a series of examinations, which tended to be tough as nails.
More importantly, Imperial Chinese society (and arguably even modern Chinese society) did not value uniqueness or innovation (kind of weird for a country responsible for a vast array of important inventions, right?) Innovation breeds change and change breeds instability. Social stability is an important feature of a nation that was usually stretching its resources to the breaking point, and the easiest way to get social stability is to blend people into a soupy homogenous mass (don't believe the CSI hype.) Unfortunately, success in any society depends on standing out; doubly so when your society has consistently been the most populous in the world. So the way to stand out isn't to do things differently or do different things, it's to just do things better. Chinese culture values skill above all things and in that social framework, skilled people rise above others.
So the situation in China was like an alternate universe version of the movie Idiocracy. People with a great deal of skill get the money and get the girls. And they get a lot of girls. And have a lot of kids. Repeat for thousands of years and you get some smart people. By smart I mean really good at taking exams.
Of course, there are some problems with this theory. 2000 years is only about 100 generations or so. It would take a very efficient selection mechanism to cause significant genetic change in that time span. There's also the question of distribution. China has always been a nation with a huge proportion of its population hovering between destitute and impecunious. The profligacy of a few rich assholes would hardly create an efficient selection mechanism. Selection needs to be vicious and China's puppy dog polygamy was probably mostly monogamy anyways.
So yeah ignore everything I just wrote. It's just a bit of an introduction to what will hopefully be a series of entries on China.
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