To date, information has had a primary direction of flow, more outside in than inside out. Some say that this is still the only direction of signal. That everything else is environmental, incidental, but things have changed. Evolution has always been about computation, processing information, finding ways to adapt. It isn’t primarily chemical. The behavioural changes come before the chemical do more often than not. Thus pale skin in humans as well as lactose tolerance. Anyone know what colour carrots were originally?
White? Purple. With rare mutant varieties, it’s human interventions that identified and selected the traits they found desirable in carrots. They combined the two mutant strains and stopped cultivating the purple.
Just in the past few centuries? Not sure the time span, but our information has even shaped the evolution of other species is my point. The information that supposedly exists only in our head.
Pretty much everything we eat…wheat, corn, cows, sheep, potatoes.
The library where I work has a 17th century book about apples, and they were so many shapes and colours.
Humanities relationship to evolution has changed. According to mainstream science we are no longer really a part of the process of natural selection. Our information, in the form of culture, has lead us to adapt behaviours and devise technologies that have given us the apex position in that whole system. Not to say we manage that well, but what about our biology allows this?
We still are adapting within our cultures. Yes, and our cultures shape our adaption as well as being adapted by us.
Our minds have become our environment, but they still insist on telling us that only the physical and material is real. Information is proving to be the most powerful force on our planet, even serves as perhaps our most powerful weapon now, information and misinformation.
And disinformation. Yes. You can destroy a nation by blocking them from information flow.
Knowledge is power. If strength was that important, than gorillas would rule the world.
North Korea feels very threatened at this point in time, and really they have only been blocked off from the flow of money which is nothing other than information. A special class of information. Only special because we declare it to be.
Well, are Iran and North Korea being unnecessarily “bullied”? China was not bullying North Korea, but they are acting against them now. The North Korean government has sworn to nuke the US.
And Iran threatens to nuke Israel. Yes. The only demand that was made of them was to stand down on the nuclear programs they were running. Nuclear missile testing. Politics kills more than disease these days, even kills as a disease.
I just saw an episode of “60 Minutes” saying that Chinese are clamouring for democracy. The Chinese government tries to block the media, but they can’t stop people from tweeting.
The force of information is flowing more and more powerfully in this modern era. We are even building matter out of it. Viral bio batteries, nano switches. These are made of things that have only a vague measurable quality for us. Viruses more easily measured than nano switches of course.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~