Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

This book presents a broad-ranging and fascinating examination of attitudes: how we form them; how we organize them towards others; and whether they are inherently human or could also be developed by computers. Professor Eiser suggests there are fundamental objections to the idea of a computer having a sense of self or a set of attitutdes.

By its alternative depiction of God's non-violent creative power at the start of the biblical canon, Gen 1 signals the Creator's original intent for shalom and blessing at the outset of human history, prior to the rise of human (or divine) violence. Gen 1 constitutes a normative framework by which we may judge all the violence that pervades the rest of the Bible.

Let be a relational system whereby D is a nonempty set and P1 is an m1-ary relation on D. With we associate the (weak) monadic second-order theory consisting of the first-order predicate calculus with individual variables ranging over D; monadic predicate variables ranging over (finite) subsets of D; monadic predicate quantifiers; and constants corresponding to P1, P2, …. We will often use ambiguously to mean also the set of true sentences of.

Rose erroneously believes that the sciences of human behavior are being swept with a wave of genetic determinism. Actually, sociologists and psychologists remain predominantly hostile to any genetic influence on behavior. They will love Rose. The few behavior geneticists and sociobiologists in these disciplines are marginalized and looking for a little respect. Rose impugns their motives and ridicules their science.

Are risk behaviours in adolescence differentiated according to same-sex vs opposite-sex interest? For all respondents a five-point scale of interest in each sex used information from both of the first two in-home waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Logistic regression predicted the probability of experiencing each risk behaviour from the same-sex and opposite-sex interest scores. Same-sex interests have more effect on emotional risk, and opposite-sex interests have more effect on substance use. Nevertheless, all risk variables (...) except boys’ depression are responsive to both same-sex and opposite-sex interest. The same-sex interest component of risk is attributed to the emotional strain of living with an anomalous sex interest in a heterosexual society. (shrink)

This article presents a plan of action to begin the process of halting proliferation of long-range ballistic missiles. These missiles are deemed particularly dangerous due to their ability to deliver weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads) over intercontinental distances. Two treaties are proposed to help control the proliferation of these missiles. They are a Ballistic Missile Non-Proliferation Treaty and a Test Ban Treaty for Long-Range Ballistic Missiles. Provision is made for peaceful launches of satellites and space missions.

Research in attitudes and social cognition exemplifies van Gelder's distinction between the computational and dynamical approaches. The former emphasizes linear measurement and rational decision-making. The latter considers processes of associative memory and self-organization in attitude formation and social influence. The study of dynamical processes in social cognition has been facilitated by connectionist approaches to computation.