Distilled, Integrative Research
Part Of: Biology sequenceContent Summary: 3000 words, 15 min read The Basic Facts of Abiogenesis From the geochemistry of the early Earth, life emerged. The abiogenesis phenomenon is interesting in at least two contexts: First, it is one of the most difficult unsolved scientific problems in the 21st century. Common descent describes how all of Continue reading A Portrait of LUCA
Part Of: Machine Learning sequenceContent Summary: 2000 words, 10min read. Excerpt 1 From: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural NetworksExcerpt 2 From: The Scaling Hypothesis How Much Money Is It Worth? A language model computes the probability of the next word, given some set of tokens. Individual predictions are optimized using cross-entropy loss, to increase the Continue reading…
Part Of: Language sequenceSee Also: Linear GrammarAdapted From: Jean-Louis Dessalles (2007). Why We TalkContent Summary: 1200 words, 6 min read Linear Grammar as Crude Predication. Protolanguage as a Vestige (Fossilized Competence). Bickerton sees protolanguage as a fossil, a behavourial vestige with which each of us is endowed. We are able, effortlessly and instantaneously, to adopt Continue…
Part Of: Politics sequenceFollowup To: The Evolution of Social StructureContent Summary: 2400 words, 12 min read A Quick Overview Last time, we introduced phase models of social structure. We started with five phases: Polities also vary along the network vs corporate dimension. Corporate-oriented polities tend to be run by oligarchies, and emphasize cult; network-oriented polities Continue reading…
Part Of: Politics sequenceContent Summary: 2400 words, 12 min read The Unilinear Stage Model A polity is an identifiable political entity. Polities exhibit a remarkable degree of variation. Traditionally, four polity types been distinguished (Service 1962). First, most human beings have lived in family-level groups (“bands”), about ~20 people living together. We’ve previously discussed the…
Part Of: History sequenceContent Summary: 5000 words, 25 min read The Indo-European Language Family In 1786, a British judge and linguist in India was asked to learn Sanskrit, to better understand how to integrate British and Hindu law. Three years after his arrival in Calcutta, Sir William Jones wrote, The Sanskrit language, whatever be its Continue reading The Yamnaya Singularity
Part Of: Culture sequenceSee Also: Kinship explains the IC DimensionContent Summary: 1800 words, 9 min read The Economics of Kinship Kinship systems are solutions to economic problems. In foraging societies, resources are scarce and dispersed. Hunter-gatherers that exploit a diversity of unevenly distributed food resources may need to hedge their bets by having kin in Continue reading Intro to…
Part Of: Anthopogeny sequenceContent Summary: 1000 words, 5 min read. Territoriality in Mammals Many mammals exhibit territoriality. A community will occupy a fixed piece of real estate, and defend it from conspecifics. Once an intrusion is detected, boundaries are defended by group members (often the females) coming together to chase the outsider away. The goal Continue reading The Evolution of…
Part Of: Links sequence Biology Cognitive Science AI Physics Other
Part Of: Anthropogeny sequenceFollowup To: Intro to Multilevel SocietiesContent Summary: 2400 words, 12 min read Introduction In today’s post, I will argue that humans have a multi-level society (MLS) social organization, and also evolved as cooperative breeders (CB). These attributes together explain a great deal of human uniqueness. They are an explanatory bridge over the Continue reading The…