Posts tagged nature

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Racism - QuoraAre you a racist? A sexist? Most likely you are. Interesting podcast about moral responsibility and consciousness, which ends with a very interesting discussion about how we make decisions unconsciously, while it seems we make them very conscious.

For example, this study into sexism: In a search for a new police officer, the researchers used 4 distinct CVs to test how much sexism plays a role in job → 1. Female with strong academic background, 2. Female who was ‘streetwise’ (experience on the street), 3. Male with strong academic background, 4. Male who was streetwise.

Group A was given the applicant forms of Female streetwise/Male academic background; and the group B was given Male streetwise/Female academic background. In both control groups, the overwhelming majority chose for the male applicant, arguing that - depending on which quality the male was given - or you need ‘someone’ who is streetwise (group B) or you need ‘someone’ with a strong academic background (group A). However, it shows that the sex is what counts, not the qualifications.

In three studies, participants assigned male and female applicants to gender-stereotypical jobs. However, they did not view male and female applicants as having different strengths and weaknesses. Instead, they redefined the criteria for success at the job as requiring the specific credentials that a candidate of the desired gender happened to have.

Racism and sexism is present in everyone, even if you don’t think so. You can test it on a Harvard research page dedicated on implicit racism. I did it with regard to my ‘preference’ towards gay/straight people. It does not measure sexual preference, which means that (taking the above example) I would probably be more likely to hire someone who is straight than someone who is gay (unless the criteria are clearly stated on beforehand).

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Straight People compared to Gay People.

This is the average result. See how racist/sexist we still are.

Implicit preference

Anuta, Rapa Nui, natural resources and Dunbar’s number

Anuta

Anuta is a very (very!) remote island in the South Pacific. Its people have developed one of the most sustainable, collaborative, and caring cultures on the planet. Its philosophy is called Aropa and

..is a concept for giving and sharing, roughly translated as compassion, love and affection. Aropa informs the way Anutans treat one another and it is demonstrated through the giving and sharing of material goods such as food. For example, the land on Anuta is shared among the family units so that each family can cultivate enough food to feed themselves and those around them.’

In the BBC documentary South Pacific, you see fishermen going out and bringing back fish, which is shared with all. Sharing and collaboration is their culture, and is the basis for their survival. It gives the impression that because of its population density (even higher than Bangladesh), its remoteness, and scarce resources (little land), this has been the most sustainable way to live. The island’s population is about 300 people, and divided into two ‘noporanga’, or “dwelling places”, each with a traditional chief. This is exactly Dunbar’s number, the estimate number of people of people with whom one can maintain a stable relationship. An interesting model for sustainability?

A whole other story is the story about Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.

Rapa Nui

 

Read more »

bbc.in

Sort of Scientific Theories: Why You Should Not Clean Your Room

sortofscientifictheories:

Situations of greater entropy are statistically favoured. Things that are statistically favoured tend to happen, especially over time. A disordered room has greater entropy than an organized one. Thus an organized room will tend to become disordered over time. The only way to reverse this is by continually putting in energy from an outside system (i.e. making the effort to clean your room regularly).

HOWEVER, at some point a disordered room will be maximally entropic. At this point, continually failing to clean one’s room will not generally result in a more disordered state. Thus no additional input of energy is needed to maintain the state of the room.

Therefore cleaning one’s room is futile - a task for the modern day Sisyphus. It is much more energetically efficient to allow the room to stay at its natural, maximally entropic state towards which it will always tend (and to expend that energy on more interesting things).

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First part of a 4-episode documentary about “The Age We Made”: a new geological era because we are having such a gigantic impact on the earth’s athmosphere, biodiversity, and future, that it can be compared with the biggest of all geological changes (like the impact of the meteorite that caused mass extinction (including the dinosaurs)). 

The other 3 parts can be listened through iTunes or the BBC Discovery website. 

Humanity’s impact on the Earth is so profound that we’re creating a new geological time period. Geologists have named the age we’re making the Anthropocene. The changes we’re making to the atmosphere, oceans, landscape and living things will leap out of the rocks forming today to Earth scientists of the far future, as clearly as the giant meteorite that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs does to today’s researchers. In this four part series, science journalist Gaia Vince looks at the impact of our planetary transformations from the perspective of geological time. When was the last time comparable events happened in Earth history, and are what are the tell-tale marks we’re making on the planet that define the Anthropocene?

Scientific paper on the topic by Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Alan Haywood and Michael Ellis. Or the Economist article about it.

Eating the planet.

Mushroom worldSome years ago, I read of a species of tiny woodland wasp that lives on mushrooms. It seems that when a Wandering female wasp chances upon the right kind of mushroom in the forest, she deposits her eggs within it. Almost inmediately, the eggs hatch and the tiny grubs begin literally to eat themselves out of house and home. The little maggots grow rapidly, but soon something very odd happens. The eggs in the larvaes’ own ovaries hatch while still inside their immature mothers. This second generation of parthenogenic grubs quickly consumes its parents from within, then breaks out of the empty shells to continue feeding on the mushroom. This seemingly gruesome process may repeat itself for another generation. It doesn’t take long before the entire mushroom is overfilled by squirming maggots and fouled by their bodily wastes. The exploding population of juvenile wasps consumes virtually its entire habitat which is the signal for the largest and most mature of the larvae to pupate. The few individuals that rhanage to emerge as mature adults then abandon their mouldering birthplace, flying off to begin the whole process over again.

From: OUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT: REDUCING HUMAN IMPACT ON THE EARTH. Mathis Wackernagel and William E. Rees.

books.google.nl

By studying ontogeny (the development of embryos), scientists can learn about the evolutionary history of organisms. Ancestral characters are often, but not always, preserved in an organism’s development. For example, both chick and human embryos go through a stage where they have slits and arches in their necks that are identical to the gill slits and gill arches of fish. This observation supports the idea that chicks and humans share a common ancestor with fish. Thus, developmental characters, along with other lines of evidence, can be used for constructing phylogenies. Interesting stuff!

By studying ontogeny (the development of embryos), scientists can learn about the evolutionary history of organisms. Ancestral characters are often, but not always, preserved in an organism’s development. For example, both chick and human embryos go through a stage where they have slits and arches in their necks that are identical to the gill slits and gill arches of fish. This observation supports the idea that chicks and humans share a common ancestor with fish. Thus, developmental characters, along with other lines of evidence, can be used for constructing phylogenies.

Interesting stuff!

evolution.berkeley.edu