Quotes About Adaptation

still, the loss of something is significant, and I think that loss is the necessary source of a new manifestation.

Science, in all its greatness, is still subject to human creativity. It starts the first moment a child tries to reach up and grab at the clouds. Soon, the child learns that his own hands cannot reach the sky, but his hands are not the limit of his potential. For the human brain observes, considers, understands, and adapts. Locked within the mind is infinite possibility.

I thought maybe this was the way we could show love for our country, and we should not make too much fuss or noise, we should abide by what they asked of us. I'm a totally different person now than I was back then. I was naiive about so many things.

Life is a constant process of change with which views and values must keep up.

Everything has its place and time. We men of the nineteen-forties can smile at the mistakes of the nineteen-thirties, and, in turn, the men of the nineteen-fifties will laugh at the mistakes of the nineteen-forties. It is this historical perspective that shall save us.

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.

People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.

Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.

Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.

our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah.

Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives, and to reinvent themselves repeatedly. Many if not most humans may be unable to do so.

There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging.5 Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.

Consistency is the playground of dull minds

Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective condition and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including to the condition of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently even dramatic improvement in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.

A good rule of thumb is 'Biology enables, culture forbids.' Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It's culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others.

Many call this process 'the destruction of nature.' But it's not really destruction, it's change. Nature cannot be destroyed.

We are suddenly showing unprecedented interest in the fate of so-called lower life forms, perhaps because we are about to become one.

If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'. On

the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

Change Is the Only Constant

The governmental tortoise cannot keep up with the technological hare.

It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.

This is all the fault of evolution. For countless generations our biochemical system adapted to increasing our chances of survival and reproduction, not our happiness. The

The currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes. Just as the economic success of a company is measured only by the number of dollars in its bank account, not by the happiness of its employees, so the evolutionary success of a species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA.