Quotes About Adaptation

The most important question in twenty-first-century economics may well be what to do with all the superfluous people.

The moment the first hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach was the moment that Homo sapiens climbed to the top rung in the food chain and became the deadliest species ever in the four-billion-year history of life on Earth.

But at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this is no longer true: Homo sapiens is transcending those limits. It is now beginning to break the laws of natural selection, replacing them with the laws of intelligent design.

We always prepare ourselves for the previous enemy, even when we face an altogether new menace.

Every other mammal that went to sea – seals, sea cows, dolphins – had to evolve for aeons to develop specialised organs and a hydrodynamic body.

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

Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

Cuando aparecieron la agricultura y la industria, la gente pudo basarse cada vez más en las habilidades de los demás para sobrevivir, y se abrieron nuevos «nichos para imbéciles».

AI might similarly help groom the best detectives, bankers, and soldiers in history.

the job market of 2050 might well be characterized by human-AI cooperation rather than competition.

In order to keep up with the world of 2050, you will need not merely to invent new ideas and products but above all to reinvent yourself again and again.

Creating new human jobs might prove easier than retraining humans to actually fill these jobs.

Bank clerks and travel agents, who a short time ago seemed completely secure from automation, have become endangered species.

But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust.

The liberal political system was shaped during the industrial era to manage a world of steam engines, oil refineries, and television sets. It has difficulty dealing with the ongoing revolutions in information technology and biotechnology.

Most of what they currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by the time they are forty. 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.

Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn't been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.

While he originally sang about 'a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode', under pressure from white-owned radio stations Berry changed the lyrics to 'a country boy named Johnny B. Goode'. As

Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neurons were enough to transform Homo erectus – who could produce nothing more impressive than flint knives – into Homo sapiens, who produce spaceships and computers.

All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation.

humans are similar to other domesticated animals. We have bred docile cows that produce enormous amounts of milk but are otherwise far inferior to their wild ancestors. They are less agile, less curious, and less resourceful.

There is no basis for thinking that the most successful cultures in history are necessarily the best one for Homo sapiens.

In order to function, the people who operate such a system of drawers must be reprogrammed to stop thinking as humans and to start thinking as clerks and accountants.

Socialism, which was very up to date a hundred years ago, failed to keep up with the new technology. [...] If Marx came back to life today, he would probably urge his few relating disciples to devote less time to reading Das Kapital and more time to studying the Internet and the human genome.