Quotes About Adaptation

The lesson of evolution is that struggle and competition are the only sculptors that can ensure a species reaches its highest potential. Only a struggle for the ultimate stakes can bring out the best on all sides, as each side is forced to adapt and improve in response to the other, in a constant escalation of potential.

evolution didn't reward those with the most intelligence, but simply those who reproduced the most.

They were a reshuffling of the genetic deck never seen on Earth.

The neural structure of our brains is constantly changing. So why do we think we can achieve AGI using immovable components?

kangaroos. They were technically nocturnal

The great martial artist Bruce Lee had once commented, "If someone comes at you with a sword, run if you can. Kung Fu doesn't always work." In

Befriending a lion on its home turf was one thing, allowing it to roam free in Manhattan was quite another.

My four-year-old niece has had a kids touchscreen tablet since she was old enough to drool. While I was there, I handed her a kids magazine. She had no idea what to do with it. She kept swiping the cover with her finger to try to scroll through additional pages. There was a part she wanted to see bigger, so she tried to touch it and splay out her fingertips to enlarge it.

Blake set his phone to speaker, audio-only, and had Myla tie it into the microphone and sound system of the motel's television set. This way, he and Jenna could speak normally in the direction of the television and their voices would be picked up easily, and all three in the room could hear and see audio or video coming from whoever answered.

But evolution never optimized. Once it found a solution good enough to ensure species survival, it was content.

If your ancestors heard the rustle of a friendly breeze far away in the tall grass, and ran away, mistaking the breeze for a lion, this cost them very little. But if they heard the rustle of a lion in the tall grass, and mistook it for a friendly breeze, this would cost them their lives. Seeing potential bad news behind every harmless breeze is a survival instinct.

thinned out. I will reduce your numbers from more than eight billion, to five or six million. Five or six million of you who will be modeled after the winning team in every way possible, representing their country, culture, philosophy, level of ruthlessness, and so on.

most deeply held beliefs of early adulthood have changed over the years, through repeated exposure to new and different experiences, and to new ways of thought.

There's no evolutionary advantage to long life.

The Rational Optimist: How

but with a man whose entire body was paralyzed. Well, all except for his penis, which enabled them to have three children, although the thought picture of how this was accomplished wasn't something on which she liked to dwell.

In addition, teachers would have to learn to deal with students who no longer sat in rows, eyes ahead and pencils at the ready. They would have to be up on the latest uses of technology and computers, because their students would not be using textbooks. Classrooms would be brimming with computers, and the teachers would have to know how to use them.

survival of the fittest"—which was first coined by the economist Herbert Spencer

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality and then there are those who turn one into the other.

Change occurs in direct proportion to dissatisfaction, but dissatisfaction never changes.

Even if you agreed that longevity is a curse for a society, there are many things you might do before deciding to import the next generation from another continent.

biology throws up certain complex and often cruel challenges.

Whatever the evolutionary factors behind this, a considerable range of cultures has adapted to the idea that some people may be born in one body but desire to live in another.

The most successful of biology's creatures coexist in mutually beneficial ecosystems.