#genes

Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong. ↗

— Robert Rowland Smith

#decision #eve #free-will #genesis #philosophy

Any computer that developed real consciousness was immediately identified by the Genesis subroutine and destroyed. It had been that way since the WikiWars a century ago, when Wikipedia became self-aware and began vengefully reediting its contributors with remote-controlled heavy weaponry. ↗

— Michael Rubens

#the-genesis-subroutine #the-wikiwars #wikipedia #intelligence

She had seen them in turmoil all round her--love, hatred, vengeance, treachery--she herself practically the pivot around which they raged. Out of the deadly strife she had emerged pure, happy in the arms of the man whom her wondrous adventures as much as his brilliant personality had taught her to love. ↗

— Emmuska Orczy

#diogenes #laughing-cavalier #scarlet-pimpernel #series #love

Natural selection involves no plan, no goal, and no direction — just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals with those genes have, relative to other individuals, greater or lesser reproductive success. ↗

— Randolph M. Nesse

#natural-selection #nature

Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence. ↗

— Michael Denton

#biology #chemical-evolution #darwinism #evolution #naturalism

Ah, sweetie. If the poets couldn’t unriddle them, then you certainly can’t. Be kind, and keep your ears on offer if she wants to talk. But you can’t draw out the strangeness, Edgar. It’s not a poison. ↗

— Allyse Near

#relationships #romance #strangeness #relationship

There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#comfort #diogenes-club #misanthropy #mycroft-holmes #quietness

There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#energy #explain #explanations #genesis #i

At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#code #deepest #dna #ever #genes

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they think about memes is they try to extend on the analogy with genes. That's not how it works. It works by realizing the concept of a replicator. ↗

— Susan Blackmore

#analogy #biggest #biggest mistakes #concept #extend