Life
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Life page (the fourth building block)
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Life is the clustering of matter that can use other - low-entropy - matter to extract energy from it by converting it into high-entropy matter and use that energy for self-replication.
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Core ideas
Physical context
The existence of life on Earth is fascinating and is made possible by a unique set of circumstances. Our planet is located in what scientists call the “Goldilocks Zone,” where it is neither too hot nor too cold, allowing liquid water to exist. Water is essential because it acts as a solvent and enables the complex biochemical reactions that form the basis of life.
Earth’s atmosphere, rich in nitrogen and oxygen, protects us from harmful solar radiation while maintaining a temperature range conducive to life. Earth’s magnetic field protects us from solar winds and preserves our atmosphere for billions of years.
In addition, Earth’s geological activity plays a crucial role. Plate tectonics recycle nutrients and help regulate the climate by controlling carbon dioxide levels.
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Biology
The discovery of microbial life in extreme environments, such as the deep sea and dry deserts, has expanded our knowledge of where life can thrive. Life, once it begins, is incredibly resilient. Earth’s unique combination of chemical, geological, and environmental factors has made our planet a cradle for life.
The presence of diverse ecosystems, from oceans to forests, creates a stable environment in which different life forms can evolve. This biodiversity provides resilience and adaptability, allowing species to survive in changing conditions. In addition, the moon’s gravity stabilizes Earth’s axial tilt, creating consistent seasons that support agriculture and ecosystems.
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Life
In its broadest form, life is a constant balancing act, teetering between,
- stability (or structures, in extreme form a rock-steady relationship)
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- unpredictability (in extreme form a relationship-less chaos).
As mammals we are all a living tube. Life extracts its required energy,
- from 'solid objects' with low-entropy (e.g. a potato)
- through a process (e.g. digestion) in which sugars (the useful energy) are released and used by the body,
- and the remainder remains as unuseful high-entropy.
This means we comply with the laws of thermodynamics during life and after we die, when entropy takes over entirely again.
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Forms
Life forms operate on a scale between quasi-individualistic and highly group-bound. Humans belong to the latter. Living in groups brought us language and culture that allowed the individual to develop an individualistic consciousness. But that does not alter the fact that in combination with the genetic level, being human takes precedence by creating society.
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The primacy of the group
What follows may be a shock because it temporarily removes ethics from the discussion. Have you ever wondered why we pay so much attention to perpetrators and so little to victims? Our fundamental interest is survival, so we always seek to prevent danger. The perpetrator remains a danger to the community, and since we are part of the community, it remains a danger to us; the community can always continue without the victim's presence.
This brings us to a system definition: a system can function without certain parts, parts can never function without the system to which they belong.
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Our society as a system
It is an illusion that forming a society would go against the laws of thermodynamics because building a social system requires supporting structures. If everything and everyone were equal, we would live in a 'flatland' without evolution. Individuality, creativity, innovation, leadership, power, etc. are needed. Building a social system costs energy at every level, from individual to world power. The energy that we get from low-entropy sources generates high entropy in the process of delivering energy.
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Deep dive
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Key take-aways from the deep dive
- I - We can safely say that humans have not changed much genetically since the sedentary farming community emerged
- We - Participation refers to the activities by which people's interests, values, needs and concerns are incorporated into decisions and actions on public matters
- Context - SES (Social Economic Status) is most important
- Humans are political
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Short summary of human evolution
Taxonomically, humans belong to the primates, a genus from the superfamily of great apes (Hominoidea), including gibbons, orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees. Man is the only living species from the genus Homo, although there have been calls for humans to be placed in the same genus as the two species of chimpanzees (Chimpanzee + Bonobo).
- About 3.5 billion years ago the first simple single-celled organisms lived in water.
- Between 1 billion and 450 million years ago, plants and insects colonized the land
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- The first primates appeared 65 million years ago
- The first hominid appeared 6 million years ago
- 2.9 million years ago, Homo rudolfensis appeared
- 2.4 million years ago, Homo habilis appeared
- 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus spread as the first human species spread across other continents
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- 250.000 years ago, Homo sapiens (modern humans) appeared (7.500 to 10.000 generations back)
- 70.000 years ago, during volcanic eruptions in Sumatra, the then-existing human species are largely extinct, only in the south of Africa, about 12.000 modern humans survived (about 2.100 to 2.800 generations back)
- 40.000 years ago, modern man came to Europe as Cro-Magnon man (about 1.200 to 1.600 generations back)
- 10.000 years ago, agriculture was invented (about 300 to 400 generations back)
- 5.000 years ago, the use of writing appeared (about 150 to 200 generations back)
We can safely say that humans have not changed much genetically in the last 400 to 500 generations. In concrete terms, this means that if we could bring a baby born 12.000 to 15.000 years back to our time, they would grow up as perfectly normal human beings in our society.
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Genetics
Every biological individual carries genes. Genes contain the information that builds every biological being. Each gene is a unit of hereditary information and occupies a fixed position (locus) on a chromosome. The human genome (the entire set of chromosomes) contains an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes.
Genes can be described as duplicators. They make copies of themselves. When an organism reproduces, its genes implant copies of themselves into the new organism. The critical role reserved for organisms by genes is the transfer of (duplicated) genes to the next generation.
Evolutionary competition occurs not so much between organisms as between the genes themselves. Genes compete to get as many copies of themselves into the next generation as possible. Genes that provide characteristics that "promote the organism's survival and organise better transfer within a given context" will be more abundant in the next generation. Genes control organisms for their own survival. Therefore they determine the physical and mental properties and the behaviour.
A gene-centric perspective is the only correct one, nicely stated by Robert Sapolsky in his book 'Behave' (2017):
| The chicken is the strategy of the egg to create more eggs. |
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We
The voice of community
Have you ever stood among a singing audience at a concert? Curiously enough, this always sounds like one voice, even though one sings at different pitches and sings better or less well. Together, we exhibit the same characteristics as individuals. Robert Aumann (2005 Nobel Prize in Economics - “for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”) has developed this further.
| Tina Nabatchi, Matt Leighninger - Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy - 2025 |
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| Participation refers to the activities by which people's interests, values, needs and concerns are incorporated into decisions and actions on public matters. |
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119154815 |
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Biology
| Iain Couzin - Collective minds - 2007 |
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| For individuals within groups, survival can depend critically on how local behavioural rules scale to collective properties. Pertinent information, such as the location of resources or predators, may often be detected by only a relatively small proportion of group members due to limitations in individual sensory capabilities, often further restricted by crowding.
The scaling from actual to effective sensory range is non-linear, however. It is hard for groups to remain cohesive and for information to spread if individuals respond only to others very close to themselves. As sensory range is increased, a response to a greater umber of neighbours increases cohesion and allows effective long-range transfer of directional information. If this range expands further still, groups that form are highly cohesive but individuals may get misdirected, as the motion of distant individuals is less likely to encode relevant information about localized stimuli. Individuals within groups may modify their interactions in a context-dependent way. Under threat of attack, for example, individuals often align more strongly with one another, heightening collective sensitivity to weak or ambiguous environmental stimuli, and so increasing the ‘system gain’. However, amplification can occur in response to random fluctuations, creating false alarms that can be costly. We are beginning to comprehend more fully how individuals in groups can gain access to higher-order collective computational capabilities such as the simultaneous acquisition and processing of information from widely distributed sources. Group members may come to a consensus not only about where to travel but also about what local rules to use. Thus, like the brain, groups may adapt to compute ‘the right thing’ in different contexts, matching their collective information-strategy with the statistical properties of their environment. |
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| Pascal Molenberghs - The neuroscience of in-group bias - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews - 2013 |
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| Through evolution, the human brain has developed to adjust to complex social group living (Dunbar, 2011). Neuroimaging studies have shown that our neural correlates respond differently to in-group and out-group members (Eberhardt, 2005; Amodio,2008; Ito and Bartholow, 2009; Chiao and Mathur, 2010; Kubotaet al., 2012; Eres and Molenberghs, 2013). Understanding how these neural correlates are influenced by group membership is important for a better understanding of how complex social problems such as racism and in-group bias develop. Race is just oneof many dimensions that people can use to categorize themselves.
Gender, age, profession, ethnicity, status, country of birth, sportsteam, social group and education are just a few examples that we use to categorize people as belonging either to the in-group or out-group. Research has shown that people categorize themselves and others even based on trivial criteria (Tajfel et al., 1971) and this categorization can be very fluid and is often context dependent (Turner et al., 1994). |
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Survival of the richest and the most powerful
With the advent of our cultural society, the statement 'the survival of the fittest' has taken on a completely different meaning. Previously, it was about an 'accidental and blind' adaptation to a changing context. Now, it is also about an intentional adjustment to a context that can be adjusted intentionally by who is capable.
Life expectancy was generally shorter than today in ancient times and the Middle Ages due to several factors, such as poor hygiene, lack of healthcare access and knowledge about healthy eating. Despite these challenges, some people in ancient times and the Middle Ages lived to a relatively old age. These people were often wealthy and had access to better nutrition, better health care and better living conditions.
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A Harvard analysis of 1.4 billion Internal Revenue Service records on income and life expectancy that showed staggering differences in life expectancy between the richest and poorest. The only thing it seems to be correlated with is how educated and rich the area is. While researchers have long known that life expectancy increases with income, the researchers were surprised to find that trend never plateaued.
| Content source |
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| Harvard Gazette - For life expectancy, money matters - 2016 |
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A Swedish study compared the wealth of people in adulthood (on average at age 44) and that of their biological and adoptive parents. Researchers found that environmental factors influence prosperity more than biological factors: the prosperity of adopted children during adulthood is more influenced by the wealth of the adoptive parents than that of the biological parents. Growing up in an environment of wealth seems to have certain advantages, which largely determine whether children become more successful and richer later in life.
| Content source |
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| Lundborg & Majlesi - Statistic Sweden |
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Gregory Clark, an economist at the University of California, has extensively researched social mobility and the influence of family ties. He states that social status is primarily determined by heredity. Moreover, he notes that social mobility is very rare: more than half of one's social status can be predicted based on the social position of one's ancestors.
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| Gregory Clark - ‘The Son Also Rises’ |
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In summary, wealth, status, power, etc., makes us live longer, possibly resulting in more offspring. This is a human logical reason to strive for (tangible ) WEALTH and (intangible) STATUS.
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Politics
Where I have my proper interests, values, and goals, all humankind and its subgroups also have interests, values, and goals. Living this group event, we call politics.
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Gregarious
The word was originally used to describe animals that live in flocks — it's from the Latin word grex, meaning "herd." Not surprisingly, people began using it to describe humans who liked being in groups. Today biologists still speak of gregarious species.
Humans are inherently social. We are not special in this way; it is hard to think of any animal for whom the regulation of social behaviour is not important. Different animals, including humans, share many of the same types of social behaviour such as affiliation and aggression, the establishment of hierarchy and territoriality.
Many primates and other animals live in social groups, where individual members coordinate their activities, communicate, and interact in affiliative (friendly) and agonistic (aggressive or submissive) ways. In many social groups, individuals are gregarious; that is, they interact with one another frequently, engage in various types of social interactions, and typically form and maintain social bonds (strong social relationships) with other individuals (Dunbar 1988, Silk 2007).
Sociality is essential to these animals for several reasons. Most importantly, living in a group likely decreases one's risk of falling victim to predation (van Schaik 1983). There are three reasons for this.
- First, more individuals are looking for predators in social groups, which will be detected more quickly.
- Second, living in a group decreases each individual's chance of being preyed upon due to an effect called "geometry for the selfish herd" (Hamilton 1971): this states that the larger the group (e.g., 100 versus 10), the lower each individual's chance (1/100 versus 1/10) of becoming prey.
- Third, group individuals can collectively mob predators and successfully drive them away, whereas lone individuals cannot.
Sociality also benefits animals via access to food and other resources. In groups, many individuals are looking for food simultaneously. Thus, the detection of good food resources will inevitably be communicated to others simply because group members are usually close to one another. Group members will also benefit from cooperation over the defence of food or other limited resources, such as water holes and sleeping sites, as groups can out-compete individuals, and larger groups can out-compete smaller groups (Wrangham 1980).
In addition, sociality is beneficial to group-living animals in that it makes it easier for them to find mates. Animals that do not live in groups must either search for mates or opportunistically mate when encountering other individuals. Group-living animals simply choose mates within their social group.
Sociality allows the cooperative socialisation of offspring. In social groups, infants and juveniles play with one another, developing motor skills and the skills necessary to survive and reproduce in a social setting. For example, during social play, juveniles receive reinforcement from adults about how dominance hierarchies work and what it means to have a given rank within a social group of a given species. Thus, when they reach adulthood, they will have learned what they can and cannot do and fit into their social group's social fabric (Pereira & Fairbanks 1993).
Strong social relationships within groups, beyond group living alone, can carry important fitness benefits for individuals.
| Content source |
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| Primate Sociality and Social Systems - Nature Education |
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Aristotle
In the first sections of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, Aristotle (384–322 BC) asserts that “the human being (anthrōpos) is a political animal (politikon zōion).” Indeed, according to Aristotle, we are the most political of all animals. This was not a cynical put-down but a foundational claim with immense implications. The Politics holds an essential place in the vast corpus of Aristotle’s writing because political science was, for Aristotle, the master science. He believed that the science of politics should be concerned with describing how a human community comes into being, explaining how such a community is sustained over time in a dangerous and mutable environment, and, most importantly, how it enables our highest aspiration – complete human flourishing.
The community that Aristotle had in mind was the state – polis in Greek – the root term from which we take our English word “politics”. Humans were, for Aristotle, by nature, “state-dwelling animals”. He believed that states emerged through an organic process that began with biological imperatives that led to the formation of nuclear families. Families conjoined to create kinship groups and villages. The process was completed when several villages aggregated into a territorial state ruled by a legitimate government. Aristotle recognised that the process of state formation entailed individuals making choices, but he also regarded the process as natural. The impulses that led people to make their choices in building states arose from innate human capacities and the process aimed at creating an environment well-suited for human existence.
Aristotle argued that, once the state had come into existence, any person who could flourish outside the framework of a state must be either less or more than human: either a beast, i.e. a non-human animal, or a god, i.e. a super-human, immortal being who possessed capacities different from those of humans and had no need of the environment required by mortal humans. In his ethical and political works, Aristotle sought the answer to the question, how can we humans – as natural beings that are neither non-human beasts nor super-human gods, live the best lives available to us? He answered that we must recognise and learn to build and sustain the right environment for the beings we naturally are. Since our natural environment is, he supposed, the state, that meant discovering, through scientific inquiry, the essential features of the best possible state.
Aristotle employed the term “political animal” as a scientific description of humans as a part of nature. His phrase was intended to remind his readers that, despite our highest aspirations to be in some ways “god-like”, we are not gods. Unlike gods, we are mortal animals caught in a natural web of necessity that makes us dependent on a particular environment.
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What is politics about?
- Politics is about the characteristic blend of conflict and cooperation that occurs so often in human interactions. Pure conflict is war. Pure cooperation is true love. Politics is a mixture of both.
- Politics is a social phenomenon: it exists only in the relations and interactions between people and, therefore, pertains to groups, collectives, or societies.
- Politics involves matters that must be settled for a group, collective, or society. This includes managing conflicts and making collectively binding decisions.
- Politics involves power and power relations in managing conflicts, allocating system values, and making collective decisions. This makes the question of how power is acquired (or retained, or lost) of particular importance, as well as the question of how power ‘works’ in political interactions and processes.
- Political processes and interactions have something at stake. Depending on our specific interests, the stakes can involve the design of the political system itself and its relations with its environment or the realisation of ‘solutions’ for specific problems. They can also involve the struggle and competition for power and other resources necessary to realise these visions.
| Content source |
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| Cees van der Eijk - The Essence of Politics |
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Agonism
Agonism (from Greek ἀγών agōn 'struggle') is a political and social theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain forms of conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict in the political sphere but seeks to show how individuals might positively accept and channel this conflict. Agonists are primarily concerned with debates about democracy and conflict's role in different conceptions of it. The agonistic tradition of democracy is often referred to as agonistic pluralism. A related political concept is that of countervailing power. Beyond the realm of the political, agonistic frameworks have similarly been utilized in broader cultural critiques of hegemony and domination.
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Do you want to know more?
| Link | |
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| Human | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human |
| Politics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics |
| Economics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics |
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