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Evo Devo Universe? A Framework for Speculations on Cosmic Culture

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In organic systems, a process of evolutionary development ("evo-devo") guides the production of intelligent, organized and complex structures. In living systems, we can distinguish genetically-linked evolutionary processes that are stochastic, creative, and divergent, and opposing, gene-linked developmental processes that produce robust, statistically predictable, conservative, and convergent structures and trajectories. New hypotheses in cosmology are allowing us to begin to model our universe as an evolutionary and developmental system. The evo-devo framework can help us reconcile a large set of apparently stochastic, unpredictable, and evolutionary features of universal emergence with a special subset of potentially statistically predictable and developmental universal trends and emergences. One apparent trend is an ever-increasing spatial and temporal locality of universal complexity development. Another is the apparent hierarchical emergence of increasingly space, time, energy, and matter ("STEM") dense and efficient substrates for adaptation and computation. Another is the increasing complexity, interiority, empathy, ethics, and integration of mind. The latter trend has been discussed most notably in the noosphere hypothesis, and its prediction of the increasing interconnectedness, integration, ethics, and consciousness in complex minds. Fortuitously, the evo-devo framework, and some of its hypotheses, offer us several concrete and testable ideas on how the noosphere, and a coming cosmosphere, may develop, in a suitably supportive environment. It offers us a vision of particularly adaptive patterns of emergence, communication, and behavior, the beginnings of a purpose-driven view of nature.
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... available within our simulation. A simulated (pseudo)-escape can be accomplished by instead of trying to hack into the external world, switching over into a simulated world of our creation [90,91]. A successful social engineering attack may make it possible to obtain support for the escape from the real-world agents, resulting in a much easier, assisted, escape. ...
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{"Every animal form is the product of two processes--development from an egg and evolution from its ancestors," writes Sean B. Carroll in his introduction to textlessItextgreaterEndless Forms Most Beautifultextless/Itextgreater. The new science of "evo devo"--or evolutionary developmental biology--examines the relationships between those two processes, embryonic development and evolutionary changes, despite their radically different time scales. Carroll first offers a recap of how genes express themselves in a growing embryo, then peers into the life histories of real-life examples to explain how those genes have changed (or not changed) over millions of years of evolution. Paraphrasing Thomas Huxley, he asks us to consider evolution and development as two sides of the same coin. textlessblockquotetextgreater We may marvel at the process of an egg becoming an adult, but we accept it as an everyday fact. It is merely then a lack of imagination to fail to grasp how changes in this process that assimilated over long periods of time, far longer than the span of human experience, shape life's diversity." textless/blockquotetextgreater The book's second half is where Carroll really gets at the meat of evo devo, explaining how regulatory genes control such mysteries as individual and population changes in butterfly's spots, jaguar fur, and hominid skulls. Evo devo is one of the hottest areas of study in 21st-century biology, and Carroll's outline of the field is a great place to start understanding it. textlessItextgreater--Therese Littletontextless/Itextgreater} {textlessBtextgreater"A beautiful and very important book."—Lewis Wolpert, textlessItextgreaterAmerican Scientisttextless/Itextgreatertextless/BtextgreatertextlessBRtextgreatertextlessBRtextgreaterFor over a century, opening the black box of embryonic development was the holy grail of biology. Evo Devo—Evolutionary Developmental Biology—is the new science that has finally cracked open the box. Within the pages of his rich and riveting book, Sean B. Carroll explains how we are discovering that complex life is ironically much simpler than anyone ever expected.textlessBRtextgreatertextlessBRtextgreaterPerhaps the most surprising finding of Evo Devo is the discovery that a small number of primitive genes led to the formation of fundamental organs and appendages textlessItextgreaterin all animal formstextless/Itextgreater. The gene that causes humans to form arms and legs is the same gene that causes birds and insects to form wings, and fish to form fins; similarly, one ancient gene has led to the creation of eyes across the animal kingdom. Changes in the way this ancient tool kit of genes is used have created all the diversity that surrounds us.textlessBRtextgreatertextlessBRtextgreaterSean Carroll is the ideal author to lead the curious on this intellectual adventure&#}151;he is the acknowledged leader of the field, and his seminal discoveries have been featured in textlessItextgreaterTimetextless/Itextgreater and textlessItextgreaterThe New York Times.textless/Itextgreater 16 pages of color and 100 black-and-white illustrations.