LCEnzo
1yr ago
not all birds fly, and anyway birds have slop similar to those of reptiles.
Nor do species lose adaptations the moment the original reason they got them disappears, but I concede the point.
larger bodies have about same number of components as smaller ones [...] And the only parts which larger bodies have more complex are gastrointestinal tract and lungs
'Components' is an artificial category. The number of cells which sense are what matters (since the collected data needs to be processed, otherwise the cell is worse than useless). If you need to sense with the same precision on 1 mm^2 of skin and on 5 mm^2, you'd need more neurons for transport and processing for the larger patch of skin. Not necessarily 5 times more, you can compress the data or whatever, but you definitely need more than for the 1 mm^2 patch.
AFAIK, two things come together to give birds small but powerful brains, and better mass/compute scaling:
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Cell size can vary between species, and birds have pressure to miniaturize to reduce weight.
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Smaller bodies have less stuff (skin, muscles, etc) that need a nervous connection and a part of the brain to process data from and/or issue commands to. See Encephalization quotient. Eg. Women have the same IQ as men, despite having, on average, 90% of the brain size.
EDIT: This post by Scott might be of interest.
LCEnzo
1yr ago
[...] point of the royal family after the end of monarchy
What end? The monarchy is still in place.
What is the actual difference between her passing and like a Kardashian passing?
Part of it is that her lack of controversies and the sheer length of her reign bred a pleasent familiarity, and another is that she's a symbol and common cultural touchstone for British (and more broadly and to a lesser extent Commonwealth) citizens. She has sentimental value for people.
LCEnzo
1yr ago
Peter Watts - Blindsight
Great Sci-Fi book touching on consciousness, truly alien aliens, firs contact, mental disorders, etc. Pretty good, tho the writing could be better.
The Martian
Got a movie, haven't watched it. It's near future, about a guy trying to survive alone on Mars after his colleagues though him dead. Has a solid grounding in real science.
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947
I'm curious about governments which were/are outliers, and thus wanted to learn more about Prussia which united Germany, and was famed for the quality of it's armies. It was readable for a layman, though some jumps across dates were a little jarring for me. I enjoyed, though couldn't read more than 2 chapters a day.
Na Drini ćuprija/The Bridge on the Drina
The one book I really enjoyed reading in Highschool. It was written by Ivo Andrić, a Nobel prize winner, diplomat, and a lover of history. This book depicts a small town on a river that divides modern day Bosnia and Serbia. Though most of the events in the book are fictional, it presents the reader with a rich and colorful picture of life in the town around the bridge (and through it the events in the surrounding lands) from the bridges construction in 16th century, to it's partial destruction in World War 1.
The problem with corpos being made up of humans is similar to trying to make ever better computers without changing transistor size. You can optimize the layout, cooling, etc, but you'll forever be bound by the size. Corpo capabilities and architecture are chained by their components. They would be a lot more dangerous if they could produce better humans at scale (compare the performance of Jane Street vs retail investors, or special forces vs green Army grunts), or produce a new part to do mental and social work (AI).
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