Usability Corner » Space http://usabilitycorner.com Some random thoughts about psychology, user experience, conscious thinking, design and technology Mon, 09 May 2011 03:06:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 The design of the universe http://usabilitycorner.com/index.php/2009/01/12/the-design-of-the-universe/ http://usabilitycorner.com/index.php/2009/01/12/the-design-of-the-universe/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:39:55 +0000 Manish Vashist http://www.usabilitycorner.com/?p=164 At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos — with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids — got built this way.

The patterns seem universal. It seems very biological. If you compare some of the simulated videos in this presentation to our growing knowledge on complex biological systems you can see a very similar pattern. Our place in the universe, albeit infinitesimally small, is to find a way to become part of it and not cancer in it.

Also, I think you walk a fine line around equating emergence with intelligence. I haven’t made that equation. What I have said, and what you might have misinterpreted, is: As far as we know, “intelligence” is an emergent quality and emergence appears on all levels of existence that we can perceive.Perhaps you mistakenly extended the subset to being the full set. That I haven’t said or implied. After all, how can two humans have a discussion about something that is defined as being beyond their comprehension, and thus beyond their conversational ability. It’s called thinking in the abstract which is not beyond human comprehension or conversational ability but we’re the model for intelligence (at least until we find something else that’s smart) and so to qualify as “intelligent” it will necessarily exhibit some of the signs that we do.

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