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THE SECOND CLOUD

One cloud is the risk of a nuclear war that could destroy us all.
The second cloud is the risk of an environmental collapse. One potential cause of such a collapse is the gradual extinction of most of the world’s species.
Isn’t extinction a natural process? If so, why should we worry about the extinctions that are happening now? Yes, every species will eventually go extinct. But the current human-caused rate of extinction is much higher than the natural rate.

346 reads

MORE IDEAS ON THIS

Does Natural Selection Explain Skin Color?

People from sunny Africa have black skin. So do people from other sunny areas, such as southern India and New Guinea. Skin gets paler as you move north or south away from the equator, until you reach northern Europe, where you find the palest skin of all.
Obviously, dark skin evolved...

501 reads

Dangerous Luxury

For animals, copulation is a dangerous luxury. Animals in the act of mating burn energy and neglect opportunities to obtain food.
They are also vulnerable to predators who want to eat them or rivals who want to take over their territory.
Copulation is something to be accomp...

597 reads

Why can’t we naturally repair or replace everything in our body?

The answer must have to do with the cost of repair. Think again about car repairs. Suppose you buy an expensive car that you expect to last for a long time. It makes sense to invest in regular maintenance, which is cheaper than discarding your car and buying a new one every few years.

543 reads

Sexual Selection and Physical Appearances

Darwin had noticed that many animals have features with no obvious survival value, such as the long, colorful tails of male peacocks and the dark, shaggy manes of male lions.
These features do help animals get mates, however, either by attracting individuals of the opposite sex or by...

463 reads

AGRICULTURE, FOR BETTER AND WORSE

Agriculture brought great increases in the amount of food we were able to store. This meant that more people could survive. But agriculture also brought disease, inequality between the sexes and between social classes, and the tyranny of powerful rulers.
Agriculture began to appear o...

394 reads

The Lives of Hunter-Gatherers

Nutrition is another difference. Farmers concentrate on crops such as rice and potatoes, which are high in carbohydrates.
Hunter-gatherers are healthy and suffer from little disease. They enjoy a varied diet, and they do not experience the food shortages and famines that can happen t...

377 reads

False Messages

It is the instinct to rely on handicap signals as a sign of strength. Whiskey and cigarette ads are cleverly directed at that old instinct, with their messages that smoking and drinking will bring status and make us attractive.
Drug addicts and alcoholics not only lead shorter lives...

386 reads

“We’re still more than 98 percent chimp in our genes.”

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN?

A scientist from outer space would immediately classify humans as a third species of chimpanzee.
Scientists right here on Earth know that we share more than 98 percent of our genetic makeup with the other two chimps. The difference between our genes and chimps’ genes is small. Yet th...

852 reads

“In the framework of evolutionary biology, success is measured in terms of leaving more offspring.”

WHY DO WE SMOKE, DRINK, AND USE DANGEROUS DRUGS?

Why would we do something that we know to be harmful or dangerous?

They do so because our drugs of abuse are addictive—once you start, the chemistry of the drug affects the brain, making you want to continue.
Ten thousand years ago we “displayed” by challenging a lion or a trib...

407 reads

The Silence Is Deafening—Thank Goodness

What would happen if we found alien —or it found us. Would we and the aliens sit down together for fascinating discussions? Would they share their advanced technology with us?

Throughout history, human explorers who discovered technically less advanced humans responded by shooting them...

373 reads

A STRANGE LIFE CYCLE

Human children took years to acquire the information and experience they needed to be efficient hunter-gatherers, just as today they take years to learn how to be farmers or computer programmers.
Human children depend on parents to bring food to them. This seems natural to us, but it...

660 reads

CURATED FROM

The Third Chimpanzee

by Jared M. Diamond

14 ideas

6.8K reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

Prince Rahul

@prince_rahul

"A good idea should be like a girl's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest."

At some point during the last 100,000 years, humans began exhibiting traits and behavior that distinguished us from other animals, eventually creating language, art, religion, bicycles, spacecraft, and nuclear weapons—all within a heartbeat of evolutionary time….

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