Agree, I believe it's because of the comments... also, tried resubmitting the correct link and it broke too, had to use a shortener: https://bloom.bg/3q5IJXE
I agree, diversifying energy sources seems to be the best policy. We've been sending radioactive materials into space for a long time (pu-batteries), albeit quite small amounts. -- Perhaps we should be "smurfing" fuel to the space station.
The book is OK, his concept is sound. He mixed weak faith based analogies in too much for my taste but it doesn't overly detract from the science. My criticism is not due to an atheistist tilt; the analogies felt forced and contrived, they were poor prose.
Overall his description of, "adaptive dissipation," is pretty solid. Our complex form (life) has developed to increase entropy. Nice discussion of thermodynamics and the flow of energy. We're all flames flickering in the light of the sun.
It would have been nice if he had touched on morphogenesis, proposed by Alan Turing, which also suggests reasons for complex biological forms.
Interesting, can you add some depth to that statement? I enjoyed the book, and found it useful in illustrating many cognitive biases.
I've gone on to read more of his work and agree the data is from, "WEIRD societies: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic." (i.e. a lot of small study groups from ivy league schools) -- but nevertheless found the book enjoyable and useful
I really enjoyed it to but agree with GP that it falls down. Initially, he sets up a system around our pattern matching, biasing, etc. but as the book progresses I felt it got more and more hand wavy. Lots of the examples didn't really fit the plot of his system but he implies that the system still holds. Also, lots of the studies like the marshmallow test have failed to stand up. We take a single study of proof when it is usually no more than an indication. The conclusions are really just a data point. Perform the same test 100 times with different scientists and participants and look at the data again. Instead we take one test and cut the data to fit and then publish.
Have to agree, in some ways he helped drive the discussion to greater depth -- many questions aren't easy to answer and Gould didn't want to entertain them. I particularly liked Sacks vignette on patterns from migraines, revisited here:
Sheldrake's discussion on magnetoreception was also of value; it wasn't perfectly accurate (nor as well understood then as it is today) but Gould was arbitrarily dismissive; see more on the really cool phenomena here:
Einstein said it well: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
