Word: feedback
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Lovelock originally thought that some purposeful design organized living things to stabilize the atmosphere and climate. Now he and Margulis believe this regulation is achieved through the simple mechanism of feedback. For instance, in a hypothetical scenario, Lovelock shows that a planet covered simply by light- and dark-colored daisies could control the sun's heat. In this self-regulating model, dark daisies would absorb sunlight and warm the planet, until it became too warm for the dark daisies and instead favored the proliferation of light-reflecting daisies. That would have the effect of cooling the planet until the cycle...
...spite of all the negative feedback, the NSF committee decided that previous experiments were inconclusive and that further research should be conducted to find the answers to the yet unsolved questions...
...great anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson pointed out 20 years ago that this myriad of feedback circuits resemble the mathematical models of thinking being developed for the new science of artificial intelligence. A forest or a coral reef or a whole planet, then, with its checks and balances and feedback loops and delicate adjustments always striving for light and equilibrium, is like a mind. In this way of thinking, pollution is literal insanity (Bateson was also a psychologist). To dump toxic waste in a swamp, say, is like trying to repress a bad thought or like hitting your wife every...
...best parts of cowboy culture -- rationalism and the spirit of inquiry. We need more science now, not less. How can we stretch our nerves around those numbers and make them as real and as ominous as our cholesterol readings? Repeat them each night on the evening news? We need feedback, as if we were the audience in a giant public radio fund-raising drive hitting the phones and making pledges. Like expert pilots navigating through a foggy night, we need the faith to fly the planet collectively by our instruments and not by the seat of our pants...
What if the spirit doesn't hit? We can't afford to wait if we want to survive. While we are waiting for this sea change of attitude, we could pretend -- a notion that sounds more whimsical than it is. Scientists have found that certain actions have a feedback effect on the actor. Smilers actually feel happier; debaters become enamored of their own arguments; a good salesman sells himself first. You become what you pretend to be. We can pretend to be unselfish and connected to the earth. We can pretend that 30- ft.-long, black-tinted-glass, air-conditioned...