Embracing Chaos

Evolution-like processes exist in many places beyond genetic adaptation of biological species. We see similar processes in a great many aspects of modern life, generally running many orders of magnitude faster. Much of economics and business is governed by processes that select for the most successful product or business model or manufacturing process or organizational structure. Successful practices thrive and out-compete ones which are less effective at meeting human needs and desires. Warfare has very obvious parallels. In computer science, user interfaces, programming languages and system architectures all evolve by analogous processes. Similar effects can be found in governments, religions,…

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Revolutionaries are idealists. They have to be. They risk their lives to fight for what they believe in. Lenin, Mao, Castro — they all truly and deeply believed that they were fighting for a better way of life for their people. And to a varying degrees, they accomplished that. In fact in all three of these cases — Russia, China and Cuba, the early years after the revolution were relatively good for the people. Wealth was redistributed and poverty decreased. The second world is generally better than the third world. When I was living in communist China, I found it…

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Last night I cooked a chicken the really old-fashioned way: by roasting it over an open wood fire. My buddy Mez and I made many observations about how much of an evolutionary throwback our dinner was. Open fire cooking clearly precedes the invention of the oven. It is incredibly inefficient in its use of fuel. Most of the heat goes up into the air. The food must be balanced at an appropriate distance to get the right amount of heat without burning to a crisp. There’s an evolutionary advantage to cooking food — it kills parasites, bacteria and other food-borne…

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