Hélio Steven

“A fair social contract is then taken to be an equilibrium in the game of life that calls for the use of strategies which, if used in the game of morals, would never leave a player with an incentive to exercise his right of appeal to the device of the original position. So a fair social contract is an equilibrium in the game of morals, but it must never be forgotten that it is also an equilibrium in the game of life; otherwise evolution will sweep it away. Indeed, the game of morals is nothing more than a coordination device for selecting one of the equilibria in the game of life.”
― Ken Binmore, Natural Justice

“The extension of minds into the world through the use of artifacts was perhaps the last vital step in the evolution of culture that underlies the modern mind. Written symbols, alphabets and number systems, are ways of using the world to hold ideas. These external symbols allow a society a capacity for systematic thinking that would be impossible otherwise, a process we have referred to earlier as progressive externalization. Indeed, these external devices are not just static devices for memory storage. We have built external devices that process information, mirroring the process of thought inside our heads, at least loosely. Consider numerical calculation. You are limited in the amount of numbers you can easily add in your head. A paper and pencil increase this ability tremendously by letting you manipulate external symbols and hold intermediate steps in the calculation. By using artifacts that themselves process symbols, such as a handheld calculator, however, you can dramatically extend the realm of thought.”
― Steven R. Quartz, Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are – Understanding Cultural Biology and the Ancient Systems Behind Our Humanity

“The great value of the Darwinian evolutionary paradigm is the way it helps us understand how what once was "noise" (e.g., unselected-uncorrelated variation) can become new "signal" under changing circumstances.”
― Terrence Deacon

“Evolution is all about turning "bugs" into "features," turning "noise" into "signal," and the fuzzy boundaries between these categories are not optional; the opportunistic open-endedness of natural selection depends on them.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds