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

“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

“Mechanism design takes up Hume's challenge by designing games in which the knaves to whom power is delegated are treated as players. The checks in the constitution are the rules of the game. These are used to prevent a player going off the rails in situations that the designer can effectively monitor and evaluate. However, it is the controls that are more important, since these apply to decisions that the designer can't monitor, or doesn't know how to evaluate. To get the players to act in accordance with the designer's aims rather than their own in such situations, it is necessary that the payoffs of the game be carefully chosen to provide the right incentives.”
― Ken Binmore, Natural Justice

“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