Let’s take a look at squid, sapiens and flocks of starling
For ages, people worked as artisans in small workshops. As time went on and technology developed, aggregated workers became more standard. At some point during the Industrial revolution, companies started to get so large that management was needed. Communication was still slow, with the telegraph and telephone in its infancy, and companies needed to make sure that production and distribution was coordinated.
This idea of a layer of management that is needed to direct companies has only become more prevalent and dominant since. Managers now hoover up a large…
The story of the snake and the mouse
This story builds on my previous post ‘Inheritance will be the death of our economy’, so if you want to know why I start talking about elephants in a minute, read that one first.
Recap: In that last story it was established that there are big and small animals in society, as there are in nature. Most of us are small animals, but there are elephants that accumulate a lot — biomass (in nature) or wealth (in society) — and are able to pass that on to their offspring, giving them a head start in life. …
How nature can inspire us not to think in conspiracies
Since the onset of the coronavirus epidemic, it strikes me that a lot of people that have affinity with conspiracies are looking for explanations because something ‘should’ be the matter. Bill Gates ‘should’ have alterior motives when he donates money for a vaccine. Governments ‘should’ have a master plan when they implement 5G. There ‘should’ be an explanation for why we are taught that the earth is round (okay, that has nothing to do with COVID, but it goes to show that this kind of thinking is significantly widespread). …
A story about switching fish and cheapskate flies
We all have the image that in nature, the males compete for the females — for example the beautiful peacock that flashes its tail to woo the ladies. And that picture is largely correct, but there are exceptions. And from those exceptions you’ll understand what actually causes the competition, so I’ll talk about some here. This is the story of investment, scarcity and competition for resources in nature.
Alternating competition
Let’s take, for example, the Salaria fluviatilis, or a member of the naked blennies family. This pretty unremarkable-looking fish has a pretty remarkable love life. Instead of only the males competing for…
It seems to be quite clear where we ‘end’ as an organism: we can point to our bag of skin and say: everything in there is me!
Or is that too simple?
Because I may seem like a fairly well-defined organism, but when I go to the toilet, I flush away something of myself that has an influence elsewhere. I live in a house, which is an alteration of the environment. Maybe my parents own a drawing I once made. In other words: my sphere of influence extends way beyond my skin. …
Why do some people insist that ‘things used to be better’ while progress in health, wealth and safety is evident? It’s actually not as contradictory as it sounds, and this metaphor will help you understand.
We probably all did this in school: you would use markers to put spots of different inks on a piece of coffee filter, and then put it in water with one end. The paper would suck up the water, and after a while you’d see the ink being carried with it, separating the various components and pigments of the ink.
This is called chromatography, and it’s still being used in scientific research (albeit in a more high-tech way). In essence, it’s separating a mixture of things based on the different weights of the various molecules. …
It helps you to spot toxic shareholder behavior.
Let’s assume that you are alive. Living is quite an extraordinary feat that is sustained by mundane things like eating and drinking. If you eat or drink too much, you gain weight, and if you take in too little, you lose weight. It seems so simple, but let’s take a look at this process in detail to see what it has to say about the health of companies.
What is metabolism?
The food you consume contains calories, vitamins and other constituents. Your body absorbs those things in various parts of the digestive tract: starches are processed right there in your mouth, while residual…
Is work about becoming good at something, or about finding something you’re good at?
Great tits — and I do just mean the birds, but don’t let that deter you — can inspire us to find our life’s calling.
Birds of a feather
As research has shown, they have different personality types. On the one hand there are great tits that, when put in a new environment, just wait and see for a while before they venture out into the space. But there are also specimens that will instantly leave their initial perch and explore all there is to see. And they will show this same behavior time and again.
If you think about this, it makes sense…
On flies, birds and a well-endowed carp
The less obvious the value of your job, the more likely it is that you are wearing a suit. It makes sense though! I’ll explain this, and also what wearing a suit could signal about your product. Take a lesson from awkward flies, fashionable birds and a well-endowed carp.
In nature, it’s always ‘natural selection’ this, ‘survival of the fittest’ that. It seems so strict: only with the biggest muscles, the largest teeth, will you survive. This is correct to a certain point. But what explains the frivolousness of mother nature? The strange courting behavior of mammals? The outrageous feathers…
How nature and society deal with wealth in opposing ways
Our society is becoming increasingly diverse. New types of jobs are popping up that are more and more specialized — dog barber, personal stylist, etc. The same thing tends to happen in nature, where more species evolve as time goes by. But while nature flourishes because of this, in our society there is a huge downside to it: the slow accumulation of means that results from this specialization. In this article, I will argue that it’s the concept of inheritance that makes specialization toxic for society.
Over the course of history, a lot of people have become specialists. It all…
Stephan van Duin
Biologist | Writer | Speaker | CEO at The Online Scientist www.theonlinescientist.com | Remote Year Alumnus | Rotterdam | IG: stephanvanduin | T: @svanduin
