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Sunday, January 22, 2012 - LoW-HI RV Ranch, Deming NM

Sunrise, LoW-HI RV Ranch, Deming NM, January 22, 2012
Sunrise, LoW-HI RV Ranch, Deming NM, January 22, 2012

Experimental workflow

I tried something new here today. Usually I take pictures and import them directly from the camera or card into Adobe Lightroom 3 where they get cataloged, edited, and exported for use here.

Today I tried something a little more convoluted. I took this picture with my iPhone 4 and sent it to my iPad using PhotoSync, an iOS app designed to sync photos between iOS devices and computers over WiFi. On the iPad I adjusted it using Filterstorm 4, a photo editing app I wanted to check out. Then I sent it on to the MacBook Pro using PhotoSync again where I cataloged it in Lightroom and exported it for use here.

Filterstorm 4 does a pretty good job tweaking a picture, in some ways more intuitively than Adobe Lightroom 3 though the verdict is still out whether I like it better. Or better enough to go through the extra file handling steps. One advantage to working on the iPad is I can kick back and edit without firing up the MacBook Pro and hunching over a desk. We shall see...

Night camp

Site 8 - LoW-HI RV Ranch, Deming NM

Genetic Determinism and Human Nature

The "implication" that seems to worry people the most is so-called genetic determinism - the notion that if human nature was shaped by evolution, then it's fixed and we're simply stuck with it; there's nothing we can do about it. We can never change the world to be the way we want; we can never institute fairer societies - policy-making and politics are pointless.

Now, that's a complete misunderstanding. It doesn't distinguish between human nature - our evolved psychology - and the behavior that results from it. Certainly, human nature is fixed. It's universal and unchanging, common to every baby that's born, down through the history of our species.But human behavior, which is generated by that nature, is endlessly variable and diverse. After all, fixed rules can give rise to an inexhaustible range of outcomes. Natural selection equipped us with the fixed rules - the rules that constitute our human nature. And it designed those rules to generate behavior that's sensitive to the environment. So the answer to genetic determinism is simple. If you want to change behavior, just change the environment.

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