Africa's evolutionary tendencies

There's something really special about Africa. It builds really powerful and capable animals. I mean looks at a lion - ultimate hunting machine. The zebra is the ultimate escape machine, with highly developed patterning and group coordination to make it hard to catch. The patterning isn't even really camouflage, I think it's something more advanced, designed to mess up the predator's vision system.


Ants and bees out of Africa are insane. Ants have jaws so powerful that they can be used as sutures, and the bees are capable of multiple stings so they can pretty much kill an animal threatening the hive.


Look at Australia in comparison - koala bear. Seriously? I really like Australia as it seemed to favor creativity over brute performance, but just sayin'

And we are the product of Africa developing a species that specializes in intelligent behavior. Pretty brutal sometimes too, which is how the African species tend to be.

Life is a brief flash of experience

Life is a brief flash of experience, the bi-product of a bunch of atoms flittering around signaling the illusion of consciousness until they disorganize in death and decay.

Girls are canaries in the social coal mine

When you walk into a public place, everybody sees your body language and interaction style. Women are the most sensitive. The game with attracting women is not just about attracting women; it's about attracting everybody. However the women will be the most sensitive.

Dancing is like a digital clock

When you turn on a digital clock and all the segments of all the numbers light up simultaneously (showing what appears to be a bunch of 8's and stuff), that's what dancing is. People use it to check that the person dancing has all of the "outputs" to muscles working. Not consciously, but unconsciously, this is why people are programmed to be attracted to people who dance "well." It also defines what dancing "well" means. Also, people are looking for synchronization with external music, which indicates that the inputs are working also. If you only dance with like one joint, it doesn't look right. You often have to engage a lot of them.

Inner confidence and being in the body

I recently listed to this Pickup Podcast Ep. #109 Inner Confidence Interview, and it's finally starting to make sense.

This time I explored being more in the body at a Salsa club. The basic principle was thinking about how joints feel, thinking about music, thinking about how toes feel, looking at the girl's facial expression constantly, and listening deeply to the music. All this occupies the mind so much that there is little left for "thought." It probably means that recently evolved structures like the neocortex are not being used as much. It made the dancing more fun. A main trick that was pointed out in the podcast was "make sure you feel your toes," and that was useful. This stuff is more important than anything they teach in school. For example, I'll never need to know any historical date of anything. I'll never use social studies. But, the ability to understand how to interact with others effectively and enjoy life... that's probably the most important thing you could ever teach to anybody. Only subject that got close was music & band... because that's where I got some experience with letting go... being forced to let go.

Risk and reward

By the way, basically everybody does analysis with every decision where risks and rewards and considered, balanced, and then action is taken. All of that typically happens unconsciously in a moment. The emotions that people feel actually will be altered based on the analysis. Main difference is that some people set the thresholds differently, some people get more reward out of certain things. Some people perceive risk differently. For those who believe in an afterlife, really and truly, theoretically there is practically no risk for anything - not even jumping off a building. Although I find few who seem to really trust the afterlife. Most seem to use it just as sort of a security blanket.

Brain mode

I'm listening to this podcast, (Pickup Podcast Ep. #109 Inner Confidence Interview), and I'm understanding more about what people mean when they talk about mind and body... being in the body... and really what you mean when you say hearing the music.

The thing is, they (including you) have an odd way of saying it. You're "right" in a way, however the meaning doesn't always get through to me. Because it's not literally about being in the body... you're always in your body. It's not literally about hearing the music... I'm always hearing the music. But I'm just now putting together what you guys and girls and really meaning to convey.

This is probably the deal:

There are two different brain states. Somehow you can semi-consciously modulate whether your brain is in one state or the other. I say semi-consciously because this is sort of like learning to wink. It's a control that sometimes you don't even have until you investigate it.

State (1) Processing and acting more directly (from sensory information through wired pathways directly into action).

State (2) Acting with high level cognitive intervention, using more recently evolved structures in your brain, like the neocortex, which is powerful cognitively but also fragile and slow compared to the rest.


The trick is switching into (2). And, the reason that people drink alcohol at clubs, is because alcohol tends to shut down the "outermost" recently evolved brain regions first, like the neocortex, leaving others like the stuff that keeps your heart beating running.

Musicians consider state (2) a lot also. Especially, it comes up with jazz musicians, because you want to flip into that state in order to have the kind of response time necessary to play music. You're still being creative, but it's got to come out of the "wiring." No time for the neocortex (unlike a music writer). And when you do turn the neocortex on, the delays there are so long that you can hear them in the playing.

At a club, those delays translate into micro-second-long facial expressions and the like that people will then automatically process.

And this is why those few guys in my classes at highschool who knew how to program computers were the exact same ones on the wall with arms crossed at the dances. Because they have a boatload of neocortex going on but don't typically switch over into the other state. It's also why my romantic interest who was a profession dancer damn near hardly ever made logical sense, because she's going through her whole life in state (2).

Dreamlike block removing conscious mind from sex

No matter what the cognitive ability of a women, she is not aware of her own motivations. It's like when you're in a dream and odd things are happening but you never know it while dreaming. There must be some kind of a block in the brain, a block that partitions application of logic to analyze the events of the dream. This partition acts in the minds of women. When they show their cleavage they will not openly say that they want sex. When they choose to go out to places with guys present, they won't admit that they want sex. They will say they are going there for fun, and that is what they will believe in their minds. But, evolution has programmed them in such a way that they cannot have fun unless they are opening themselves up to be accessed by males. They will also drink alcohol, to disable some of their inhibition, also because they want the sex. Again, they'll say and believe that they are drinking because it's fun.

It follows that they will not respond well to direct talk about sex, but they will crave talk about it that is indirect. Just enough of a suggestion to bring it to mind, but not enough to admit that it really is the topic of conversation.

Comments on Bell Curve video

The Bell Curve is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein

Comments are about this video http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/BellC

(1)

I think at the core, there's a pain that humans have to deal with: survival of the fittest seems immoral.

Survival of the fittest is probably a major creative force. Ironically, it's the creative force that people usually assign to someone like God of the new testament, who is loving. We want the creator to be loving.

(If God is reading this email, I should be clear that the creation is amazing, whatever it is, even if I don't understand the how or the why of everything... and it's a privilege just to be an observer.)

The idea of welfare is that we don't want children to go without food. However, welfare makes no sense for evolution. It pretty much breaks the force (of evolution) that created us.

Still... (for example) Steven Hawkins would have been wiped out by ancient evolutionary pressure... he survived and made major contributions... because people had love and weren't Nazi's about it. And... actually love evolved out of survival of the fitness.

It's pretty complicated. Although I have to agree that welfare could be limited, and that would probably help. I heard from homeless people that churches give away better food anyway. I think the government is more likely to cause problems than regular human kindness.

(2)

Something about this guy's speaking sort of disturbs me. Mostly he makes sense. But, he loosely uses words like smart and dumb, just drops people into those categories. I have a friend who has some serious issues with school and learning basic math skills for some reason. But the thing is, she just uses a calculator, and when you get past that, she has a great sense of humor, and she's fun to be around. She's arguably one of the most-fun-to-be around people I know. So, what's up with that... this guy doesn't recognize that there's more going on in life than IQ scores. I'm not really criticizing his thesis here... just sayin.. we do NOT want to evolve into mere problem solving machines.. do we? Isn't that what artificial intelligence is for?