Geomagnetic pole reversal

Sometime the one penguine walking the other way is only one that will survive.

Evolutionary jobs

Each environment is like another job, another learning environment. Orcas went beyond sharks by taking vastly different jobs as they progressed.

The purpose of religion

Religion is all about using a faith based belief to trick people into doing something that (1) they would not choose to do otherwise and (2) will benefit them or society in some way.

Example 1:
Judaism has a day for apologizing to people you have hurt. It's just a good thing for social cohesion, and something many people may forget to do on their own.

Example 2:
All the taboos that Christianity puts on premarital sex were put in place to ensure that people were born with parents to care for them and that sexually transmitted diseases were minimized. Those laws arguably are now out of date, but the original evolutionary purpose seems pretty clear.

Small continuous gifts

Women are from Venus and men are from Mars talks about how women give the same amount of points for each gift no matter the size. So, a small continuous stream of gifts makes the most sense. This evaluation method makes sense. The woman is really checking loyalty, so the actual gift value is less important. She is programmed to identify a man who will continuously take care of her and her children. Consider the extreme opposite, a man might give up a few hundred dollars in one night for a prostitute, but it doesn't prove loyalty at all.

Pickup

Shows like pickup podcast teach you to handle the first 60 to 120 seconds of interaction with a woman, a skill which can take months or years to learn. It's analogous to learning a musical instrument, like a violin. Even if you only have to play for a minute, in order to do that one minute well, much practice may be required. It's not what you say, it's how you appear in terms of body language and how you say it. With the violin, it's not just the notes you play, it's how you play them. After the first 120 seconds, you are more out of the "pickup" arena and into just conversation and longer term interaction. This is also a skill of sorts, but one that pickup podcast doesn't focus on as much.

Spirituality

The purpose, point, and challenge of spirituality is to disconnect from reality.

Getting things done

Getting things done. Why? Life is an inefficient path to death. Make it as inefficient as possible.

Speed of light limitation

It would be funny if the universe was a physics simulator and the speed of light limitation was just a result of the simulator's computational limitations. (And also some other effects like time dilation)

Woman are like jobs

Playing the field with women is like applying to a new job every day, and taking the jobs for just one day, then quitting and moving on. This may be enjoyable for people who enjoy the job seeking process. However, the advantage of a longer job or relationship is that you don't have to spend time proving yourself over and over. You basically already took care of proving yourself, so you can do other stuff. (Sometimes fun stuff)

Pickup

I've vote for you, I'll invest in you, I'll donate to your cause, I'll have your children. It's all based on the attitude and feeling you convey, the confidence. It's all pickup.

Recursive Bayesian estimation, update

Recursive Bayesian estimation, update. You have observations like for example, it has a beak, it has feathers, it swims, etc. You want to figure the probability of it being a duck. You know about the definition of a duck with information like p(has_features | it's_a_duck) but you want to figure out probability it's_a_duck given all observations up until now, making one observation at a time.

Recursive Bayesian estimation turns information like p(has_features | it's_a_duck) into what you want in this case. If you already knew probability it's_a_duck given any sequence of observations, you wouldn't need this.

From Wikipedia: 

(1) 

p(x_k | z_k) = c p(z_k | x_k) p(x_k | z_k-1)

 We just ignore the constant c. 

p(x_k | z_k) = p(z_k | x_k) p(x_k | z_k-1)

This is recursive. You could write it in words as:
current_estimate = p(z_k | x_k) estimate_based_on_last_observation

Now an example:

p(x₃ | z₃) = p(z₃ | x₃) p(x₃ | z₂)

Need to find p(x₃ | z₂) 

p(x₃ | z₂) = p(z₂ | x₃) p(x₃ | z₁)

Need to find p(x₃ | z₁) 

Equation (1) no longer applies, but you could say:

p(x₃ | z₁) = p(z₁ | x₃) p(x₃)

p(x_k | z_k)

in terms of p(z_i | x₃)

And we assume these are known. If the hypothesis is that it's a duck. z1 and z2 are pieces of evidence picked up along the way that it's duck or not. Suppose z_{1 is beak observation.} This p(z₁ | x₃) would be probability of beak given it's a duck, like almost 1.

Time Travel

Going back in time for real would mean pushing the rest of the universe (as in every atom) backwards and keeping yourself going forwards. Just pushing your self backwards... I don't think that would work. You would age in reverse and observe a backwards universe... but it would still be going forward so you wouldn't see the past. You would perceive yourself starting in the future and moving to the present.

Criminal justice factoring in probability

It would make sense to adjust the penalty for crime based on the strength of the evidence, sort of. It would reduce the amount of punishment to uncertain crimes. However it would also seem unfair to those with strong evidence against them.