Business and species evolution

The cambrian explosion is like the industrial revolution, the analogy is that business are like species, sets of them can experience rapid growth at times and then stabilize.

Nelson mandella

Nelson mandella said it's the effect you have on others that counts

Electrons have a similar, feel all and effect all, except themselves

Cartalk dream

Cartalk background noise going into dream (listening while dreaming and seeing brain's video) and I see a guy show up before he actually shows up in episode (#1343: Hold the Cream Rinse)... makes me think brain buffers the signal while dreaming to make things seems to make more sense.

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 Those laws arguably are now out of date, but the original evolutionary purpose seems pretty clear.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.

Why teach Shakespeare in school

People have chosen Shakespeare for school. It has a lot of sex and violence (like just about any popular story), but it's so out of date with language that it's hard to read. I believe this is why it's so popular. The language naturally makes it so stupid people (who would be offended more) can't read it, and those smart enough to read it won't be offended anyway (smart people aren't offended by such things). It's like when Newton wrote in Latin so he wouldn't have to deal with stupid people getting upset or putting him in prison (as with Galileo).

Men and women mate selection

Women use a set of inputs to determine if a man is a suitable mate. It's difficult to quantify with a number, but you can imagine about 100. Examples are height, symmetry, geometric properties of face, muscles, posture, problem solving ability, speech clarity, interaction with children, ability to take care of a plant. They also check indications of interest. Does the man think about her, consider her well being, exhibit jealousy (this can be a positive indicator). A woman needs to check all of these before investing time in having a child with a man (in the stone age). However a man does not really. He only needs to mate with fertile women, so his checks are different.

Best song lyrics are porn

Best song lyrics are porn written with words that are ambiguous so you can interpret everything in a slightly different nonporno way. This satisfies the desire everyone has for porn without setting off any major alarms in the minds of people who ostensibly consider porn a bad thing.

Example: Johnny Cash's I'm on Fire

Maintaining oppressive regimes

it's more difficult to maintains lies as most dictatorships do now that the internet and social media is so advanced. The one remaining way to control people is the oldest, through belief and religion.

Religion goes beyond terrorism

Religion goes beyond terrorism by injecting the motivating fear directly into people's minds so that people become their own victims. Terrorists can be identified as an outside threat, but a religion person feels fear that ingrained within them.

Limitation of online profile for dating

Problem with an online profile is that the natural way to learn about a person is in stages. You can't process all information at once (if that's what's in the profile) and you can't make it interesting without putting in the stuff that wouldn't be learned until later.

The testing that women do in a relationship (sh*t testing)

Women are programmed to test you if you are in a relationship with them. They probably don't even do it based on careful thought. They just do it. They will consider problems with the relationship or with you, and see what happens. As long as the problems are manageable, and you want the relationship, you should work through these problems. The woman may still love you even if she is performing these tests that seem critical. This behavior probably evolved because women need some way to ensure that a man will stay with her through the good and the bad, that he will take a lead in staying with her. (Similar to using ultrasound to perturb a plate while you are electroplating it in liquid. Only the pieces that stick really hard will stick at all.)

Cheat

It's obvious why a man would not want a woman to cheat, in evolutionary terms that would mean he'd probabably end up caring for another's DNA. What about women getting upset when men cheat though? Maybe women don't like men who 'cheat' because they were more likely to have VD's millions of years ago during human evolution.

Deciding when ready to reproduce

Nature gave some female ducks the ability to redirect the male's penis into a different place during sex to stop fertilization, but it doesn't give human women a simple voluntary way to stop a pregnancy after sex has happened. It's likely that all of the decision making was forced into the part where the women chooses whether she wants to have sex or not. Nature basically coerces a human so that he or she will reproduce whether he or she feels consciously ready or not. And, this may have been the optimal way to decide. It wouldn't have evolved this way if it wasn't a pretty good way.

"Playing God"

Evil scientists in movies get pinned with playing God when they do something that will affect large numbers of humans. Why? Every human affectst the evolution of humanity with each decision. However, I suppose those people do more faster, and that really could be a problem. It's not about playing God or not, it's about changing things rapidly without testing effects. Evolution moves slowly, testing everything as it goes.

Casual sex misnomer

There's not much casual about casual sex. Casual is married people, just doing it whenever without much planning or preparation. Casual sex is the most uncasual, requiring the most preparation, nicest clothes, and the most attention to presentation.

There's no such thing as universal beauty

There's no such thing as universal beauty. Human beauty is based on whatever is "fit" from a human perspective. Some might say... well a cat is beautiful sometimes, and it's not human. True some cats are beautiful, but it's really just a coincidence. The shape of their face, body, and eyes, can activate some of the same beauty detection mechanisms that we use on people. That's why you see women that are half cat in anime. And then there are horses, which women consider beautiful (or handsome) because they exibit the standard attractive properties of a male, basically big a strong, bulging muscles and all.

Woman's greatest desire is to isolate one mate who will provide resources

A woman's greatest desire is to isolate one mate who will provide resources. Most women will not tell you this directly, and they may not even think it. But, they will think about all the necessary requirements. I knew a women who completely terminated a relationship because the man gave a birthday gift to another women, and didn't give one to her (or at least took too long to figure out that she needed one). The signal here was that he's providing resources to another. Women want *exclusive* access to a man's resources, and that instinct was programmed into them because man's primary role is resource provision. He can't reproduce, so that's all that is left. Some women also manifest this need in their desire to be married. Marriage is contract based version of this tendency to provide resources, where legal obligations are put in place. The point is, for a typical woman to really love a man and want a relationship, she has to identify him as a good and exclusive resource provider.

Portlandia

Portlandia is the only good modern TV show that I can compliment without reservation. I watch other things like James Bond movies (circa 1960) and appreciate them, but that's because they are old, and I forgive them.

World changing

Two wrong myths injected into people: you should go out and change the world and money is not important. Both pretty much wrong. It's hard to change the world much. If you create a major business or whatever, that is a difference, however the main difference is that you have a part in the business rather than somebody else. If there is a major demand for something, it probably will spring into existence, just a matter of time. What you can effect greatly is your world. And, money is a logical aim, as it opens many other doors.

Human brain

Pain of childbirth due to gigantic brain that grew faster than the rest of the human body, for a species that is reprogrammable and therefore adaptive

How women communicate

Women create a cascade, a flood, of bullshit information, completely inaccurate, they leave you to sift through, to find some truth, and they are not aware themselves of the innaccuracies, becoming angry if one is pointed out.

For example "i don't go out to meet guys" translates to i spent an hour and extra money on makeup, cosmetic surgery, etc. To be sexy as possible then go out and show what i have to guys with conversation floating around sexual topics.

"I want to be free and single" translates to i am searching as fast as possible through all men i come into contact with and the moment i find one who reaches my requirements, i'll start having sex again with him.

Dual survival

Watching dual survival it's clear that just staying alive use to be difficult. That'd what our advanced brains handled. They key to moving beyond was making survival so easy that we don't have to think about it. We focus on other stuff.

Large animals

They call the big dinosaurs the kings but they are really just another way to distribute mass, and often not an optimal one. Smaller individuals that act in a coordinated way are more resilient and powerful.

Cars and women, styles change uniformly across the population (apparent in bond movies)

Local (in time) versus long term optimal decision making

Locally optimal decision making: measured with tests where questions take only a few minutes to solve

Longer term optimal decision making: difficult to measure with a test at all

Having a child is pressing the reset button

When your life is like a painting that has so much in it that it can't really be changed rationally anymore... not that it's right or wrong... it's just sort of a certain way, probably lots of mistakes, the child is a fresh canvas where a new painting can arise, with much more foresight, assuming the kid actually listens to parents.

Keep a count of nodes in left subtree with binary search tree

This comes up in Gayle Laakmann McDowell's book.

You need to have the number of nodes to the left of each node, and you want that updated with each insert.

This post is about doing this by walking down the tree as you do for BST insert.

One way is to just update each node to say the number of nodes in its subtree (including itself). When you add one node to the tree, this goes up by one at the current node, no matter if you walk left or right. The you check the left child to see how many a node has on the left.

The code in the book does it differently. It inserts a node into a binary tree but only increases the current nodes count if the node put in the left child.With all nodes inserted, the tree nodes then have a count of how many nodes are on the left of each node. It's sort of like letting marbles roll into position. At each node you watch how many end up rolling left, and then will end up being the number of left nodes.

Longest increasing subsequence, considering contigous or not, starting with brute force and then optimizing

Introduction

 A way to solve problems like this is to keep a candidate list of subsolutions. You walk along the input and either add to an existing subsolution or start a new one. A brute force approach would be to keep track of all possible candidates and then verify to find which ones are best after the list of all of them is generated. However, a more efficient approach is to only add a candidate if you know that it may contribute, and prune away candidates if you know they will not contribute.

 

Longest Contiguous Increasing Subsequence

Say you want to find the longest contiguous increasing subsequence of an array.

(Using python syntax for description.)

For example:

X = [0, 8, 4, 9, 2, 3]


Brute force:
Walk across the list from left to right, and keep a list of possible solutions S you have found so far. This means that when you are at position i you do this:

Keep all lists already in S
Consider each list in S and add a new one that has X[i] appended to the end.

(This will also generate a new list that starts on X[i] because the empty list is in S.)

def longestContiguousSubsequence(X):



 # Staring with just one empty solution []. 

 S = [[]]

 for i in range(len(X)):
     for j in range(len(S)):
         newLists = []
         for s in S:
             copyOfList = list(s) 
             copyOfList.append(X[i])
             newLists.append(copyOfList)
         S += newLists


 max = 0
 maxList = []


 for s in S:
  if increasing(s):   # assume increasing returns true if the sequence is increasing
      if len(s) > max:
          max = len(s)
          maxList = s 

 return maxList

# test
print longestContiguousSubsequence(X)

This works but it does a lot of extra work.

For example, [0, 8] and [0, 4] are both put into S. However, you really don't need to keep both of them. The last element of [0, 4] is less than the last element of [0, 8], and there's no way that [0, 4] could do any better than [0, 8]. You can always add more increasing items to the end of [0, 4]. So, here's a rule: if you are about to add a new list it has to be "better" (it has to have more potential) than existing lists.

In here's what makes a list better:
(1) It's better if it has a lower number on the end.
(2) It's better if it's longer.

When you add a list, you are appending on new number. You're making a new list that's one longer, so it might better than the one that it comes from. But you want to compare it to other existing lists of equal length to see if it has a lower ending number, if it doesn't have a lower ending number, it's not useful. (Also if there are longer lists with lower numbers at the end, this one will not be useful, later on we can use this fact also.)

This means that really there can never be more than one useful list in S of a given length. The only list you would keep in S of a given length is one with the minimum ending value.

This means that we can have an array "Best" exactly the length of the list X that just stores a best list for each possible length. It will store a reference to a list at each element of the array. The first element is the best list of length 1, the second element is the best list of length 2, etc.

Since Python has zero based arrays, we'll actually use an array Best that has length of S + 1. The index of the array is equal to the lengh of the candidate sequence stored at that position.

Now, when you are adding a candidate list, and it turns out to be length n, you always look to the Best array to see if there's a list of length n that has a lower ending value, if so, you don't need to add it.

One more simplification: you don't need to store the whole lists in Best. You really only need to know where the list ends and the length of the list. That's enough to fully describe any subsequence. The index to Best is the length of the list, so if you just store where the list ends (one number) in each element of Best, that is enough.

Now, when you are about to add a new candidate list of length n by appending x, just look at Best[n] and it will give the the index i to the end of the best list of that length. If X[i] is smaller than x, you don't need to add your new list. If X[i] is bigger than x, you do need to add your new list, which just means replacing Best[n] with a new ending index.

 for i in range(len(X)):
   for lengthOfList in range(len(Best)):
     newLengthOfList = legthOfList + 1
     newEndOfList = X[i]
     if newEndOfList < Best[newLengthOfList]:
       Best[newLengthOfList] = X[i]


There's another optimization. If you can put x at the end of some subsequence s as above, then you don't need to put s at the end of any shorter subsequence. The shorter one would just end up having the exact same ending value and a shorter length, which can't possible be useful. So you really you only need to append to one of the candidate subsequences at most.

Walk along Best from highest index to lowest to find where to add to create a new list with one added. Then skip the others because they won't contribute to the final solution.

However, you don't really have to walk down the list one by one. The list represents the set of best solutions. Any solution A in the list that is shorter than solution B in the list will always have a lower number on the end (otherwise it would have been eliminated). So in a list of best solutions, the longer ones have higher values at the end. Because our Best array is indexed by length, it's also in order lowest last value to highest last value.

Longest Increasing Subsequence (Does not need to be contiguous)

This section is examining a different problem, where the goal is to find the longest increasing subsequence, and it does not need to be contiguous. Now I'm assuming that each candidates are being stored as a lists. (Other sources like Wikipedia have more efficient ways, but this is for explanation purposes.)

The approach to this is similar as described in the last section. You keep a list of best lists, indexed by length. You encounter a new number and you can create a new list with it appended to an existing candidate if it will create a new list that is "better" than those existing so far. (This includes the possibility of it creating a list longer than all of those existing so far and the possibility of creating a list that's just the same length as an existing but has a lower end value.)

Candidate solutions end up looking like this for example:
Best[1]:  0
Best[2]:  0, 4
Best[3]:  0, 4, 12
Best[4]:  0, 4, 12, 16

Notice that the ending number is always increasing. It must be, because if it was less than the previous, then the previous would not be useful. (Previous checks ensure that each list is useful, it has to be either longer or have a lower value at the end to get added.)

You could walk down Best from longest to shortest, one by one, checking the end value at each and append when you find the sufficiently small end value.

For example, if you found an 8, you could create a new list where it's appended to 0, 4 giving:
Best[1]:  0
Best[2]:  0, 4
Best[3]:  0, 4, 8
Best[4]:  0, 4, 12, 16

Or, if you found a 14, you'd want to make a new list with it appended to 0,4,12
Best[1]:  0
Best[2]:  0, 4
Best[3]:  0, 4, 12
Best[4]:  0, 4, 12, 14

In the examples, you can see that you really want to try adding it to the longest list with an ending value that's lower. (The only one that will work is the longest with an ending value lower. The ending values has to be lower for you to add it at all. And, if you tried one that wasn't longest, you'd always be trying to make a new list that's no better than one you already have based on ending value... because the one after it would have a lower ending value.) For example, if ending values are 0, 4, 12, 14, then 8 can only be extending 0, 4, there is not other option.


Considering ending values:
0 4 12 14
       ^
You can find where you'd want to put 8 with a binary search of the list's end values.
Binary search for 8, which will put you between value 4 and 12 (index 2 and index 3), so you'd want a new sublist extending the list shown at Best[2] and replacing Best[3].

In summary the algorithm is effectively maintaining a list of candidates like this for example:

Best[1]:  0
Best[2]:  0, 4
Best[3]:  0, 4, 12
Best[4]:  0, 4, 12, 14

At each iteration, walking down the input:
  It can put in a new best (Best[5] in this example) by appending

An optimization: Making new lists by copying is expensive. Here's more efficient way to get the job done. Represent the list as linked lists. For example:
0 4 12
(0) <- 3="" array="" p="" position="">
Now when you want to add 14. Create node with 14 and just set its point to (12) of this list (0) <- p="">



Above essentially creates an array of nodes where each of the nodes's points certain other previously created node.


Instead of using nodes, standard algorithms accomplish the same with a "parent" array.


You were creating one node at each iteration i (which each check of an input value). You can just put an index in an array p instead. Create an array of parents, each points to a child index (Very much like a node. Each element of the array is an index which is associated with another index. Just like each node is a reference to a number that's associated with a reference to another node.) For examples: At the addition of 4, the pointer p[1] would be set to point to the position of 0, which is i=0. At the addition of 12 (at i=2) the pointer (just a number) p[2] would point to position of the array that holds 4 (which is i=1).

N is length of array (assume its indices start at 1)
Note that each index that p stores can point you to a number in the input (if that's what you want) or to a previous node in p (if that's what you want). (Just like each node will give you either the data of the node or the next node.)
So p[N] points to the position in the array of the last value. (It also points to a position in the parent array.)
p[p[N]] points to the position in the array of the second to last value. (It also points to a position in the parent array.)

Talking to women

Probably the deeper you go into reality, into what you are really thinking and into what she is really thinking, and what her motivations are, all the way down to the evolutionary level, the farther away you are from connecting. Better off at a much different level. A level of interest in the items of life, the events of the day, with attendtion to believing her internal model of the world and working with that. Haven't varified that. However I've seen many times how women have a very odd disbelieving reaction to characterizing human behvior (and their own) in terms of evolutionary biology.

Dating

Woman said she only spends time alone with a guy if she is dating him. (Formally I though dating was spending time alone, but it's not in this case.) I believe that in her culture, dating means an interaction in public that establishes that they are a romantic couple, possibly in a bar-type scene or just in a restaurant. Dating is not just going out or going in for one meeting, it's a state of the relationship, like going steady. Once the relationship is in that dating phase, she's OK with spending time alone. It's like a social verification stage before intimate involvement.

Nature, evolution, religion, cognitive dissonance

Vast majority of people believe in a god of some sort. The beliefs are not true, but they are effective. The numbers indicate that believes (in terms of reproduction) are highly successful and represent the majority of humanity. It's amazing that nature managed to generate people capable of both logical and belief in religion. Innovations of evolution like cognitive dissonance made this possible.

What the universe cares about

The universe doesn't care about anything normal people consider, but it does care about extraordinarily minute details... like where an electron should be in the next femtosecond based on everything going on around it. Ironically, by keeping track of only those details, it has constructed machines (humans and maybe others) that *do* perceive a much more global view. The universe perceives and acts on itself somewhat rationally through the machines that it builds.

Variety of tastes

Variety of tastes is so extreme because there is no one optimal solution. Depending on available food, one taste may be more optimal than another. Best to hate poison and like good stuff, but there's no guarantee. So, with a variety of tastes, somebody in the population will probably have a near optimal system.

Women in pairs

Women almost always go to clubs in pairs and it makes sense to meet both of them, and focus on one. Talk to one about the other if it makes sense in conversation, the other is often a useful topic.

Compliments

Common advice is that compliments aren't good openers because they make you seem sort of easy and don't lead anywhere. My experience is that if the first thing you say is a compliment, it doesn't exactly lead anywhere. Like if you just say "you're cute" that doesn't really go anywhere. However, if you ask where she's from and make some observation about facial features, ask more questions etc., then complimenting is totally appropiate and does lead places. So it's a good thing when used conversationally. Women feel more at ease once they know what you think.

Women write that they want someone who makes them laugh in their online profile

Women write that they want someone who makes them laugh in their online profile. This is worthless information because pretty much everybody wants somebody who makes them laugh. It's also worthless because it doesn't actually specify what the woman is looking for. Different people laugh at different things. A woman will laugh more at a guy who she's attracted too. In fact saying that she wants someone who makes her laugh is pretty much the same as saying she wants someone whose personality is attractive to here. It would be more descriptive if she said what kind of humor she liked, like dry or silly or British, whatever, that would start to say something about her personality.

Heavy napkins

Somebody should invent heavy napkins that don't blow away in the wind.

Why does turning technology off and on fix it

It seems too easy, but 90% of the time turning it off and on fixes it. I believe it's because you are returning it to a state where the engineers who built it tested it the most. The longer it's on, the more likely that it's state has drifted into some state that is untested and a bug may occur. Who knows, maybe human brains sleep for similar reasons.

Subtlety

It takes more work to be subtle and that's why women prefer people being subtle with sexual references. Anybody can talk about it directly, but women were perceive the subtle references as a skill. They want the subject to come up, but they want it subtle.

The debate about teaching evolution

The debate about teaching evolution in schools isn't about truth or not, it's about injecting a particular value system or not. Long term solution will probably be people formulating a relgion sufficiently abstract so that it doesn't interfere with scientific understanding (sort of like Buddhism).

How to meet girls on the dance floor (specifically latin dance)

Still learning this myself, but there are some key points I'm seeing more clearly.

Having fun
A critical point is to make sure the girl doesn't get bored while dancing. What makes her bored will depend on her personality, but moving around more and being interactive tend to be more engaging. There are different modes, some where you move around more, some where you are more intimate and not moving very much. At the clubs where people are really going there for dating options, songs run for a long time, and you have plenty of time to progress from playful to more intimate and it's best to use the time (and you can use multiple songs).

Verbal Communication
As far as talking goes, I've seen some guys who don't say anything verbally the whole time dancing and girls seems happy and engaged. I think the best strategy is to say a little bit, make a few observations, but not a whole lot of conversation is needed while dancing. You absolutely should have some verbal interaction to make sure she knows you are interested, it just doesn't take that much while dancing. You can ask her how's she doing, how she likes the club so far, or what her name is. It doesn't matter what the answer to any of the questions are, and you probably won't be able to hear them exactly. The point is to just ask them in an upbeat way and convey positive energy. With a few words, she's feel more connected. You can only hear her if you're pretty close, so this gives you an excuse to stand close to her. Typical advise is to avoid pecking, which is leaning in just to get a work and leaning back out, which indicates you're afraid to stand close. The way to hear her is just by standing solidly close enough to hear. You'll be moving away and giving her more space at time naturally while dancing.

Progression
It's best to keep the interaction light, and slowly (over the course of an hour or hours), move to more intimate. Find a girl that you want and you give her more attention than others. You still don't overwhelm her with attention. You can take breaks and dance with others. But you come back to her. You can totally read how intimate or not a girl wants to be based on how she responds and how close she gets. You can pull her close and if she bounces off, then you give her some space, and let her decide if she wants to come back. If you pull her close and she stays, then you know she's OK with that for some time. However you still want to gage if she's permanently comfortable with being close or just temporarily, so you take feedback to gauge that also. There is a perfect amount of space, but if you don't know it exactly, it's best to give her just a little more space than she wants, so that she desires to be a little closer. If you give a little less space that she wants, she'll probably feel uncomfortable. You can switch up between "dirty" dancing and "not dirty" and this seems to be what the most "fun" guys are doing. Specifically, dancing with a lot of  "not dirty" moves but some teasing with the "dirty" stuff only about 10 percent of the time. Over time (hours), it's probably acceptable to increase the amount of "dirty."

Using Eye Contact
You can tell a lot by eye contact. If she absolutely doesn't make eye contact at all, it's a sign to move on to the next girl. It's good if you get smiles when she glances at you. You don't want to stare too hard. You just want to glance at her on a regular basis to keep engaged. You also want to be looking somewhere near her even if you aren't looking directly at her, because she'll feel ignored if you are staring randomly off into space.

Drunk people know more

Once a girl said while drunk that she can only be trusted when drunk and then when sober implied she can only be trusted when sober. It's hard to tell which to trust. While alcohol disabled the hippocampus of the girl while drunk (removing ability to store memory), she still had full access to the moment and maybe full access to feelings. Her sober version is able to store memories but does not have access to drunk moments (where no memories are formed). So maybe the drunk version is more omniscient.

Women and phones

How would women tell if you love them or not if there were no phones, no way to call back

How religion puts empathy on hold

Normal ape behavior involves violence toward strangers. Humans developed a sense of empathy stronger than that of other apes as they became more intelligent and more social. However, optimal evolutionary strategy millions of years ago still involves violence, because it's the way that who gets access to resources gets chosen. It's nature's way of choosing wich biochemical machine archetypes and programs will continue and which will not. At the point where empathy became strong, religion came into play as a way of selectively choosing situations where empathy is to be ignored. This is a common thread in many relgions: Israeli, Mayan, Egyptian, etc. With the rise of secular governments, such as the United States, government has taken the role that religion once had, deciding when empathy should be ignored. Empathetic tedences are ignored when the collective has an agenda that can be served by ignored the basic right to life that people in another collective. The serial killer is a criminal because he acts on his own, the soldier is a hero because he acts for the collective. When an act is too senseless and brutal to be justified easily, it is attributed to being something that God or the gods wish to happen. And even now, with secular government agencies responsible for choosing what killing should take place, you still see references to religion and God popping up when people attempt to defend their positions on why the wars need to be fought and won.

Positive

I'm thinking I need to be careful about the women I bring into my life. You're positive obviously, but not necessarily all are. I've been pulling in pretty much any fish that bite as a rule, just learning how to fish. But I'd like to be happy and hang out with only certain fish that really make me happy.

Instincts beyond conscious and unconscious

There are conscious and unconscious desires and planned behaviors that lead to desired goals, but there's another category of desires, one where the behavior leads to a distant result, but the human needs no conscious or unconscious understanding of the action. For example, women want to maximize their beauty. They work on this even before they understand that it will increase their reproduction and survival potential. For the same simple reason many human behaviors exists, those who had the inclination contributed more to the gene pool.

Individual versus mass murder

The stories of Israelites in the bible describe a society that devices a way to make murder illegal (ten commandments) but mass murder with a socially agreed purpose legal (holy war). Individually motivated murders may benefit individuals but they damage the overall function of a given group. War is a method that was devised to justify acts that are obviously illegal on an individual level and still allow societies to fight for resources.

Faith

Faith or sex

You're not supposed to understand it, you just have it

Women like conversation that's not random

Women like to go deep into given topics. If they mention a topic, it can be explored in depth. Guys don't care, they will often do random topic, a little bit of information from each. With a women it makes sense to explore topics deeply. It probably makes sense to smoothly transition to topics also. Like when having an actually conversation. Now with quick text messages, I suppose one typically would not explore very deep but rather just focus on short lines, humorous is good. Main thing with text messages is to get to a plan for meeting in person.

Are dreams real

We'll never know if dreams (or waking life) are real. However, the fact that you wake up out of sleep when you hear a sound (rather than the other way around) indicates to me that your body is trying to put you into external reality so that you will not be eaten by a lion or whatever.

Drifting DNA

With the constant random changes that occur in our DNA (a downward drift), the only thing that has stopped our species from degerating from "DNA rot" is evolutionary pressure, which pushes us to not neccesarily to the same place as before, but always "upward" in some direction of pseudo-progress. (I say pseudo-progress because there are some weird things - like boobs evolving to looks like butts when people began standing more upright - is that really progress - who knows - but it worked.) Looks like evolutionary pressure or genetic engineering are the only ways to continue long term.

How war factors into evolution

War is a "solution" that nature came up with to deal with the problem of deciding which society should be allowed to use resources and which should not. Humans have tribal warfare instincts (so do apes). Tribal warfare "works" (in a totally amoral way) because it selects groups that mentally and physically out-perform others. Without this pressure, humans may not have evolved to become more and more intelligent to the point they have reached today. The problem is that tribal warfare insticts mixed with modern nuclear weapons is not what nature intended or tested. The bombs just kill everybody without selecting the fittest for survival. It's fortunate that somewhere in our minds nature also gave us some kind of global respect for human life - which is probably what stopped the the Cuban missle crisis from turning into WW3. However, I really don't think that global respect is very strong on average - because it never needed to be while our instincts were evolving. We have not yet been through the evolutionary pressure required to select for global respect for life. Consider 100 human-level species on 100 different planets. The societies that have sufficient respect continue to exist while the ones without it bomb themselves into nuclear winter. We either are one that survives or not. (This is very different from tribal existence thousands of years ago where pretty much only repect toward the tribe members counted.)

Coffee shop

Doing my thing working on something at coffee shop

I start overhearing two girls talking

They're like 20ish - I say this because by the time women are like 35 they are different.

One was grossing me out because she was slowly eating a giant egg sandwich - eggs are weird - they're almost not a food at all - and they smell funny - make me nauseous. I can still eat them, but only in a particular mood.

I decided to stay at the adjacent table as a sort of person challenge rather than moving.

It wasn't really a conversation they had, more like verbal diarrhea flowing effortlessly from their mouths. I feel disgust but envy also. Because truly how can people do this, it's hard for me to understand - how can you just flow through a conversation that's not really talking about anything?

This may be why I tend to drop evolutionary biological stuff into conversations when I'm there - it's like I'm trying to derail the topic off of the track and somewhere else. I was thinking if I was at the table, that's probably what I would have done.

Personality is difficult to quantify

A girl asked me what is really different about her personality. It's a difficult question to answer. Unlike something like height, hair color, eye color, eye size, symmetry, all easily quantified, personality is based on brain structure and neural circuitry, which is extremely complex with room for effectively infinite numbers of different people.

Language

All written rules of language should be ignored so it can naturally change over time.

Self replicating patterns

Self replicating patterns imprinting themselves on limited matter and energy, that's humans replacing other homonids, and it's what has been going on throughout the whole course of biological evolution.

Peacock

Peacock with it's giant nonfunctional but beautiful tail has evolved to survival proficiency far beyond what is needed. Evolutionary pressure now is not just to survive but to go beyond survival, as humans often do.

Evolution

In New Ginea where people kill each other if not an ancestor, one can see evolution playing out. this kind of stuff makes evolutionary theory ring as accurate. The behavior seems crazy and psychopathic but it totally makes sense in terms of evolution. More industrialized society still fight for territory and such like animals too, but they've organized into coherent nations that do not self-attack.

Refence: this american life episode about the tribe

Crocodile

A crocodile's almost the same as a mouse-trap, an ambush style snap-shut thingy

How to answer the the girls's question of "why did you choose me"

When you want to answer the the girls's question of "why did you choose me" as a mate or as a partner or for a conversation or as a person to join for an event, etc., the answer should be in the form of a positive. Tell here the properties that she has which put her above everyone else. The negative approach, criticizing others is less effective. It indicates to her that maybe she is just average and others are worse. You want to indicate other are average and she is better.

Two personalities of women

Women have two simulatneous minds. One is the nice one that is fun to talk to and likes sex. The other is dilusional paranoid detail analyzer that will try to determine your long term potential as a mate based on seemly arbitrary and often innacrate cue's. Learning the the parameters of the dilusional paranoid personality is equivalent to learning how to be in a longer term relationship (longer term meaning like two weeks or more).

Evolution of motivation

Human society and behavior has changed rapidly and drastically in the last 20 thousand years while our instinctive motivations haven't had time to change. (20 thousand years is hardly any time for evolution to change our actual hard wiring.) Many things that people do really are mapping back to the same instinctive drives, for example football is basically nerf tribal warfare. But for optimal performance, one would expect that human society has developed some way to reprogram the desires themselves (not just hard-wire them). One way the is apparently done is with the instinctive desire to do whatever the parents want you to do. (1) Parents are often experienced enough to logically and intuitively figure out what would be a pretty good course based on up-to-date information. (2) The child has a hard-wired biological drive to make the parents happy. Put the two together and you have a way that evolution has developed to put logic and experience based drives and motivations deep into the children's minds.

Divorce and childlessness

"Sociologists believe that childlessness is also a common cause of divorce. The absence of children leads to loneliness and weariness and even in the United States, at least 66 per cent of all divorced couples are childless."

This is likely because marriage and monogamy are systems that evolved primarily to handle child care. One doesn't really need them is one is not having children.

Realistic underpinnings of hippie "vibrations"

From website: "We use the term vibrations now as well, and it hasn't changed much in terms of its meaning. It still conjures up images of invisible rays of energy flying through the air and influencing people in various ways. For instance, we know what happens when we get "vibed" by someone. It means to encounter anger, a cold shoulder, an inhospitable response. But it also suggests more than just the outer expressions of emotion, as evidenced only by gestures or words."

Three physical things

(1) OK, in physics a ray is usually something like light. It's measurable, and it's measurable with pretty simple equipment, you can use photographic paper and stuff like that to "pick it up."

(2) Mechanical vibrations are also pretty easy to pick up - use a seismograph or something like that.

(3) Electromagnetic vibrations - that's what radio's pick up.

So first thing is to just accept the hippie vibrations are something else, not just the physics definition.

So how is a (hippie) vibe transmitted really? You take in information about the whole person. The sound of the voice (pitch and tamper), the way the joints are moving, posture, the actual words, the meaning, the phrasing, haircut, facial expression (muscles of the face), all of that stuff. It's all processed in a fraction of a second without you even knowing it. You have a high speed computer of sorts in your head that processes all of this on its own. It even goes into your mind and affects you. Like being around a happy person is more likely to make you happen. All of that goes on based on the dynamics in your brain, which is interpreting signals and adjusting both your perception of the person and your own mood.

So what I'm saying is that the vibe is sort of a signal, but it's very complicated to generate and detect (not hard for a human, but it would be hard to make another machine that does it). That's why you use motion capture for good 3D movies - you want to capture the way real people (actors) move - it's very hard to fake it with simple algorithms. It feels natural and easy because the brain (the deeper parts that you are not aware of) take care of all the work.

I'm reading this website and I tend to agree with the way that it models human interaction with physical analogies and stuff:
http://www.lightfigures.com/goodvibrationspeople/index.php?p=4

However, I have to say, it's dangerous to do too much with the analogy.

Example:
"For instance, they say that after a few years couples often start acting and speaking like one another. This is because their energy fields are constantly inter‑mingling. They become very sympathetic in terms of their vibrational patterns, and some will tell you that they know what their partner will say before they actually verbalize it. In extreme cases of auric resonance, they may even begin to resemble each other physically."

OK, if you have two bells, this is exactly describing what happens in terms of mechanical vibrations. (Number 2 above.)

But with people this is really what's happening:
(1) Acting like one another. This is because they are observing each other constantly and learning behaviors from each other. Humans do it. Apes do it. It's neurological, and it's an instinct. To say it's a vibration is not really scientifically accurate.
(2) Knowing what their partner will say. This is because the human brain has awesome predictive ability. In order to make the predictions, it needs sufficient "training" data, which comes from spending a lot of time with a person. Computer science is currently doing stuff analogous to this, machine learning, etc. - sometimes inspired by how the brain is configured.
(3) Resemble each other physically? That won't really happen except for certain cases. Like people who stay out in the sun together will both eventually get leathery tan skin (I've seen that). People who are both goth will start to both dress like goth, etc. However, stuff like bone structure will not spontaneously modify to bring them into sync.

Anyway, the principles taught are really valuable. I can see that. It's just strange that people who talk about this often don't keep everything "scientifically" accurate and rigorous. You actually could if you wanted, and pretty much teach the same thing I think.

Why an online date meetup makes another girl mad

I went on a POF date with a different woman (where nothing happened) a few days after kissing a woman and such. The original woman got really upset. This is an analysis of why.

The thing is, many of the things that women do and consider fun are roughly equivalent to a POF date. (Maybe men too, but I haven't studied men much, so I'm not making a statement about them here.) Women enjoy going out and being around people appropriate to their age. They enjoy being in mixed crowds of friends and new people so they can meet new people while still being the presence of friends - friends who provide a layer of safety, fun, and help in evaluation. Compared to a nigh out, a POF date is actually less, it's just a conversation with one person. With a night out, a girl could have a conversation with 20 people, and possibly date any of them.

So in my mind, a POF date was basically nothing. There's arguably less mate evaluation happening than going out to salsa, which is something she does all the time anyway. This is how I see it, and I think it's valid. But it's not how she saw it. And from now on, I'll know that women respond emotionally to certain things - maybe things with "dating" in the title or whatever, regardless of the actual content.

The fact is women are always doing stuff to meet people that could end up sexual partners. They consider all the stuff just fun - parties, going out, talking to people at coffee shops, etc. etc. And they interpret all of that as just living a normal life - with little conscious awareness that they are programmed to use all those methods to evaluate people and find mates. Typical comment: "I wasn't looking for anybody and I just stumbled upon this guy..." Well OK, but she was probably going out on a regular bases evaluating 10's or 100's of people week by week through interaction and conversation. That's not exactly stumbling.

I suppose the difference with POF is that the intention moves more into the conscious rather than unconscious - it's just too obvious.

Dryer lint

Seems like with the about of lint that comes out of the dryer, my clothes would be disappearing from fiber-loss faster than they are.

Purpose

You can sort of choose whatever you want as purpose, however you can't necessarily make the goal resonate with your own mind. When you are young apparently the purpose is defined. (Inner child that stays with you.)

Optimal difference for sexual attraction

Too much the same and you have inbreeding problems. Too much different and you may not even produce fertile offspring (horse and donkey). Just enough difference can produce really healthy offspring, an effect known as heterogenous vigor. This is why people are attracted to the other. This is why foreign languages are sexy. It's also why people often marry similar races. They look for different, but not extremely different mates.

Optimal amount of lie

In religion, spirituality, politics, and marketing, there is an optimal amount of nontruth that will bring in the largest number of followers. The complete truth is usually too cold, and can turn people away. A complete lie is often transparent and will turn people away. Somewhere in between is an optimal story, a mixture of truth an nontruth, which will attract the most followers.

Necessity of an anchor, true or not

Could call up leadership of Jehohah's Witnesses and suggest that they teach good principles without the baggage attached such as claims that biological evolution didn't affect human origin. However, in reality the religion is based on an underlying faith in the bible, and the people who would accept the principles without the rest of the baggage may be an almost mutually exclusive set to the current members.

Bible is like DNA

Asking whether the Bible is true is like asking if DNA is true. It doesn't matter. It's a set of instructions. When carried out, it forms a super-organism. That super-organism is either strong or not.

Strongest religions survived

The stories of religion are impressive, but from a sort of evil genius standpoint. They are highly manipulative. They take core instincts of people like love of parents and fear of death and use them to mold people. They do this extremely effectively. Only the strongest religions survived. The ones that continue to exist today are extremely powerful in their ability to implant into people and "reproduce" or spread to others.

Evolutionary significance of using hands while making out

I'm thinking about the legs that started on fish and all the things that happened to them through evolution. Snakes took an extreme approach and dropped all four, focusing efforts on hyper deadly jaws. T-rex kept that back but didn't use the front much... maybe in another 100 million years they would have disappeared completely. Whales grew a tale and let the back legs go to nothing while making the front into flippers... consider that the front legs were fins to start with on the fish... so full circle. Birds kept the reptile back legs and modified the front into wings... then penguins made the wings into flippers. After a long stint of being a land mammal on all four, humans stood up and freed front legs to be hands. The human hand is pretty amazing. I don't know of any other animal with such an advanced manipulator... evolved specifically for building and using tools. Dexterity must have been extremely important to survival to evolve to such a level. And of course, anything that is extemely important to survival will be extremely important in terms of sexual attraction. That, my friends, is why humans do so much with their hands when they are making out. It's little test, in realtime, answering a question about what one can do with one's hands.

Occam's razor in design and evolution

In the book The Design of Everyday Things, the author describes how designs tend to get over-complicated with too many features and then later on reduced to a more optimal set of only the most useful features. This is like a snake culling away it's legs and just becoming a tube that eats things.

 

Belief and purpose

Two special items exist in human minds, global purpose and spiritual belief, both of them often configured at childhood and then left in place for the rest of life. It helps to have both active at the same time. Spiritual belief is what allows a purpose to be well defined. Most animal don't have either one, and they are fine like that, but they can't really see bigger pictures like humans can. In a way, the highly social animals like ants do have both, but they are hard-wired. For example an ant will sacrifice its life to save the colony without any hesitation. The ant's belief system is crystal clear. With humans, the spiritual beliefs are very diverse, not hardwired the same for each. They are arbitrary, but not random. The beliefs can't be proven because they are too fundamental. They are the axioms, stated without proof. The stories of religion were created to make the beliefs more teachable and understandable. The stories are fictitios, but the beliefs, the definitions of purpose that stem from them, the consequences - are real.

How women always keep their options open

Women are always seeking out new sexual partners. this is what they refer to as going out and having fun. they arenlt consciously aware of what they want, but they know what feels fun. they want to look sexy and dress carefully to do this, essentially conveying that they are fertile to other males. they won't neccesarily reproduce at all because these days there is birth control, but their minds evolved in a time when birth control didn't exist.

Women don't need online dating because they ate constantly putting themselves in situations with people who are the opposite sex and about their age, thatls the social interaction they enjoy most.

So, if you have a girlfriend, she probably won't want you doing online dating, but she will always be doing its equavalent, going out and meeting people.

It's probably best to play the same game. if you really want something like online dating while you have a girlfriend, just go out with her. maybe use facebbok more, it may not be a dating website, but itls pretty useful in a similar way.

To be clear, I don't recommend deceiving your girlfriend, what ilm saying is that she will always keep her options open, so you should too.

Women considering the future

I want to tell her to enjoy the moment. Narrow the experience down to about one month, and just work with that. I can narrow it down to about 30 seconds. She wants to project out 30 years into the future, evaluating the probability of her children's survival, before deciding whether to go to dinner.

Women can laugh at fairly small things, so use this in conversation and text messages

Women can laugh at fairly small things. Things that don't seem that funny. They are more likely to laugh at what a man said if they are attracted to the man and more likely to be attracted if they have reason to laugh. It's a positive feedback system. It doesn't have to be like Robin Williams stand-up. Simple comments can work. I observed a guy making fun of girl a little bit for not knowing where Ukraine is. Then he kept referring back to this. He even added it to a text message that he sent to her later, something about her forgetting where Ukraine is or whatever. She got a kick out of it. Women love to communicate, and they love it more with a little bit of humor or making fun, as long as it's light.

Sci fi

Why is it that individuals in sci fi who engineer immortality are bad guys in sci fi, while people who just extend life by saving people from death are heros.

Compared to saving people or medical science, engineering immortality is just a more complete solution to the problem of death.

Unmovable emotional state

Sometimes I get into a completely unmovable rather stoic emotional state. I'm in it right now. I don't feel the emotion that the Alias show is attempting to convey. Even watching porn doesn't do anything. Usually porn will have some sort of an effect. Actually physically interacting with another person naked would probably be enough to take an effect, but it would take at least that much.

Why women demand monogamy

From an evolutionary biology perspective, men demand monogamy because they need to be sure that their mate's children are actually their own. But, why do women also demand monogamy? Women want a full time protector. A man will naturally act as protector to his biological offspring and their caretaker. The woman wants a man who will pay attention to her and her children more than anyone else. If she can ensure that she is the only one baring young to the man, she will get most of the attention. So, she doesn't want him impregnating others.

Why girls naturally want more than sex and what to do about it

A man only needs sex to be happy. In contrast, a woman needs to have some guarantee that the man either has good genes or will take care of her in order to be happy. Nature has evolved our brains to interpret sex as the woman giving access to her reproductive ability. (These days she's not really doing that, but our brains are sill wired to consider it.) So, sex is always a good thing for the guy in his mind, always a chance to reproduce. It's not always good for a girl in her mind, unless it's with a person who either has good genes or is likely to provide. Most women use traits such as body form, body posture, body language, indications of confidence, humor, verbal and physical connections to others, or proficiency with some skill in order to determine if they guy has genetics that she wants. Body posture and indications of confidence, happiness, and connection to others seem to be some of the biggest attractors.

Considering all this, it's a mistake to think that having sex is just an enjoyable thing, equal for the man and the woman. For the man it's simply enjoyable. For the woman, her own mind will try to signal her that she's doing something wrong (or has done something wrong) if the man is either not likely a provider or doesn't have all characteristics that she wants. Considering that women often want an ideal, they probably have to deal with this built self criticism quite a bit. They're always on the search for a man with whom they can have sex and not feel regret. Because in nature, apparently the women who were careful about who they had sex with were more successful.

The practical consequence is that a man should continually convey confidence, happiness, and connection to others in order to continually attract a woman or women. And, he should continue to be a source of fun and a source of emotional support, so that she will continue to enjoy having sex without any doubts afterward. Although the physical pleasure of sex is always present, she doesn't want to deal with regret. And, the way to reduce the regret she predicts she will have is to convey and provide the aforementioned items, confidence, happiness, connection.

How to talk to women

Talking to women is polite interrogation. Not about what you are thinking, but about what she is thinking and what she cares about. Anything she mentions becomes a point that can explored further. The critical action on your part is to ask open ended questions. For example, if she mentions peanuts, you get the story on peanuts. You ask something like "how did you get into peanuts." It's a question that barely makes sense, but it's open to discussion. A question like "do you like roasted nuts" is not open ended and might just end with yes or no.

There are many videos on youtube (such as below) and many webpages that explain this.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnFsK_Clfgo

Belief threshold

There's a setting in people's brain, probably hard-wired, that is the amount of evidence a person need classify a concept as "real." People with a low setting tend to believe a lot of stuff that isn't true. People with a high setting are less likely to believe anything. Evolution determined approximately how to set this to maximize survival and reproduction, but there are still various people with various settings. I think my setting is jacked abnormally high, maybe too high, so that even if I desire to to accept something as true, I cannot, unless there's plenty of evidence.

Artificial intelligence applied to real and imaginary

Just keeping track of real vs. imaginary could get pretty complicated. Real things are the ones with sufficient evidence. Imaginary ones don't require evidence. We usually make the distiction very naturally because we already have a brain that does it well, but an artificial system that detects the distinction would need to be pretty complex.

Imaginary

The physical brain with its dynamics is a place where the imaginary is real. Real activity and real physical structure

Real body swap

I just heard a story about a guy becoming an insect. Suppose a soul is an indivisible and indestructable nonphysical item, like a magic atom, that brings life and continuity to human body. If that were true, to make a body swap happen, you just swap souls. But, a soul is only a concept. A good body swap would require a central nervous system swap. There isn't enough room in an insect for the central nervous system of a human, so it wouldn't really work. The idea that life is continuous (as a soul is) even to an individual is a perception maintained by the brain's machinery. We keep track of our selves both in a moment and over time. The one place a soul really does exist is in the logical framework of a mind. (Imaginary.) Even people with no religious beliefs keep track of others and themselves with something like a soul concept.

Advice to spy movie characters

When somebody has you tied to a chair, threatening torture, brandishing needles, pliers, etc., that's not the time to spit in their face, cut down their mother, or bring up that thing they are deeply ashamed of. That's when you should become their friend, banter it up, seriously. People in real life have gotten out of being abducted and such by being friendly. No guarantees, but most humans don't want to see you in pain as much if they are having fun hanging out with you.

Plausible deniability for selecting date ideas that will lead to sex

When young woman are dating, they want to maintain the story that they are not going directly after sex. The story they want to maintain is that they are just in situations, one thing leads to another, and sex ends up happening. A plan to have sex is not romantic and less desirable. The want to consider it a temporary lapse in judgement or an irresistible situation, not a choice or a plan. They will put themselves in situations where sex or meeting people for sex is most likely to happen (parties), but they will not respond well to direct invitations to sex or even accept that they are going after sex. It's a pretty thin illusion and they may carry items to make sex safer or whatever with them, knowing somewhere in the back of their mind what can happen.


This thing illusion is why plausible deniability is important when setting up a date with a woman, especially while dating. There should always be a reason for meeting that is plausible other than sex. It should be something that's pretty interesting, engaging, and makes sense. If it's making dinner, then making dinner should be pretty involved and interesting (not just a simple meal like a guy would normally make for himself). If it's watching a movie, the movie watching experience should be involved. The movie should be good. And some communication should happen during the movie. The non-sex event can then transition into sex.


Even after sex has occurred in the relationship, it helps to keep creating plausibly deniable situations for meeting and then transitioning into sex. Just meeting for sex and leaving isn't ideal for a young woman. They do love sex, but they like it much more when it's romantic. Guy's don't really care if it's romantic or not, so they need to consciously consider this.

This is a direct quote from a woman in her early twenties "that's my problem, I spend time alone with guys and then I do bad things." ("Bad" simply meaning sexual in this context.) Note that the quote was all said with a hint of self-criticism but a smile at the same time. She wants to believe that she plans to just hang out and these things just happen. Of course the guys who have sex with her are likely moving rationally (consciously or unconsciously) to the desired point from the moment they first begin speaking to her to the final moment of intercourse. If they operate correctly, the whole experience should feel natural and accidental.

She also wants to believe that she has a so called "wild side" - a mode where she desires to have sex. It's a temporary "side" because a constant state would imply more of a "slutty" idea which she wants to avoid.

Boob is not a muscle

In movies and TV, guys who are fighters have big muscles, which provide the necessary power output. However, women who are masters of hand to hand combat, swordplay, etc., don't have big muscles, they have big boobs instead. Doesn't make any sense. You can't punch somebody out with the power of a boob, it's 80% fat (or possibly silicone) and glands. And, from what I'm told, big boobs can annoyingly flop around while you're engaged in activity like fighting, so they could be a handicap.

Hugs not drugs

My relative attended a grade school where they don't allow the students to hug each other. It sounds like just a silly rule, but I would say it's a fully retarded and destructive rule. Note that this school is geared toward art students & artists so they need all the psychological support they can get. A hug is a valid treatment for mild psychological illness. It really doesn't take a scientific paper to figure this out, although you can probably find them, basically hugs make people happy and depression is a lack of happy. Prozac will activate some kind of happy circuitry, and so will a hug. However the hugs are illegal in the school and Prozac is more accepted. Prozac has 18 common unwanted side effects and you have to pay for it. Hugs are free, and side effects are arguably minimal. I assume some people can get all the hugs they need at home, but really some people can't. It all depends on the family.

Balance of positive and negative when talking to women

I used to make really negative comments to women that I'm meeting and figure that they would see some sort of humor in the criticism. My friends see the humor, women included. However, new people are still in a phase of forming a connection and negative comments can disconnect you.

For example, a woman mentioned a technique on the internet for "getting things done," and I said I wasn't very familiar but maybe saw some comments from the delusional who actually believe in that stuff. This disconnects in two ways, (1) not familiar and (2) criticizing the people who apparently like what she likes. A much better approach would have been to ask her more details about it. Actually, I probably could have learned some interesting stuff by doing that.

Negative can be interesting, but it's less useful when you first meet. You want to have a lot of commonalities, connections, etc. This means that you are connected enough to be having a conversation. Then you can have opposing opinions and such on specific items, but the connection is still in place.

If you are visibly joking with good body language and presentation, it may be possible to make negative comments and have the come off as just entertaining. I consider that an exception. In most cases agreeing and even finding ways to restate and add to (not subject from) what the woman said is the way to go.

How to have a conversation with a woman, current experience

I'm an introvert by nature, so this the topic of how to effectively converse with women is something I think about and read about. Tonight I had a relatively good experience just talking to women at a Salsa club. This is after more than one year of making an effort to develop these skills. I now tend to look at them and ask myself what the story is behind them. You can't ask that directly, but you can ask a question that's more about the current situation, and then move step by step based on her cues to learning more about her whole story. The more comfortable the woman is, the more information she gives you at each step. And, I always prefer to ask open ended rather than yes or no questions. Each piece of information she mentions is a launch point for a whole new chunk of information. So, there's really a lot of stuff to talk about. I've also learned to talk to some women as friends, whether there's any physical attraction or not, as this establishes me (to everyone in the venue) as a person who interacts. Women characterize your personality not just by how you talk to them, but by how you talk to everybody.

To go to a public gathering, meet new people, and enjoy the conversations without much conscious effort - this is an ideal state. I remember a time when I would say pretty much nothing when put in an environment like this. Now it seems that I can begin to glipse at what it would be to really just have fun with people, however I'm not totally there yet. I like the Salsa venues because they give you something to do other than just talking - dancing, which is a great ice breaker - however ultimately the deep connections come out of the talking.

Bluetooth freedom

Tonight I realized that I can talk to myself while walking in public and people will just think I'm using a bluetooth earpiece... freedom.

Computer Science view of talking to new girls at Salsa event

Computer Science view of talking to new girls at Salsa event: You have a life story and she has a life story - those are graphs of information, with nodes and edges. You ask one open ended question and she'll give you one node's description in the graph. By open ended I mean not yes/no - because yes/no is just binary and you only get one bit of information back. Open ended questions like "how did you get into Salsa" typically give you a lot more than a bit. Once you have one node to start with, you can do a depth first search to a common interest node. That is, you ask a question about the first node, which gives you an adjacent node. Then you can ask about that, etc, etc, moving step by step. Once you hit a common interest node, you make that clear by expressing how you share information or opinion about that node. This creates a little connection between your graph and her graph, a new edge. You continue to move from node to node, connecting, adding edges. If a conversation gets deep enough, you might even start adding new nodes to both of your graphs. And if things go well, your graphs end up fairly entangled, with lots of interesting connections. If they don't, you end up with just one or two ephemeral edges connected to her, and they will probably fade with time. Contrast this to talking to a friend. There's a major difference - you've already got edges connecting your graphs to start with. You also have random access - you can go anywhere pretty quickly - rather than step by step, searching and checking, coherently from one node to the next. That freedom and that experience is part of why friendship is so valuable.

The Force

There is a Force of light and dark, like in Star Wars. However, it's an emergent property of all life (an nonliving things). You can't use it directly like they do in the movie, but it operates according to the actions of all involved. You can allow either the dark or light side to affect your actions.

Alien boobs

Alien women probably would not have boobs. Most animals do not (even ones that give milk).

Beauty

Looking at a flower, I wonder why a flower built for a bee is pretty to me also. Maybe there are principles of beauty that are universal. The most basic assumption some might make it that their own concept of beauty is the universal definition and anybody who disagrees is wrong. Next, there are those who are OK with "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" - really meaning it's the the brain of the beholder. How much is our brain like a bee brain. It doesn't have to be very similar. Our common ancestor was a little worm that barely had a nervous system. But still, even computer vision systems are beginning to exibit some aspects similar to natural vision systems. So maybe some things just evolve in vision systems, no matter what the species. (Sort of like how eyes are pretty similar in squid and humans even though they evolved separately.) Or, maybe it's no accedent. Humans used to eat a lot of fruit. Maybe nature made us like flowers because they are good indications of fruit. And by the way, I don't mean flowers that look like human private parts, I know exactly why people think those are beautiful, I just mean normal little flowers.

Real quote about nature

"he does grant some peace and security in this world we accept as real, whereas you will
always be like a hot, burning fire to my soul despite and maybe because of your unusually advanced, yet basic nature"

How to measure love

It's difficult for me to estimate my own love toward a woman, but I've found a way. The key question: how upset would I be if she became pregnant, had my child, and I supported this child. If I'm not upset at all, that is true love.

Over-use of quantum physics when pop speakers are talking about how the mind works

Seems to be an over-use of quantum physics when pop speakers are talking about how the mind works. Quantum physics is the basis of chemistry and electronics... and those are important for brain function, but you often don't need to get deep into the weirdness of QM to understand and characterize brain function. The cells are often computing in the more deterministic way that we are familiar with rather than the weird "quantum computer" way. Scientists build good models of single brain cells without using quantum mechanics (see NEURON simulator). As a thought experiment, you could replace each of the cells in your brain with a simulated neuron. You certainly wouldn't notice the different if you just replaced one with a machine that somehow received and created the same signals. (For an example, a pacemaker for a heart is sort of is a virtual cell signal simulator that works pretty well.) You could eventually replace every cell with a machine that does the same thing. I assume after all that you wouldn't know the difference. You'd be like the same program running on a different computer at that point. I suppose it's theoretically possible that something funny is going on specifically with organic biology that makes conciousness more real, but honestly I doubt it. So, why do the pop speakers talk about QM so much? - because it sounds cool. Nobody wants to be just an extremely complex computer or machine - we want to be something that we cannot understand. We want some magic. Quantum mechanics is strange enough at the level of single atom interactions to seem almost magical. But lets get real, cell are not atoms, and the brain is an analog computer, period.