Identity

our identity is pretty much an illusion. it's a program running on our brain for a bunch of reasons, one of which is probably to help preserve our bodies. the feeling that we cannot be replaced is to help convince us to stay alive. it wouldn't matter if somebody replaced a human with a copy in his or her sleep, it may have already happened to me, no different would be detected. our mind is the result of information encoded into a bunch of atoms. although the mind itself is a rather weird thing - it's not the atoms really - just something riding on top of physics. i don't know if humans will carry the concept of identity into the distant future when they are computing things on machines other than brains.

Polygamy

polygamy

this makes me think: with humans, a man and a woman form a colony (a very small colony) that is like a super-organism. ants being an example of a super-organism with lots of members.

the drive that humans feel to find another (sometimes called love or whatever) is like the drive that ants have to be part of their colony. they would feel lost without it. they would only be 1/10000th of an organism. human would only be 1/2.

Dolphins

"The Cove" documentary about dolphins mentioned that a TV show used 5 dolphins to play one. One dolphin could recognize itself on TV. So dolphins can recognize themselves on TV while people cannot.

Predicting The Future

Lets just say physics is deterministic. You could predict the future by making a copy of the system and simulating it into the future. You could observe what happens. But, there's a catch. If you looked at the result of the simulation, you would need that result near the beginning of the simulation to run it properly. So, it wouldn't work unless you did not observe the result. As long as you don't observe the result, you can create a good simulation that just assumes that you don't know the result. Unfortunately the whole thing is pretty pointless if you can't observe the result of the simulation.

Anyway, the thing about observation reminds me of quantum mechanics - even though this thought experiment has nothing to do with quantum mechanics and assumes the state of the world is measurable and deterministic.

Life's Value

this is interesting, the author is hinting that pain is the essence of life's value. captain kirk once said something similar.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/11/28/what-makes-life-sacred/

"An additional bonus of saying ‘the brain does it’ is that we can decide whether a human being or another animal has value by considering its brain development. The gestational age for a legal abortion, for example, is generally premised on viability but some argue that it might be better to premise it on experience. Neuroscientists have pointed to the fact that after 24 weeks gestation the fetus has the necessary receptors, wiring and brain areas to experience pain and so, after 24 weeks, the fetus has value."

Insanity Revisited

Maybe not actually, I take that last insanity-related message back.

Those women's minds were programmed through a 3 billion year process of evolution. Using the concept of boosting, I would assume that the average behavior of the group is near optimal.

They are the personalities that produced the most viable offspring. I suspect that social interaction was truly critical to keep their men alive and fed - also keeping their family protected and such. That's why they have this tendency programmed into them to identify the guys who seem to be socially connected.

www.wikihow.com/Pick-Up-a-Girl-in-a-Club

http://www.wikihow.com/Pick-Up-a-Girl-in-a-Club

I read this and it leads me to believe that most (not all, but most) women are completely  insane. I mean what kind of fish goes after that bait?

But I suppose that's just it, like Dale Carenegie said: worms may not taste that good to a human, but if you want to catch a fish, you use a worm. So be it.

(Just to be fair, most guys are also insane.)