Irony of Evolution

The irony of Evolution vs. Religion is that spirituality evolved as a means for humans to ignore reality. We are biochemical machines, but it's not neccessarily a good thing to look at ourselves that way. Many people are happier and more productive believing that there's something spiritual beyond - that belief makes them perform better - that's why the belief evolved. It seems that some don't understand this when criticizing people for not teaching evolution (or the like). They don't understand that humans are probably programmed to reject the truth if needed - and accept explanations that don't cause depression.

Responding to the Food Question

standard motif: "how's your x" where x is the food you just got

this one's sort of like the forward basic, very common move

next time i'll be like, what metric shall i evaluate it by? nutritional value? probability that i'll have a headache in an hour? energy content? propensity to keep by brain's glucose level up? texture? response of the tongue to basic sweet/sour/bitter? or the subtler flavors that the olfactory system detects?

it's a complex question - usually i just say "good."

Metaphor - Dating/Dancing

i think that dating is like salsa dancing... and i'm thinking specifically in terms of the way the lead works... the guy is expected to guide and the girl can do her thing within that. possibly another correlation - use of standard motifs.

Alcohol

Use of alcohol (in any situation including dates and friendly gatherings) is probably deeply ingrained into human psychy. Like our teeth are modified for cooked food, our minds are modified to expect alcohol.

h(t)

let h(t) be happiness as a function of time for a given relationship.

i like this formalism.

h(t) = 0 would be pretty boring

positive spikes would be... pretty obvious

negative spikes would be arguments

there would probably be negative and positive spike correlations

the RMS of h would be like a measure of how much of a rollercoaster the relationship is.

DC bias would be just how generally "constantly" happy it makes you - like are you in a lower or higher mood throughout the whole relationship.

healthy relationships probably have significant RMS. it's a sign that communication is happening, but not so much RMS that they blow a fuse.

At the River

for the full sized, goth, bio-luminescent fairy that's going to be my lover, this is the make-out song. i'll just call her maya, (Hindu for illusion).

it (the song) takes about 1 min 30 secs to really get going.

groove armada - at the river
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb2HBDxqwIg

Two Minds

i have this part of my mind, it's right, but it's so fucking impractical - it doesn't work with my reward system, dopamine, or whatever. it just sits there and tells me the truth, as if i need to know about it.

and it's at odds with the other part, that is basically an animal (and when i say animal i mean like a cat or a mouse, not a great ape, which is almost the same as a human)

this is what happens when an evolved brain. you get the animal brain, then nature spends 10 million years tacking on one more layer. instead of revamping the whole system for one cohesive function, it just tacked on a layer.

i think i'll need one project to keep one part of the brain happy, and another part to keep the other happy.

now that i think about it, this is probably what freud was talking about (id and super-ego), but he jumped to way too many conclusions to be generally credible.

religion teaches that our life energy will be preserved in some way, and this makes the super-ego and the id relatively happy - as they are both interested in keeping us going.

but really the only way to preserve our life energy... would be to do it ourselves. no invisible super-powerful being is going to do it for us.