wonderings
11-27-2016, 09:11 PM
i don't remember anything that happened to me before i was three years old, but it happened all the same. similarly, i was a very different person five years ago, and yet everything that happened to them happened to me.
how do babies think without language?
if i could slow time, i could easily dodge bullets. but if i one hit me, would it actually damage me? i mean, it would be going really slowly.
if me or any one of my billions of ancestors was conceived five minutes earlier or five minutes later, i would not exist, and nobody would know the difference.
where was i before i was conceived? obviously according to science to science i didn't exist but that's kind of lame and what about according christianity/judaism/islam or buddhism or hinduism? what about all the other mes that never were born?
i can understand the subtle communication of my cat better than i can that of most humans.
if all religions, including atheism, claim to be the one only truth but rely entirely on the faith that that is the fact, how do you know which is right?
do i identify more with a52 or my actual name? or does it matter whether i'm currently on the internet or not? are a52 and [redacted] actually two different people?
what would a man from the 17h century think of plastic?
could an alien race exist that goes backwards through time? i mean, single celled organisms are more orderly than heat death, and complex organisms are more orderly than single celled ones, so it doesn't break entropy. would such a race fear ultimate order in the same way we fear ultimate entropy?
how can we define intelligence for alien races? thinking about it, all the things we consider necessary for animal intelligence -- complex social structure, limbs that can be used to make tools, a high position on the food chain -- are all really just things that we have ourselves. they all seem necessary, but if you combine em, it's hard to end up with anything other than a human or similar.
what are emotions, really? i could write an program that responds "emotionally" to input in less than 200 lines, but how is that different than the emotions of an intelligent ai, and how is that different than the emotions of a human? are genetic algorithms addicted to high values on their fitness function?
isn't rabies basically a zombie virus? it slowly drives you mad, then you run around biting people and spreadiing it.
if i made a sapient ai in conway's game of life, it would seem less human than one made as a computer program, just because you could see it working.
how many times were self-replicating molecules formed on earth only to be destroyed/run out of material within a few days? how long did it take for one to finally be able to protect and feed itself?
what would mozart think of jazz?
if ancient cultures just used spaces to mark empty digits instead of zeroes, how could they tell the difference between 1000 and 10? did they use 1 1 - 1 and 11 - 1?
why do we have five fingers and not four or six?
would aliens have music?
how do babies think without language?
if i could slow time, i could easily dodge bullets. but if i one hit me, would it actually damage me? i mean, it would be going really slowly.
if me or any one of my billions of ancestors was conceived five minutes earlier or five minutes later, i would not exist, and nobody would know the difference.
where was i before i was conceived? obviously according to science to science i didn't exist but that's kind of lame and what about according christianity/judaism/islam or buddhism or hinduism? what about all the other mes that never were born?
i can understand the subtle communication of my cat better than i can that of most humans.
if all religions, including atheism, claim to be the one only truth but rely entirely on the faith that that is the fact, how do you know which is right?
do i identify more with a52 or my actual name? or does it matter whether i'm currently on the internet or not? are a52 and [redacted] actually two different people?
what would a man from the 17h century think of plastic?
could an alien race exist that goes backwards through time? i mean, single celled organisms are more orderly than heat death, and complex organisms are more orderly than single celled ones, so it doesn't break entropy. would such a race fear ultimate order in the same way we fear ultimate entropy?
how can we define intelligence for alien races? thinking about it, all the things we consider necessary for animal intelligence -- complex social structure, limbs that can be used to make tools, a high position on the food chain -- are all really just things that we have ourselves. they all seem necessary, but if you combine em, it's hard to end up with anything other than a human or similar.
what are emotions, really? i could write an program that responds "emotionally" to input in less than 200 lines, but how is that different than the emotions of an intelligent ai, and how is that different than the emotions of a human? are genetic algorithms addicted to high values on their fitness function?
isn't rabies basically a zombie virus? it slowly drives you mad, then you run around biting people and spreadiing it.
if i made a sapient ai in conway's game of life, it would seem less human than one made as a computer program, just because you could see it working.
how many times were self-replicating molecules formed on earth only to be destroyed/run out of material within a few days? how long did it take for one to finally be able to protect and feed itself?
what would mozart think of jazz?
if ancient cultures just used spaces to mark empty digits instead of zeroes, how could they tell the difference between 1000 and 10? did they use 1 1 - 1 and 11 - 1?
why do we have five fingers and not four or six?
would aliens have music?
![[Image: egg006.png?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/xirjasxjrie6qdn/egg006.png?raw=1)
![[Image: Gou1RJu.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Gou1RJu.png)