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How do you experience evolutionary selection pressure?

Evolutionary selection permeates the consciousness of members of a species at a level higher than the individuals themselves. Everyone comes into awareness about the selection pressures and adaptations taking place across their population. This happens independently of who they happen to be. Awareness of “life”, being alive, what it takes to survive, exist in each individual even when they lack it in some perceived manner e.g. being unattractive, having low self-esteem, being a failure. Indeed, it’s what enables self-deprecation and sometimes suicide based on some of these beliefs in an individual. Each individual is not out for themselves, with the selection pressure encouraging them to succeed, but rather they are out for the collective they are part of, whether they realise it or not, whether they like it or not. It is detrimental to individuals to feel bad about themselves. However, this is the effect of collective selection. Individuals therefore place themselves...
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No, but seriously: What is “Life”?

i) Attempts to define life in terms of humans thinking about defining life in terms of egotistical individuals, genes, species or whatnot have failed for what should be obvious reasons. Life is a natural phenomenon no different to any other. It can be regarded as an abstract concept referring to an energy exchange process rather than any given chemical, object, individual or concrete material arrangement. The temptation to define life as such has been merely a bias of the definer, of our individual consciousness taking place in an individual body. While bodies may exhibit life, as they are alive, they are not as such life itself, as life itself does not operate in any significant way on a given object: not individuals, nor species, nor size scales, chemicals nor arrangements of matter. The failure of life at any of these levels (think individual death, species extinction or even mass extinctions) does not overall hinder the process of life through time, for as long as any sin...
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The Agenda of Those Who Praise You

Is praise for personal success just guised reinforcement for doing something that benefits others while hurting that individual? Often successful people aren’t themselves happy per se, truly, genuinely fulfilled with the object of their success, whatever it may be – so why do they seek it? Reinforcement and praise is given by others, by society as a whole for doing certain things such as working hard and being generous. These things clearly benefit others, and that is why they should encourage it. They also often come at the expense of the individual doing it; they suffer ill health from pursuing those activities, mental health included, and take the brunt of things upon themselves. Another example of this in action is entrepreneurship – what is entrepreneurship? Why has it been glamourised so heavily? Simply, entrepreneurship is that act of doing absolutely whatever it takes, often unpleasant activities no one else would derive any happiness from, to do thing...
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Are you ready to leave your body?

Imagine you have just upgraded your mind, brain or otherwise consciousness to an objectively superior carcass – a transhumanist dream come true. You no longer have bodily limitations as before, such as running out of breath or not being able to find the nearest toilet. How would you relate to your world, a world built around our previous biological bodies? Would your mind quickly adapt to its new senses, or be left alienated and unsatisfied, still tethered to the ghost of your body past? What would waking up become, now that the potent touch of sunlight no longer connects to your post-biological self? Homes, laden with accessories and structure to suit a feeble human body, now rendered all but obsolete. What’s a kitchen if you don’t need to squeeze chemical energy out of food? What’s a table with chairs if you don’t get tired or need to make the most of feeding and socialising in a designated space? What’s a bathroom for you now that failing skin need no longer be bathed, ...
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Where does intuition come from?

Intuition is the complex, as of yet unexplained phenomenon which enables people to gain knowledge without any direct or obvious pathway from raw, disconnected components, to a unified, coherent idea . The source of intuition is unknown, and therefore knowledge gathered through it is often questioned for its usefulness, validity and accuracy . The source and process of intuition can be viewed in a mathematical way. I propose a viewpoint, not my own or original, that takes into account our human perspective and its relationship with the physical reality truth s. This can be boiled down to our own nature, and its necessary obedience of any natural principles or laws.   In essence, this means that we are part of the universe, on the deepest and loosest level of connection, through the fabrics that span the farthest regions of the world, by the most fundamental principles such as time or gravity; and more intimately in our environment, through the fabrics that span closer regi...
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